Neuer Anzug [OPEN]

[Alaric von der Marck]

WEARING

Suits. They were far simpler now than they had been in centuries past, but they were simple, they were sleek. The elder discovered that he preferred them, even though he’d been told several times over that he did not need to wear a suit every single night. Even if he did not leave the estate, one would find him decked out in a suit. Suits with matching jackets and waistcoats, with different ties to change things up a bit. Different button-up shirts underneath to make a suit either casual or formal.

Too easily overwhelmed, the Telepath didn’t often go into the city. It took a lot of energy to keep his mental shields up, to keep the technology out of his head -- to keep other people out of his head. It wasn’t that they did anything on purpose, he just lacked the control required to keep his mental fingers from prying.

Although there were ways to get things delivered to the estate and, if he so wished, Alaric never had to leave, he was not a child. He was not a toddler to be cared for. He was born centuries ago, he had experience beyond that of his current contemporaries. He would not stay confined, no more than was necessary.

And so here he was, the tailor shop open beyond sunset. The elder had managed to get further into the city, the Swansdale train taking him through to Gullsborough. A hasty pace took him past the nightclubs and to the mall, where he bypassed the chain stores and instead sought the quieter confines of the tailor shop, owned by an elderly man who didn’t make enough money to retire. He’d told this to Alaric, confiding in the German gentleman who understood the fine art of the suit far better than any of the younger folk did, these days.

The elder stepped out of the changing room, the cut of the suit framing him perfectly but he was so very unsure of the plaid, and of the pattern on the tie. Unable to see himself in the mirror, however, he had to trust the elderly tailor’s opinion. Was it too modern…?

The hubbub of the mall outside only distracted Alaric mildly, his defenses glitching only momentarily and a sharp stabbing headache assaulted his temple. He shook it off, a second’s glance spared for the crowd outside. He liked to stay here, with the tailor, until it was quiet. Only then would he make his way home.

[Meara]

Don't **** where you eat.

An old proverb told to her by an older busker once upon a time when he was teaching Meara the ins and outs of public performance. What he meant by that was never perform near your house or dayjob. He had regaled Meara with a tale of a young flutist who had been stalked by an over zealous admirer and nearly killed. So when the redhead wanted to earn a couple bucks in addition to the allowance she earned from managing Alex's shop, she would go perform for the people of this city. Ammunition didn't buy itself after all, and her new found gifts seemed to make humans flock to her like rats to the pied piper.

She had heard about another mall across town from some of the customers that would pop in to the shop, and perhaps had passed it as she had explored around town. So on a somewhat cooler evening, Meara packed up her equipment and caught the train over to Gullsborough from her usual stop at Wickbridge. Once inside, her blue eyes drank in her surroundings as she looked around for a suitable area that had enough foot traffic but wouldn't be in the way either.

After a little bit of looking, she saw a fountain with a marble ledge , nestled in the center of several stores. Sort of like a courtyard. There was one cart vendor there, whom Meara promptly chatted up to see if they minded if Meara played near them. When they said no, and that the complex owners probably wouldn't mind either, Meara clapped her hands gleefully before moving to get set up. 10 minutes of power cord wiring and tuning later she set her case open in front of the fountain and hopped up on the ledge.

In a fluid motion she started to flow her bow over the strings, and the sound filled the space quickly as her lithe body began to bend and sway. Some people would trickle by looking at the woman strangely, while others watched awhile seemingly enthralled by the music. Meara herself tended to daydream and lose herself in the music and the dance. Some of her pieces were original compositions, whereas others were arrangements of popular music such as John Legend's "All of Me" or Maclemore's "Thrift Shop."

WEARING

All of Me

[Alaric von der Marck]

The suit, with all its colours and modern style, did not appeal to Alaric as much as it could have. It was a whim, something he thought he might try. Suddenly, he wished that he were not alone. As much as he trusted the tailor to give an honest opinion, Alaric thought that someone like Leonie would give him a better opinion. Even Judah. For a fleeting second he thought of Anna and those few weeks of fevered emotional attachment he’d felt for the woman who looked so much like his wife. He wondered whether he’d been too forward, too eager – he’d scared her away. It was for the best. She was not Anya, and he’d have spent his time with Anna only comparing her to a ghost. That would not have been healthy for either of them.

Anya had been the one who’d helped tailor the suits Alaric had owned, when he was human. She was the one who helped him to pick them out. There was something to be said about women and their inherent sense of style, and what went with what – and it was truer in this century than it had ever been. Especially now, when Alaric was still so unsure about what was ‘hip’.

The elder, in the end, was distracted from his mission to try to get a good look at himself without the aid of a mirror. From outside, the hubbub of the crowd was vanquished by the keening cry of an instrument. What was it? It sounded a little like a violin, but it was different. Dazed, and lured by the unfamiliar melody, Alaric meandered toward the front of the shop. The tailor said nothing. It was only when Alaric wandered out the front door that the tailor protested – without thinking, the elder assured the tailor that he would be back. Not out loud, but via telepathy. He left the old man behind, fingers at his old temple looking a little perplexed.

Strangely oblivious to the crowds around him, Alaric von der Marck made a straight line for the fountain, and for the waif of a girl who played her instrument by its side. It was a violin, but it was electrified, attached to chords and booming from a small box at her feet. Mesmerized, Alaric stared, the expression painted upon his features more intense than it needed to be.

[Meara]

Now Playing

Meara had decided that this mall was a great bet.

The crowd was younger and more eclectic than the one over in QCC. It reminded Mea of her last permanent residence, Asheville, with its crunchy hipster culture. So she would treat them to one of her favorite compositions, a pirate inspired Irish jig. She would sway along the edge jumping along with the beat before moving into a jig like step. It would be obvious to passers by that the woman had done this on walls and ledges before as to not lose her footing while playing.

Suddenly as she pirouetted along the fountain's ledge as the piece soared to a high note, Meara felt a very heavy almost leaden stare on her. It wasn't like a normal observer who was watching her performance, but it felt like a large omnipotent presence. Blue eyes were now starting to glance about, trying to see who was staring a hole into her as Meara's fingers danced over the finger board in their choreographed routine. Part of her was starting to grow concerned it was that damned paladin that tried to murder her a couple times already. She could feel him coming from a mile away after all, so Meara thought whomever's attention she had might be very powerful. Time to investigate possible escape routes.

But this was the power of busking. Meara didn't have a setlist. She could make it up as she went any no one would be the wiser. Meara had been playing for nearly twenty to twenty five minutes by now anyways, so she could get a way with a TV time out. As she glided to a stop and took a bow for the applause, Meara gave a bright smile.

"I'm going to take a 10 minute intermission. Feel free to come back later on!"

Gracefully Meara jumped down off the edge of the fountain and sat on the floor next to her case to collect her earnings so she could fold them up and tuck them away for safe keeping.

[Alaric von der Marck]

The music sent chills up Alaric’s spine. It was… new. And yet there was an eerie resonance to it. It spoke directly to one’s soul, uplifting in a way the elder had not felt in so long. Well, that was a lie. Many things gave him wonder in this new age, though mostly the things that he had missed in the two centuries he’d spent in the darkness of limbo. The touch of the breeze against his skin, the sound of a cricket in the grass, the moon limning the clouds in silver. The feel of his toes as they dug into earth that was still soaked with the sun’s warmth.

It might have had to do with the acoustics, too – the way the electricity of the melody flew skyward and bounced from the domed glass ceiling, reverberating around the shopping centre and luring others to come and watch. It wasn’t a small crowd, either. It was the kind of crowd that might have had Alaric running for cover, if he were paying any attention. But they weren’t paying any mind to him, and the music drowned out all other noise – both external and internal.

But then the music stopped, so suddenly, and Alaric was brought back down to Earth. The girl said she was having a break and most of the other bystanders shuffled off, quite a few of them dropping money into the collection. The hubbub of the shopping centre returned, and Alaric cringed, though his eyes remained upon the musician. It was easier to focus on one thing to keep the rest at bay. It was a trick he had taught himself. Focus on the one thing, and the rest could become background noise.

Alaric approached, where no one else did.

”What is this box…?” he asked, German accent strong, gesturing to the box from which the music had come, wires connecting it to an instrument that he wanted to hug only because of its familiarity – something from a past that was mostly forgotten.

[Meara]

Meara's nimble fingers were sorting and counting the stack of bills as a heavy German voice drifted into her consciousness and startled her enough to the point that the bow resting against her shoulder tipped over and clattered against the marble floor. She glanced up to find herself staring at a pair of kneecaps enclosed in a pair of extremely nice looking navy trousers. As Meara tipped her head the rest of the way back awhile trying to play it cool, she discovered there was a tall lanky body attached to those legs. Blue eyes blinked owlishly as she tried to formulate an answer to his seemingly odd question.

"Oh you mean my amplifier?" Meara set the cash down in her case and picked her violin up with her left hand. As she stood up, her right hand grabbed the handle of the vintage styled small amplifier to present it for inspection. "Basically what it does is it captures the reverberations within my instrument and uses electronics to make them louder." Admittedly, Meara was not a sound engineer so she didn't understand the ins and outs of the instruments really well, but that was the best basic answer she could give. "It resonates a lot differently then my wooden instrument."

Meara gave a pause as she gave a man a smile. "Feel free to look it over it you like. The cable is disconnected right now so it won't result in feedback if you hit a wrong button. Do you play too?" The tone of her voice was kind of hopeful that she might meet another classically trained instrumentalist instead of the guitar players she kept running into.

[Alaric von der Marck]

The elder glanced between the box – what the girl called an amplifier – and the instrument. It was a violin, yes. Or an outline of one. It didn’t look completely traditional, despite Alaric’s former assessment. Though the girl suggested that he could look over the amplifier and Alaric shook his head. Anything with electric signals and him, they didn’t mix – though he wasn’t getting any mental feedback from the little electric box.

The violin itself did not look like it would work without the cords that connected it to the little box. There was no back to it, no chamber within which the music could echo and soar. If the instrument were to be played without the chords, it would sound like a reed, would it not? Distractedly, Alaric nodded. Now the music had stopped the chaos of the shopping centre was starting to creep back in, and the elder was close to backing up, retreating to the sanctity of the suit parlour, the quiet hush of heavy fabric, all outside sound muffled as if it did not exist.

”I play, yes,” he said. The affirmation even surprised him, like it was a lesser known fact that he had forgotten about. And maybe he had. It was so very long ago, and he’d had so much to think about since. He was brought back, everything had changed. Where had his violin gone? Two centuries being absent from this mortal coil, he did not even think to go looking for old belongings.

”I do not know how well. It has been… a very long time. You… play very well. It is magical,” he said, and took a single step backwards.

[Meara]

Meara watched the man closely, noticing how he seemed to slink and shirk away from her in the now nearly silent space. She thought it somewhat odd. Any feelings of threat she had been getting were melted away. Mea was at least reasonably convinced now that he was not a paladin. Maybe he was socially awkward and shy, and he just sometimes forgot it was impolite to stare. Impossible to know.

Painted lips twisted upwards into an impish smile as he admitted that he had played some very long time ago. This answer perplexed the redhead, he didn't look to be much more than thirty years old. While she was sure that could be deceiving among the undead like herself, surely there weren't vampires out there that were centuries or millennia old, right? "Very long time...like high school or uni right?" She said jokingly to the taller man. "What sort is your favorite? Beethoven or more like Mendelssohn." Meara placed down the amplifier and picked up the bow, immediately transitioning into playing the opening excerpt from Mendelssohn's Sonata in F, Opus 4. The instrument did make a faint sound on its own, ringing off the fingerboard and bridge, but not loud enough to be heard more than about 10 feet away from where Meara was standing.

As she stopped, Meara was realized the well dressed man was going somewhere, and she hadn't even caught his name yet. She awkwardly jutted her hand out with a warm smile. "Meara Quartermaine. Nice to meet you."

[Alaric von der Marck]

High school. Uni. These were not words that Alaric knew the meaning of. ‘High’ and ‘school’, yes, but not what they meant when put together. ‘Uni’ he did not know at all, though he put it down to his English. The language was fresh for him, and he was still learning new words every day.

”I do not understand the question,” he said even as he took Meara’s hand in his own. ”My English, I am still learning,” he said. The smile that he offered in return was only half forced – like he had to remind himself how to act when so distracted by everything else. With just that touch of her hand he could tell that she was an Allurist, that her skills were varied – that she was not an elder, like him. She was like a baby, but not fresh from the womb.

”Alaric von der Marck,” he said, giving his name in return as was customary when someone introduced themselves. He nodded toward the instrument in the girl’s hand. ”Do all of the violins look like that?” he asked. He was giving away his age, he knew – or that he’d been living under a rock for two centuries. But it was a question he would like an answer for, as he had half a mind to find a violin for himself, to pick up the practice.

[Meara]

"I was asking if you stopped playing when you were a teenager like most kids do in the States where I'm from. I mean you don't look much older than me, Mister " She gave the man's hand a firm squeeze as she shook it, then withdrew it to her side. As she looked up at him, she was starting to become aware that it wasn't all that far fetched that vampires could be much older then she or Alex were. After all , were they not immortal now? "Alaric is a nice name though. Unique." Her brain was trying to tell her to stop rambling so she didn't just out and ask him how old he was. Oh wait he asked about he violin, if they were all like this.

Gracefully, Meara laid the instrument across her forearms so he could get a better look at it. "This is what we call an electric violin. It's designed specifically to be played with amplification like I was. But they only constitute maybe about 10% of all violins in production. Most are the traditional wooden ones." Wheels were spinning a little as she tried to think of a parallel. Then a light bulb went off.

"I dunno if you're familiar with guitars. But the difference between my violin and the ones you're used to is the same difference as an electric and acoustic guitar. But I am far more partial to the sound the wood makes." Meara was trying to be charming and warm in her responses, as it seemed the man seemed a bit lost and confused. In a way she was a bit like that herself with everything still being so new to her. Maybe they could help each other - who knew.