It was down in Dockside where a lonesome sort of giant loitered at a street corner bathed in more shadows than light. It was there that he played beside the remains of a building that had crumbled due to the fires, the riots, and the chaos that had filled the city of the previous season.

In his hands was a guitar that had seen better days, but was treated with the same reverence and care that a priceless artifact would be given. His fingers picked and plucked at strings while his voice carried off the street corner and into the night. Bits of his crooning songs could be heard in the winter's wind and chill of the air. Some were left stunned with awe, others struggled to fight back cathartic tears that spilled down their face.

But for any who passed him by, a deep shifting tug was felt at their core moved in some manner by the music. What did he sing that struck the chord in your soul"

(Anyone please feel free to join in on this as a passing witness or listener! Through an ability called Melpominee, Gabriel can encourage or persuade someone into feeling a particular sensation or emotion. Strictly speaking it 'shakes the very soul of those nearby and allows the vampire to perform sonic feats otherwise impossible." The songs he plays are typically haunting and sad, but that does not limit the end result of how your character would feel. Perhaps they are inspired or motivated, or even find a sense of peace. Good, bad and all that is in-between! Please post your own writings under this thread or leave a link for cross posting. Any questions? Feel free to send me a PM. Icons will be given out to those who participate!)

Normally Sunehri was no where near Dockside but she had opted to take a different route home from the hospital after her shift was over. The woman caught sounds of music that wasn't coming from a bar or club and there was just something about it that compelled her to follow the sound. Each stepped of a black booted foot brought her closer and closer, listening with a slight tilt of her head to the side as the sounds grew louder. Her hands stuffed into the forest green parka that kept her warm as the woman finally came into view of the musician, watching him as she skirted the crowd to find a place where she could look and listen without doing so over someone's shoulder. For a few seconds pale greens closed to savor the music, letting it reach more than just her ears as it tugged at the very depths of her soul with that haunting, beautiful melody. She allowed herself to be carried away by the strummed notes watching the guitar and the hands that played before that gaze lifted to view the man that made her sway absently with the near tangible music that caressed a lot more than her auditory system. She simply couldn't stop listening and definitely couldn't stop watching, getting lost in it all until she couldn't even feel the cold air around her. No, right now, she was in a whole different place and it wasn't Dockside.

It was late. But then it got that way a lot when you rarely needed sleep.

Saila had wandered the streets with no particular goal or objective, her mind deliberately blank as she practiced shielding herself from outside influence. Given her preoccupation with these mental gymnastics, it wasn't all that much of a surprise when she lifted mismatched eyes to find herself within a block of Panacea. A dry smirk rolling like river fog over pale lips, the girl in black shook her head and turned away.

On a whim, she took a different path away from the shop than usual, turning down a street she wasn't sure she'd ever explored. It lead into the heart of the damage she'd read about in passing, something about explosions and fires and fighting in the streets, if she'd remembered the headlines correctly. There was a haunting sadness here, an oppressive shroud of this, near tangible tension that seemed to hum with its own electricity, throbbing and sore in the husks of each building.

Trailing ringed fingers lightly over one such husk, Saila caught her lower lips in her teeth, a heavy sigh pushing its way out of her chest. A moment later she pulled her hand away, wiping soot and ash on the leg of her jeans.

She'd been on the verge of doing an about face, taking herself on the first available course away from all this heavy nothing, when a pulse of light a ways off in the distance snags her peripheral vision. That's the way it translates to her at first, a glimmering fractal of light. Curiosity peaked, she tracks it down the next block and then the next, leading herself ever deeper into ruined back alleys as the pulse grows stronger, more vibrant, more insistent.

Tugging at her consciousness, Saila turns a corner one last corner, and for the first time her mind understands that what?s calling to her is music. Or perhaps more particularly, the musician. There isn't much of a crowd surrounding him anymore, just one or two people, though given the quality of the song she has no doubt that there had been something of a crowd earlier.

Why he's still playing, now at this hour of the night, she has no idea. But she leans a shoulder against the hulking shell of what used to be a warehouse, listening. Watching.

It's in his hands but also his chest, a brilliance that pours out of him, hypnotic and almost sensual in the way it undulates with the rhythm of the notes he's playing. It paints the guitar in a sea of fairy lights, twinkling brightly over the strings as he plays them, lingering there a short time even after his fingers move on.

There's a sudden swelling in her chest, a pounding ache that rises seemingly from nowhere. It's only when she's swallowed roughly and pressed her hands to her chest, trying to ease the deep constriction there she has no words to describe " that she notices the way her body is reacting to the music, the way an echoing light suffuses her deep black sleeves with its phosphorescent glow.

Retreat on her mind, dragging herself away proves significantly more difficult than she'd anticipated. It takes a forcible switch from her natural sight, what Coilin calls her "magic eye thing?, into the more mundane colors and shapes version to break the spell, her strange eyes taking in for the first time the details of his appearance, of the battered instrument he's playing.

Shaking her head roughly, she presses one set of fingers to her temple, rubbing there as though to ease a mourning she doesn't recognize; a grief that is not her own.

As quietly as she came and as soon as she was able, the mercurial muse retreats into the shadows, wiping a single crystalline tear from her cheek.