and the bass keeps runnin runnin

[250mhzwabl]

Who: Anyone who heard the announcement, caught a flier in the plaza, of heard by word of mouth. Everyone's welcome!
What: A rave! Well, "rave." Luceti makes everything a little different.
When: June 21st, nightfall to early morning
Where: the beach near Adele's house
Summary: It's the first day of summer! This calls for bonfires, naturally, but why not spice it up with loud music, flashing lights, drinks, dancing, and a conspicuous lack of curfew?
Rating: PG to PG-13, please move anything steamier to appointments or Adele will take the hose to you



Getting all the firewood, food, and drink out to the beach had been, honestly, the hardest part of preparation. Whatever else one might say about running things on magic, it certainly did cut down on the trouble of constructing edifices and machines to run the entertainment side of a party. As it stands, the setup is labour-intensive but otherwise minimal, and there's not much to do by sunset. Escape the house before Max and Zevran, the culture-displaced madmen, can put any more eyeliner on him. Arrive at the beach. Light the bonfires. Make sure the bonfire-cooking-compliant food is set out. Put up a table loaded with bottles, cups, ice, and permanent markers. Thank the resident doctor and quartermaster once more. Plug in the stereo system.

The speakers and light show have been with him since he left his house, in the form of the resident god of mischief, and they confer over sheets of paper with track names and times written on them for a little while just before the start. That's the last of it, and by the time the sky above the mountains is beginning to darken into twilight, the first thumping, trilling strains of dance music begin to echo out across the sand.

It's the shortest night of the year. Best make every second last.

[OOC: Feel free to post your character for mingling, since this entire event is very free-form anyway. For everyone's enjoyment there is a drinks table, food, several bonfires, the ocean (lifeguards not on duty, splash drunkenly at your own risk), and of course a dancing area with lights and music. Music will probably be primarily EDM with a heavy bass line, but occasionally wander into the territories of electro-swing and the like to give even less modern partygoers a chance to show off. The light show as well will stray out of the typical at times, with the expected abstract wheeling and flashing lights giving way to more complicated illusions. Don't be surprised to find yourself and your fellows occasionally dancing in a forest glen or a Rivendell look-alike for a few minutes at a time. Loki is working the tech booth, after all.

The party will go as long as people stay and are enjoying themselves, so have fun and tag around!]

Comments

[250mhzwabl]

[He'd never thought of Isaac having a mother.

Stupid, wasn't it? As if anyone, even someone like Isaac, just coalesced out of thin air and free-floating spite. But it had never been something that had occurred to him - that the man who wore borrowed faces and told him hideous things and had twisted so deeply into Zevran's sentiments had been young once, too. That there might be some truth in that little throwaway line about how a different life might have left him a man not unlike Jack.]

How old were you?

[Only on the surface are the reluctant words a query for Isaac's age at one moment in his life. Jack wants to know what happens, in that sinking way that is sure he'd be happiest in the dutiless ignorance of never having heard the beginning of the story. Even brief acquaintance with Isaac is enough to infer that he's from a decidedly pre-modern time, and Jack is a little too aware of what even earlier parts of modernity have had to say about people like him. Them.]

[relictusdeus]

Isaac blinks slowly, surfacing from his reverie just enough for the question to penetrate. "Eleven, I believe... when I had first seen him. But I was twelve when we met. ...Yes. I know not the day I was born, but the year was… 1453, Anno Domini. If it holds any meaning for you."

Blank-faced, he looks to the stars as if a message were spelled out in the faintly glittering constellations. "Much too young was I to know what it is men are wont to do when burning with desire deep in the night. My desires were simpler, in a way; all I had hoped for was to be adored and to be spoken to and to find a friend in a human other than my own sister. So taken, so smitten was I by this man I had never met and who knew not I existed."

Pausing, he turns the words over in his mind, huffing a soft, sad little laugh at the foolishness of such sentiments. "How fortunate it was for me that my mother would sleep very deeply, for one night I mustered the courage to break free, as it were. Twelve years spent as a recluse, beaten about the head with warnings and never permitted to wander far from the woods had made a very restless and fearful boy of me, as you might imagine. But… my curiosity was greater than my fear, and I dared to enter Cordova several times."

An almost gleeful smile steals across his face, making a child of him.

"A marvel I did not wet myself then from the sheer thrill of it all. I found all manner of things and made them mine – a coin or two, a scrap of leather, some sort of half-eaten pastry from the market… ah. Such were my treasures."

He lingers fondly on the thought.

"Of course, it came to be that I began to think very highly of my ability to pass through unseen and grew too... comfortable. Cordova had its guardians… that is to say, about a dozen able-bodied men appointed to wander the streets after dark to answer the threat of flesh-eating ghouls and demons and the like to which the night belongs. But ‘twas I who they caught, thrashing and screaming, my arms wrenched behind me. And others came forth from the darkness. Men brandishing crucifixes and flasks of holy water. But when I flinched not at the sight of the Lord’s son and His flesh pressed into mine, and the water could singe my skin no more than the cross, even greater was their terror. I had begged them to understand I was naught but a foolish child, a human like themselves, and like their own sons. I apologized, as if it might appease their wrath. But no child did they see before them. Be not fooled, one said, by the cunning of a strigoi. And then, I saw him – ‘twas he who came forth with the stake, and for the first time he looked at me. He looked at me, and… and with such… hatred --"

The words are spat out in a sharp and snarling whisper, his nose wrinkling.

"-- and disgust in his eyes." A beat. He's left panting softly, fierce energy and hope bleeding from him. "...Such pretty eyes they were."

Breaking off, he turns his attention to his dirt-scuffed boots and studies them absently, chuckling low in his throat despite himself. "I had his attentions at last, but... not quite in the way I had wanted it."

[250mhzwabl]

For better or for worse, Isaac is a marvellous storyteller, and Jack finds himself bound in silence as he listens to him unfurl the tale. What he does not say, or touches upon only briefly, leaves at least as much of an impression on him as the things he lingers upon at length.

That had been Isaac. Twelve years old, with no company but a mother and a sister, at a time in the world's history when darkness and solitude were both such terribly dangerous things. Enough of a twelve-year-old boy to risk even the things he had been told were most dangerous, and revel in his new-found invincibility to have come away from the so-called peril alive and full of new experiences. Enough of a child to be terrified to find himself alone, set-upon by unfamiliar authority, and willing to say whatever he thought would see him back to the home he'd gleefully fled. And just old enough to have built up in his mind someone who could never come even close to those careless daydreams.

It doesn't change a thing he's done. And Jack's not enough of a fool to think that past pain makes the man any less dangerous - if anything, the pattern tends to run exactly the opposite. But there's an ache in understanding a little better, perhaps, some of the monstrousness. Of course he proclaims that he's not human. Who on earth would want to be human, after that?

". . . hell," he murmurs, when he finally finds his voice again, watching Isaac with only a troubled disquiet.

[relictusdeus]

Though Jack’s hushed response registers, quietly absorbed, he’s still smiling half-absently as if he hadn’t heard. Eyes soft and dim and lost in the distance.

“Mother was furious.” There’s a soft exhalation of a laugh, his tone too buoyant. ”I believe her desire to strangle me to death was quite nearly equal to her desire to save me. More wrathful a woman when cross I have never known since. She was -- I had hated her.” The word turns over and over in his mind and his brow furrowing as warring emotions wrench him every which way. “…No. I had hated what it is she would do.”

Had he truly and wholly hated her with every fibre of his being in the way he had come to hate the human race, he would have never gone weak at the knees and buckled at the sight of her charred corpse, blind with fury and tears and howling until his throat had gone raw. He had assumed the same fate had befallen Julia and fled in helplessness for what he had hoped would be the very last time, angrily and desperately forcing his wobbling legs to carry him to the castle, its distant spires rising from the fog. Running from man and monsters, panting breaths tearing at his lungs.

He shakes his head.

“It should have killed me. It did, in the end.” Slowly, his fingers climb his ribs, thoughtfully smoothing over the scar. “So died the foolish creature that night, seeking love --“ The word curls his lips like a rotten piece of food. “-- and to live among his own ilk. Never again did I enter Cordova. Not until many years had passed and Dracula bade that we leave it in ruins, the blood of every man, woman, and child flowing through the streets. Ah, my love… my sweet and gentle hunter, he recognized me in an instant."

A pleased little smile.

"Fierce as was his scowl and as dark the night, I could see the blood draining from his face…” His voice drops to a breathy, alcohol-laden whisper, heavy-lidded eyes gleaming as they hold Jack's gaze. “…and it made me hard.”

The smile deepens as if in anticipation of a laugh.