Log:Zinnfandel
| Zinnfandel | |
|---|---|
"You feel rightly." | |
| Participants | 16 November 2017 The Captain seeks Dross out after visiting Rib Hollow, and he thinks?? maybe?? they connected?? or maybe he really just really hopes they did a lot because hell if he knows what's going on, with his elemental curse with empathy. |
| Location
Meetinghouse Graveyard MT04 | |
Incongruously, a warm breeze blows through, smelling of roses and burning sage, with a sharp metallic tang of sun-warmed metal underlying them. It goes past, then doubles back, and the breeze pulls in to define itself-- through the spinningly frantic activity of autumn ground debris-- into the shape of a man, which resolves into a familiar tin soldier, once more dressed in black with a voluminous greatcoat keeping out the damp and chill. His mantle is subdued and nearly monochrome in the fading moonlight and dim grey of approaching dawn: white flowers and color-leached vines. The soldier himself is hesitant, keeping something of a distance, wary, perhaps, of spooking Dross. "Guten Abend," he says, voice quiet, the hollow-chested resonance kept to a minimum. And then amusement in that voice: "Oder, guten Morgen, Herr Dross." And then he hesitates again. "War das deine Kunst? Rib Hollow."
That shift in the temperature-- and the scents permeating the graveyard-- seems to draw the Darkling's attention straightaway. Immediately, he looks to where the empty air fills with tin and flowers; the fresh, green smell of new growth. Seeking the newcomer's gaze, which he'll hold, if possible, he answers, in the affirmative: "Gehoert mir das." He watches Czcibor for a while in silence, letting the soft sounds of the leaves rustling in the wind and the insects turning through the grass speak for now. Perhaps to see if the soldier has more to say.
The Captain brightens. Still in Vienna's idiosyncratic German, he does continue, not coming any closer; he's well aware of how overwhelming his enthusiasm can get. "It was amazing. I have not finished going through all of it yet, I think; I went to explore it with Vorpal, and we sank into the earth and into a dry cave, and--" Here he pauses, shoulders drawing in a little. "We wondered how you managed all of it. How it could have been so real and so broken and so impossible, the things film can and cannot catch. I don't expect you to reveal your secrets; I only wished to share my appreciation for the amount of effort and time you put in, and for-- for how real it seemed. Parts of it were--" Kowal puts a hand over his empty chest, and then it moves up to touch the seam around his neck. "Almost too real," he finishes with amused apology, clearly unsettled just thinking about it. "But I imagine that was part of the purpose. To unsettle, to be multilayered enough to make one think about it days afterwards, or remember pieces months on."
Oddly, as the Captain speaks, though there's little enough expression on Dross's face, per se, something difficult to put one's finger on changes about his eyes. Almost as if, like wells, the black pupils at their centers are really tunnels that travel deep into the earth and can be covered or uncovered at will. That cover lifts, now, and lets escape... What? Just the briefest flash of a deeper, richer color; a phthalate-bright, burning blue. "I have aimed at the same target for a long time," Dross answers, simply. He seems to be scrutinizing the tin soldier before him, quite intensely. There's an almost tangible feeling to that hard, clear gaze. What is he looking for, or trying to understand? "What did you see?" he asks. After a moment, his next question comes, though he'd likely not have posed it to most. Perhaps the familiar tongue incites it. "Are you so reserved by habit, Captain?"
"No," Kowal answers, last question first; he laughs in embarrassment. "I thought-- maybe-- I had scared you off. In Cat-22. Your face changed when you learned who I was, and I couldn't read it, and then you left. I don't want to do so again." He takes his hands from his pockets and understands, for a moment, one of the reasons that people smoke cigarettes. A smokescreen, a filter, for the world and for uncomfortable interactions. But he doesn't smoke, so his fingers lace with a dull series of clacks. His body language is remarkably close to that of a nervous schoolboy giving an oral report. So an oral report it is: "The battlefield hit me the hardest. I saw in it the hopelessness and loss and unending cycle that even death couldn't stop, the--" He shakes his head, then, and reaches into his coat, and there's a quiet shinggg of a long knife being drawn from a sheath; he flips it in his hand, and dim moonlight glints off a thin, shining blade, which he offers hilt-first to Dross, finally taking a step forward. It's a bayonet. It resembles the one in those seconds of film where a hand was impaled. "This is mine. It was mine in Arcadia. I still had it with me when I escaped. It's not magical, it does nothing that any other bayonet couldn't. But attached or not, it's done things I'm glad it could and things I wish it couldn't have."
Watching that nervous demeanor, Dross remains patient, head tilted slightly toward his interlocutor, listening to the sound of Kowal's voice and the echo of his fingers as they parse, as well as to the softer, warmer breeze that followed the other into the graveyard... For a moment, it looks as if there's a new, just as strange gleam in his eyes. But perhaps it's only the last of the moonlight, reflected in the clear, pale field of his gaze. Somewhere in that odd mirror, the Captain himself, and the slightest of his movements, also show in duplicate. Reversed. Dross responds, rather softly, "I'm not frightened of you. Should I be?" When the Captain steps forward with that bright, thin blade, Dross comes forward to meet him. He lets his hand fall from the strap at his shoulder to accept the old bayonet. He takes it gently, letting his fingertips just brush that hand. There's something oddly steadying about his touch; as if, cool and brief as it is, it shaves a thin layer back from the rest of the world. He turns the blade this way and that-- slowly, slowly. Watches the moonlight collect at the tip. Hyaline; too bright. "You honor me," says Dross. Still in the same low, even tones. Then he looks up again, to catch the Captain's eyes. "Obwohl... man immer nur das in Woerte fassen kann, was in Woerte zu fassen geht, Captain who has known death." With this last, there's something like the beginnings of a smile on his face. The pencil under-drawing before the painting itself.
When there's no fear, only calm, and another instance of that flickering change-- possible change-- in Dross' eyes, there's the faintest stilling of the Captain's worry; his own eyes are blank, featureless silver, and if one were to rely solely on the position of pupil and iris to identify regard, it would be impossible. But part of the tin soldier's pervasive presence is the weight of his regard, a focused thing that could carve as cleanly as a scalpel if the Captain so chose. These days, he rarely chooses to. "No," Czcibor answers, relaxing the rest of the way, self-amusement clear in the crows' feet around his eyes. "No, I'm a protector, not an aggressor." As Dross takes the bayonet and transfers some of his own peace and steadiness in the brush of a hand, the amusement falls away, and leaves a gentle, steadfast solidity behind, sorrow wreathed throughout as surely as determination is. There's the cooler, earlier spring scents mixed in, now, snowdrops and petrichor, and the richer later growth vanishes into moonlight and smoke. When Dross looks up once more, a smile's pulling at one corner of the Captain's mouth. "You can take it as an honor, if you wish, but it's only that I believed you would understand-- and my belief holds true. Sometimes there aren't words." A beat. "Thank you."
"You are welcome," answers Dross. "Countryman." He hands that fine old bayonet blade back to the Captain, with care. Steadily, gradually, the sky has been growing lighter over the cemetery; starting to obscure the thinner, more diffuse light of the waning moon. The old headstones, crumbling, reflect tints of rose; tints of gold. Stirring in the grass and in the branches, as the wild life that dwells here begins to wake. Bit by bit, as drops of dew fall from the bent-heavy blades. The Darkling takes a deep breath, then looks away, just for a moment. Appreciating those rich scents, perhaps. When his gaze returns to Kowal, it's as steady as before. Lingering on the seamless silver of those eyes. Dropping once to the mark on his neck... Then up again. "What made you a soldier?"
The partial smile blooms full-force on the elemental's face when Dross calls him countryman, even as the real sun beginning to turn the sky gold reflects off his eyes, off the scores of nicks and abrasions on his oxidized skin. There's no real reflection from the raised seam of solder around his neck; it's too old, as dark and worn as most of the rest of him. He takes the blade back with a slight nod of his head, and carefully slides it back into its sheath, inside his coat. And then there's the question. The calm doesn't vanish; there's no bitterness, because the Captain's come to terms with what he's made of himself since. "They did," he answers, and a certain wry quality enters his tone as he moves to lean against one of the newer, hardier stones, taking the weight off his left leg. His hands go back in his pockets. "They took a high school star sweeper being scouted for Slask Wroclaw, for his strategy and tactics, and his awareness of all the other players on the field. When I returned, I started in Summer because I was told it was how best to fight Them with the skills I'd taken with me. Die Landeswehr proved that battle, while useful when necessary, was not the only way to defeat Them-- so I remain a soldier, but not the kind They wanted."
Dross returns something of that smile-- not in its entirety, but more than he typically shows. He remains standing where he is, the breeze very slightly cooler around him, just lifting the tips of his dark hair as he watches that resolute transformation in the tin soldier before him. At the last, he nods. "So I had heard," he says. Gravely. "That was what I meant, when I said I knew your work." But what does he think about it? Is it any clearer than when he first made this statement back in CAT-22? Certainly, that fraction of a smile lingers on his sharp-featured face, suggesting that, at the very least, and as he told the Captain himself, it doesn't frighten him. Dross watches that bright gleam of sun off of metal-- noting, too, the places where the sun sinks into darker patches instead-- and listens intently. "Is that what brought you here?"
A shelved wondering is dusted off and answered, and Czcibor nods, then tilts his head slightly, eyebrows up; the wind doesn't ruffle his metal hair, and he looks like more of a statue than ever, rose-gold light glinting off his eyes and the pins on his lapel, bringing the crimson ribbon pinned beneath one of them to the fore with its vivid color. "Reputation," he says mildly, "has its pros and cons. I'm never sure if mine will get me admired, stabbed, challenged, or run from-- or something else entirely." It's not unpleasant, though. Less amused than earlier, but it's still there, wry and understated. After a long moment of considering Dross' question, and regarding him-- almost studying him, once more trying to read his face, his manner-- the Captain shrugs lightly, smiling again. "Petra and I-- she's the other active member of our motley right now-- have been traveling, seeing where we could help, for some years now. We heard about this place, and how it welcomes the very strange and powerful, and we decided we'd like to try and help someplace where we wouldn't be the strangest, the most imposing, the most well-known." He lets out a breath, and it sounds like the wind itself, hollow in his empty chest, and inclines his head then. "Yourself? You are equally far from home..." (again, a crinkling at the corners of his eyes more than the rest of a smile) "...countryman."
Dross watches the gentle movement of that band of crimson on the wind. Halo of sunlight growing stronger behind the tin soldier as the hour wears later, turning the air repand with its warm glimmer. In the trees and the bushes, the birds are awake now, and one or two of them have begun to call. "And I... Did which?" he asks. Arching one eyebrow for a moment. It sounds like a question of pure curiosity, but then again, perhaps, a little teasing, too? As for that explanation... "Very strange and powerful," he repeats. Dross seems to find this amusing, by the way that that little sketch of a smile starts to show itself just the slightest bit more clearly; shifting from red-brown sinopia to the first touch of true paint. But he makes no further comment on it. Rather, shifts the weight of the instrument that he's carrying, tightening the grip of his thin hand on the strap. The stronger light-- or harsher light, for some-- of day breaking reveals no more color in him than the moon did: not in his face, or clothing, or even those strange, deep-set eyes that sometimes seem to have almost no color at all, and at other times surface the deepest, most vivid, chemical blue. But that must be hardly surprising. "I never returned to Vienna to live," answers Dross. Still watching the Captain's unusual, shining face; the way that the rising sun bounces back from his gaze.
"I don't know," answers the Captain with a bright laugh at his own expense, taking the question entirely for teasing: after all, Dross would know better than anyone else. "I can rule out the stabbing, at least, and also probably not run from since you said you weren't afraid. Maybe the invitation to your installation was a challenge." The light glimmers off his eyes but little else, and there's the crows' feet again, and the light off them. He shifts his weight again, now half-sitting; in the shift there was very little time spent with the left supporting the whole of him. That spot of color-- His oathmate is as monochrome; his best love is coaxing the vivid from her. It's not surprising, but it's as comforting and comfortable as Daniel Dross' accent is-- and maybe that occasional blue is a wistful thing to him, too, as the steps of the Wyrd took even his Mask's from him. It's something Dross will probably see, sooner or later, but a change in a mirror's reflection years ago loses its significance with time and lack of association. The Captain's regard shifts briefly to the instrument case that Dross carries, and he smiles a little again, then pushes himself upright, taking his weight off the headstone. "Nor I to Wroclaw. Sometimes I feel that every step vanishes behind me, swallowed. Sometime soon," he says, then pauses, his gaze shifting back to Dross' face, "I'd like to hear you play. But it's dawn; I should go."
That startles a laugh out of Dross-- a real one, sudden and strange and a little harsh. "Well," he says. "Maybe it was. Or maybe I just wanted to know you, Zinnfandel." Which might amount to... Just about the same thing, really. The shadows in the graveyard grow shorter; the grass, greener, as the purple-red-gold light of dawn moves toward the harder white light of day. It glints off the captain's face and eyes, here polished, there worn almost to black, like the surface of a worn coin, as Dross studies the way that he shifts his weight, and the burnished shine of metal. Now that the dew has all burned away, leaving the branches and the bushes and the grass of the cemetery, the little pebbles and offerings left at some of the graves, exposed to the bright, staring sun. When the Captain says that about Wroclaw, and about wanting to meet again, sometime, Dross inclines his head. For a moment, he looks at the soldier not straight on, but out of the corners of those pale, sometimes blue eyes, rather like a bird. Whatever it is that he sees there seems to affect him somehow; enough to say, "You feel rightly." He lets those words, too, burn away into silence; flame down to nothing in the sunlight, before he speaks again. And then-- regarding the violin, simply-- "Of course."
For a moment, Czcibor's grinning wide, teeth as reflective as his eyes in his dark oxidized face, and then it falls away abruptly as his eyes widen, and he sputters at the pub. "Moze boj," he finally gets out, hand clunked to his chest in shock. "That was awful. I approve. That was AWFUL." It takes him a second before he fully recovers, shaking his head, eyes still wide and voice relegated to a hollow echoing laugh of disbelief. He takes a step, half-grin playing at the corners of his mouth again, and yes: there's a limp, favoring his left leg. He won't be playing the futbol again. But the step's not to go for the awkward handshake again; an entire conversation in German was enough to brush that away. It's him getting ready to leave, and then pausing as he's regarded. There's a second of curiosity, and then Dross speaks again, and Kowal knows what he should feel: a tightening of his chest, a reaction of his sympathetic nervous system, a shortness of breath, heat in his face and stinging in his eyes. That he doesn't only makes it that much worse. But pain is an addiction as much as glamour is, and this is a pain that is also right. All at once, the hollow man made of dreams, poisonous metal, and a heart that wills itself into reality-- he dissolves into the air like the creeping dreamstuff vines of his Mantle. There's the scents: the full roses of late June, sweet wisteria, night bonfires and ozone; gunmetal, always, beneath them. The breeze briefly ruffles Dross' hair, tugs at his coat, brushes at him like a strangely affectionate ghost, and blows away. | |
