So, you ask, what brings a girl like her to a town like this" Don't the bright lights of bigger, booming cities take the fancy of a showgirl"

She's had enough of them. The smaller towns and seaside ports held her interest now, with their quaint taverns and tighter social groups, which anchored her to a normal lifestyle away from the fast paced dragstrip that was the celebrity life. It enabled her to keep in touch with reality, which if she was more succumbing and easier to make surrender would be a pushover, however like any star she got caught in the rush and had lost touch with many a friend over the busy, turmultuous years.

There wasn't just her own choice in the matter, there was another reason her arrow pointed to the road, why her compass could spin wildly at an unexpected time, and have her back up as though she never was there, leave no forwarding address or lipstick stained loveletters for a man; she was the messenger for an intergalactic mob, a racket, cartels, all of them clambering for her undercover prowess when they needed a decoy and an escape artist in one. She'd untied herself from the mafia-made chains of many a struggled situation in lean effort to help the Bosses, though the weight of a life did crush one's hopes for an entirely normal existance in time, and thus came the sorrow Sonia felt sometimes for a life she felt she might not ever lead, with the dangers of her life that was as precarious, when magnified, as herself blindfolded walking a highwired tightrope.

Sonia had the blues, though you wouldn't know it, she doesn't show it, her smile on fire..

Her feelings were kept up her sleeve, tucked away and came out on rainy days..

Fluorescent strobes illuminated her on the stage, the she Houdini, sitting in a plush armchair, ankles tied with chains. Around her eyes a purple silken blindfold, her hands chained behind her shoulders. She is draped like a woman unfettered, luminous and languid despite the shackles.

She is smiling as the curtain falls, and once it does she maintains the fa?ade while ankles and red-rubbed skin strain and buck in slow, sure motions until she is freed. The curtain rises moments later, and the crowd in gasps, watches as she stands to face them, and bow.

Slowly it builds the applause, the reverberation shaking the platform of the stage, and she feels it like doorknocks to her heart. There is no real emotion behind the dazzling smile and wave. She is hollow-stomached and displeasured, wanting to runaway, to not feel the eyes of the Bosses and their slick-suited men, who watched from above in alcoves of the opera hall like vultures, gruesome phantoms. All was carrion to these cruel, urban bandits, no matter who you were, and they waited always for her to slip purely into either category, regardless of how much she had helped them, now and thrice upon a time...

It was for their clawing threat that she stayed strong and survived, covert messenger and drug runner, but never would she allow herself to become a sensual buffet for their malice, or an iris of death by their will.

((The excerpt below is an encounter between Domikai, The Sandman, and Sonia. The way she is presented in this scene is within an intensely private moment, as she is on a high of endorphins and acting peculiar and unlike herself. Her words are half-truths and blurred admittances that are partly inspired and fueled by the drug and the drink she has had earlier in the evening, in an attempt to douse her blues with the kerosine effect of hallucinogenics and liquor..

It also makes for a peculiar instance in the Sandman's way of behaviour. "We are rarely curious, anymore..." and shares with the reader a subtle change in his nature. Perhaps.

It has been left with an ambiguous ending, for the meantime, due to time constraints of Kai's Mun and Myself, but also in respect of the dreamlike quality of her state at the time of their conversation, and his myriad influences as a character. Both are mysteries unto themselves, in their own ways.

This story will be added to, as time permits. All meetings are spontaneous at the start, and this one is no different))

With sazerac and a joint, she had retired to her room after a brief visit downstairs.....

Who knows where 'Kai had been lurking prior...

Domikai and Sonia

SoniaDeliner (6:58:39 PM): ::The walls looked miles away. All of them. In her rented room, on the first floor of available rooms in the Inn, she lounged with legs over the side of the sole armchair, shoes kicked off, toes wiggling slowly in the incense-laden air, which when mingling with her smoke, only assisted in her delirium, and again the million fingers began playing piano in her stomach, and her throat inside felt like a chorus of burrs and breathy whistles, as she chuckled to herself alone in the dark but for candles and and ash-surrounded burners. She didn't know why she was laughing, but she found it funny that everywhere she looked resembled the desert, and that she some out yonder, forsaken daughter of the dunes, miniature bonfires speckling the dust of what felt to be too lucid a dream...::

Kaotic Artist (7:03:05 PM): ::and what if this desert began to reach its darkness laden fingers back into the candles.....he was curious, and that was a strangeness in and off itself, as the sandman shook his mind free of lassitude. a slumbering dragon, coiled snake, resting in a place that was certainly not winter. he moved closer to the breath of delirious incense and laughter and toyed with a canlde flame before trouncing it out with a reach beyond those mile-wide-walls, much like a cat upon a bug. that one....then another, and another. he pause for a while after killing three candle flames and turned his shadows to the woman-creature upon the island of an armchair.::

SoniaDeliner (7:06:13 PM): ::Stown away on that leather seat, a languid turn of her head as she sat upright and curled those feet away, as though teeth lurked beyond the shores of her chair. Toes and heels buried away to her side, forearms out on the edges, as glittered, purple nails instinctively dug into her harbour; her eyelids heavy with the smolder of murky thoughts, lashes giving slow blinks as she searched the silhouetted-scarce room for the phantom. Blue eyes seek the space beneath the door, where light filtered in....:: SoniaDeliner (7:07:10 PM): "Who's there?", her voice sounded like distant rain, soft, as was her cashmere frame of mind::

Kaotic Artist (7:11:38 PM): ::certainly something drifted within the dark spaces of the room. it smelled a bit of sand, old-dust, places bleached in the light of countless stars going supernova. that smell was probably better described as ozone though. electric and not. there was nothing threatening creeping into her incense, however. something more cheshire, perhaps. he had turned aside from he queries and hunted out another candle to slaughter, and perhaps another, until only one remained. only then, only then, did the sandman speak.:: (s) Now....within a room scented thus....how do you know anyone is actually there" ::Rusty from disuse, rusty from unfamiliar humor. That voice was most certainly already inside of the door with her.::

SoniaDeliner (7:15:07 PM): ::The kind of breath that shakes all the way to the belly is what came out of her, as in uncertain, drowsy measure, she sat forward, elbow falling to her knee, and meaning to move faster than she did, gaze roams the pitch-dark, matchstruck blankness in mild horror. Fixating on any movement, through night-eyed strain, she rises to her feet, all 6' something of her, and barefoot walks through this wasteland might be inn-room, stirring sand and dust with her soles. She knows something is stirring, more than dust, and her voice, as she slowly turns in circles, threatened, but muscles dulled to the point, that she is more indolent than fierce::Who are you?!", the million dollar question, as she stops with her shoulders grazing the wall, her joint now a rolling butt in the musty earth below::

SoniaDeliner (7:17:01 PM): ::Was that a shadow that fell across her, that felt like wet suede against her skin" Surely not...::

Kaotic Artist (7:33:15 PM): (s) We are...curious. ::A snake's hiss of dust movement as the sandman retrieved a thing within the sand and in another world, rolling on floorboards dusted with incense. Both and neither. The lapping darkness, felt or not, moved like children's fingers curious of her feet and ankles (touch touch) before withdrawing. There, there....a puff of light, a lighter contributing a flame to that lonely distant candle. He held her joint, yes, but was lighting a clove. Absent mindedly, the joint was held forth in a clawed hand, sardonic unspoken words moving on the air (you dropped this...) .::

SoniaDeliner (7:36:06 PM): ::Glittered nails like a trillion stars in flight twinkle as she reaches out in her slowed dance, to catch at her joint. The floorboards creak, and startled her, having feet pitter patter her into the wall where back of head draws along the panels in a look of panic or fright, but she smiles, charmed, somehow, like those candle-clever fingers at her legs and touching her throat in fireflare, had convinced her she was okay; hyponotised" Perhaps.

SoniaDeliner (7:36:18 PM): However, She had learnt to feign fear, as an inside woman does in her game, it's a territorial pass"; be less than you are and they'll go if you're already "inside", no matter how underrated, she executed it now and again. But she's swaying, induced so with the fumes of exploding, exploring stars colliding in the fire, the incense takes on an entirely new character; it looks and smells like a man; musky, salty and undeniable. And who was he" Some illusionist from an underground Pack"::

SoniaDeliner (7:37:40 PM): ::With a lowkey chuckle, she drops her eyes and hangs her head, turning her face from the fire, the galaxy and the wasteland, to fall into herself for a moment or two::

Kaotic Artist (7:42:46 PM): (s) You should use your words for those thoughts. I am....out of practice, these days. ::There was only a strange man in the dim room, and if he had wolfish edges, he was perhaps not at all what she might think him. A smoke ring within a smoke ring drifted from the sandman and dissipated as smoke rings should, which was not always the case with him. Those shadows ideas skittered away from her feet, though they still roamed freely about the sandman. without harsh light to define their rules, they tended to be capricious.::

SoniaDeliner (7:49:05 PM): ::Smoke stained her vision, her dress near suffocating with the hundreds of smells that traveled over her body. She didn't recognise him, and he didn't smell to her like the type that the Bosses would send. Tattoos like a fairytale on flesh, undulate seemingly in the scarce light as she steps away from the wall, to rest her hands on her hips, striding in the miles of room and dirt for the stranger. Returning to herself, but not falling any further within, she reaches a hand out suddenly, over the rays of grayscale phantasmagoria that flirted with his edges, and widened her still murky eyes..:: "Oh...my...", and that is all that is uttered, and she covers her eyes, fingers peered through and then they are behind her back, furling to gather the skirt of her snug, white, chiffon:: "You're....", she breathes, and for every one taken, the room begins to fade, and she feels threadbare and worn, almost naked in the divide::

Kaotic Artist (7:59:00 PM): ::To his credit, there was a mere flick of an ear as fingers wasped close and then miles away again. He breathed smoke dragon-style and black eyes flicked upwards for a moment to watch it trail away.:: (s) Wake up, stargazer. ::He tasted this found name, tapped it against the violence of his teeth, and found it fitting. The sandman moved across and over names much like dreams, that unknown but doubtless certainty of facts. Slowly, slowly, there were fewer of his shadows and more of the room as it was, wooden and perhaps more comforting. A few of the slaughtered candles sprang back to life, surprised that they knew what death was.::

SoniaDeliner (8:02:44 PM): ::and somehow, somehow she was curled upon that seat, with her candles and a fully formed ....someone with her. The candles no longer gutted, shone as they had not earlier, and quivered. She watches him, more awake now, anything she might have said punctuated and finished off for her by the glare of his razor-teeth in the distance-closeness of his vapourous ways; he was more mirage than man, now that she had the mind for it, and sitting straight, she beckoned him near, so she could see him up close:: "You know, you have a kind face from here. And your voice sounds like snakes in the grass, you are a puppeteer of shadows and a firestarter the same...", she mused in some abstraction, for still her blood crooned with the green spell::

SoniaDeliner (8:04:35 PM): "Do you know how I count the stars?", she said with a trickling laugh, as his presence rivered throughout her, as though he swam through her bones like sepulcher and tomb for him to bury his mystic self between::

SoniaDeliner (8:15:13 PM): ::Pupils like drop-spoilt pools, shudder as she takes him in, eyelids peeling back and in turn changing her expression, more delight than surprise. The sides of her mouth crease gently, as she warms to the difference in him:: "The shadows count me down, to my dying day, I suppose" Know who it will that will rat me out..?", it was half a question, and too a half-hearted conviction, such as these that came about while she was high. But the certainty existed in her that he was real, in her bones and right before her. Unhooking her legs, she slides them slowly so feet brush the floor, still traced in dust, and knees part, chiffon murmuring against her skin, and she sits forward, raising a hand into the air, the lifelines daring his smoke::

SoniaDeliner (8:18:21 PM): "What are you curious of?", fingers reach, lifelines lengthening with a stretch of her palm, to touch his own::

Kaotic Artist (8:21:51 PM): (s) We are not a thing quite like a Seer any longer. ::The sandman did indeed exist, down to those infinitessimal reflections of her dark selves within his ink-black eyes. He eased away from the near-breadth of her touch....not a skittish movement, but not aloof. It was more deliberate than either of those things, so said the ease of the smoke following him in quiet ripples.:: The story that came from this room....It was purple. We are curious so rarely, anymore....::His back was to her now as he perused the door. The vast violent angles of muscles and scapulae were described beneath the cloth.::

SoniaDeliner (8:25:41 PM): "Like an iris?", the one fear she did have. Instead, now, the dancer gets to her feet to follow the Sandman, and with a rare insight, expansive mind settled, she comes behind him to place her hands over his shoulders, until the pads of her fingers, and the sketches of her lifelines, like constellations in flesh, press into the cloth, and those violent angles were not so stark to the eye. Her stomach presses to him and she buries her face into his back:: "I don't want to die...", her earliest confession, even as a child she had told her Mother this. There was black, and then there was purple that looked like black, and he had seen her true sheen:: "Can you take me?" SoniaDeliner (8:27:00 PM): ::It was a revelation, unhindered by rejection or doubt, purple, glittering nails falling to clutch his upper arms, like he was some noble doorway, and she its arrow-key:: SoniaDeliner (8:29:02 PM): ::Like she could surf with him. Like she could be as Unreal as him. Flirtation with death much of these years, and she had outlived her oldest worries:: SoniaDeliner (8:29:55 PM): ::Wasn't she worth, the chance"::

Kaotic Artist (8:33:29 PM): ::There was wire beneath her touch, dancing with the concealed energy that first trailed that hint of ozone after him. It promised a type of maelstrom beyond what any oxygen-fire dreamt of. Despite his tnesion, the old call of rust and reminders, he allowed her touch to remain, speaking around the clove in a murmur of slate.:: (s) You fear terrible things indeed, to want to follow this old wolf. ::Ash dripped absent-mindedly from the kretek for he had forgotten such a menial task.::

SoniaDeliner (8:36:48 PM): ::He sounded like the tines of tuning forks, in a storm, she thought, but remained tightlipped on that. She remains as she is, afraid to talk on the cruel she has witnessed, that she wanted to be a better escape artist....No one had ever found her before, no less, and he had. "I will go with you. I will die otherwise. Didn't you scent out my nakedness" You stink of the horizon, and I smell like decayed flowers in my dreams..", her head leans away, and her cheek leans to the taut skin of the cloth beneath, her grip loosening::

SoniaDeliner (8:39:24 PM): ::The high had gentled her, tamed her into this longing, but she could not resist the chance::

Hours later, she awoke on her bed. She knew not the ending to her early morning timewarp. But her clothes smelled like burnt leaves, and her lips licked away the flavours of rainwater and dust..

Grace

Sonia liked to visit the bar downstairs in the later hours. She found the less people the better, or those few that were around, well, some of them, all the more interesting, as she made a midnight snack, a drink mix, maybe chatted or lazed about her a while, before disappearing back to her room. She wondered if the old wolf who paid her a hello had done the same to others?

Tracing her gaze from the glass in hand and over an inked shoulder of many hues to the side of the bar, she gazed at the staircase with a hint of wonder, now with some expectance of creatures to walk not down them, but from out of the nowhere eitherside and everywhere; the notion sent a flickering smile across her lips. She supposed that was what she asked of Domikai, that maybe-unknown stranger-guide, totem-man...she had asked, in essence, to be shown how to walk through walls.

Returning to her room after a shy toast to the silence, she got into bed and with a bowl of grapes quickly devoured, read until her eyes blurred, and the rush of heavy sleep lulled her into dream..

"Out of Order" or alternatively.. "Does not accept short changing"

Andrei and Sonia meet at the bar, they go back to her room a little later, and this is how it all turns out.

What plays out before this will be posted later, part of the reason for the title of this chapter in 'The Big Easy'

SoniaDeliner (7:19:46 PM): ::The corridor is ill-lit and murky like the blue-snared brown of her gaze, the one that swings over her shoulder as she makes her way down the hall, smiling to him:: "I could teach you to read. Many things...", she turns around, having stuck the key in the lock, and grazes her shoulders to the wood of the door, watching him, "More than books...", she grins a little, it was nothing fiendish, but cheerful, "Like skin..."

SoniaDeliner (7:21:02 PM): "And paintings, by the most reknowned of painters. Of music and dance.."

Ohrmazda (7:21:27 PM): He doesn't take his shades off, and combined with his natural poker face it makes him impossible to read except through his eyes. "Go on. I've never had to read and write English, once I learned Thai. I knew how, a little bit, a long time ago."

SoniaDeliner (7:21:39 PM): ::Arms raise with the intention to encircle his neck as he gets close enough::

Ohrmazda (7:22:16 PM): "I'm not any kind of cultured. Just pop music and funny movies." He moves forward, but very hesitantly.

SoniaDeliner (7:23:02 PM): "That sounds fun", she doesn't move, just stares up at him in a feline sort of way, smilingly, and then drops her hands, turns the door handle, and swings out of his arms with it, to let him through::

Ohrmazda (7:24:41 PM): He lets her step in first, watching the place from outside the door. His paranoia is palpable. It's really quite detestable - 40% of his thoughts are about the possibility of sex, and 40% are about the possibility of murder. But that last little bit, that last 10%, is interested in her. Fascinated by her.

SoniaDeliner (7:26:24 PM): ::Her room looks like any rented room does in the room, except it doesn't feel or look lived in. It's empty, but for its furnishings. Everything she had was in the closet, and it was very little. SoniaDeliner (7:27:45 PM): She was used to quick pack-ups, and so never bothered with settling in. Heels are kicked off as as she moves for the sole armchair in the room and swings her legs over its arm, her back to the other one, and with a naked foot, wiggles a toe at the leather couch seat free for him:: "I've got some dope if you want a hit?" SoniaDeliner (7:28:39 PM): ::she's smiling still, as she reaches over for the desk near where she perches, and pulls open a drawer, grabbing rollies and her small pouch of marajuana::

Ohrmazda (7:28:52 PM): He sits on the couch, crashing down. "I won't say no. I can't pay much, though."

SoniaDeliner (7:29:52 PM): "Oh, don't be silly. I'd never ask that of a soul", expecting that he knew how to do it, she leans over and holds out some wraps, as well as a few fingertips worth of the grass, enough for two hits for him:: SoniaDeliner (7:30:36 PM): "I really would like to know why you've got a gun on you...", she notices his bulge:: SoniaDeliner (7:30:51 PM): ::a playful smirk in pursuit of her comment, and she winks::

Ohrmazda (7:31:24 PM): "It's just good sense here, you know." He makes eye contact with her, though his sunglasses, and without breaking it he takes out his gun.

SoniaDeliner (7:32:19 PM): ::Sonia returns her gaze to the man, as she rolls herself a smoke. She doesn't flinch, nor say a word. There's just the rustling of the paper against the soft pads of her fingers::

Ohrmazda (7:33:38 PM): With one hand, he pops the magazine out, putting it in his pocket. The gun, however, he lays down on the table. "A show of good faith, since you're smoking out with me. Got any yaa baa, or any harder stuff?"

SoniaDeliner (7:35:45 PM): "Faith is worse than fortune, but just so happens to be a currency I accept", still in her reclined position, she chews on her lip and glances discreetly over towards the desk again:: "At the far back of that draw is some hash. Left overs from a run I did two weeks ago. I don't do it, so it's yours...", her eyes trace over the line of the desk and back to his face. Even in the dark of her room, heady with the musk of incense and unsaid thoughts, she doesn't ask him to remove his glasses. The gun was enough::

Ohrmazda (7:37:21 PM): "Very charitable of you. Any trouble getting it?" He looks her up and down, undressing her ever-so-quickly with his eyes.

SoniaDeliner (7:39:42 PM): ::Beware of traps, but her carelessness inflated by the liquor, she shrugs gently and gets to her feet, bare feet padding over the carpet, curiously dusty, even with ash (perhaps from the candles and the incense sticks, but if you touch the floor , those bits of dust feel more like sand...) and reaches a hand up the length of the drawer to her elbow, feels around, and drags the thin, black velvet pouch back. She undoes its tie, glancing inside, reties it, and tosses it over to him:: "$500 worth", a wan sort of smile, and she crosses back to her chair::

Ohrmazda (7:40:55 PM): "Worth its very weight in gold . . ." he reaches over to take her joint and takes a puff off it.

SoniaDeliner (7:41:14 PM): ::there was some light for their curiosities; from candles left on while she was downstairs, and the dawns first rays through the slit between two curtains::

SoniaDeliner (7:42:29 PM): ::Accepting it back, she does the same, and with some abstraction, blamed ever on the liquor and her earlier indulgences, she is aware his lips have been there before her, and it brings a smile of oddity to light her pale, pretty face::

Ohrmazda (7:43:01 PM): He chuckles. "What'chu smiling at, smiley?"

SoniaDeliner (7:44:07 PM): ::Sonia shakes her head, "Not telling", and a tenderness creeps into her manner, as she dissolves into the plush armchair, her legs over its side again:: "You really like that stuff?", indicating the pouch, as she holds her rollie away, to exhale to the stained ceiling above::

Ohrmazda (7:52:45 PM): He takes another long puff of the stuff. "I hate to be rude, but is this going anywhere, or are we just sitting around smoking?"

SoniaDeliner (7:53:30 PM): "I'm not a prostitute...", she exclaims, his question bothering her out of semi-stupor:: SoniaDeliner (7:54:02 PM): ::She takes a long, sweet puff and regards him through eyes smoldering and red from the hit of the substance:: Ohrmazda (7:54:33 PM): "And a good thing, too, 'cuz I don't have any money. What are you?"

SoniaDeliner (7:55:57 PM): "I'm an exotic dancer. I don't really strip. I'm a terpsichorean, meaning I'm actually a professional dancer, I studied it...", with knees knocked, she raises her legs over from the side so toes rest against the carpet, and she crosses her legs demurely, regarding him with an unnerving stillness, exhaling::

Ohrmazda (7:56:24 PM): "Can I see a dance?"

SoniaDeliner (7:57:38 PM): "What, apart from faith, is your balance? I don't dance for a zero", she arches her spine in some indignity, turning her face away as she swallows a smokey corner of the room, next to the door, with her eyes::

Ohrmazda (7:59:37 PM): "I'll give you $500 for your best."

SoniaDeliner (8:00:57 PM): "I could've kept my pouch for that offer...", she shrugs, deflecting his wager with a tiny smirk, her eyes returning to his, clearer now, like the smog had passed; however, the summer rain of that dance with delirium still lingered in her bloodstream ....::

Ohrmazda (8:04:20 PM): "Yeah. But now I've got it. So I'll give it back to you." Ohrmazda (8:04:46 PM): He doesn't seem angry, or hostile, just in sort of a what-have-we-here mood.

SoniaDeliner (8:06:32 PM): ::Sonia shakes her head, and reaches over for her desk, the death of her cigarette given by the foulplay of her thumb:: "The door is that way...", she didn't seem to care he had $500 worth of hash on him, for free, it was less a stress in her life if someone else did, she straightens herself into a stand and walks over to the desk, closing the drawer, her back to him. She folds her arms and stares at the window, at the sheer bruising clouds of blue-black on the sky, a scant vision through the curtains part::

Ohrmazda (8:08:00 PM): He stands up. "And now, like a gentleman, I walk away. And believe me, that does make me a gentleman - any other man in the world who had one bullet left, why, who knows what he'd be doing . . ."

SoniaDeliner (8:09:53 PM): ::With a sardonic look, she pivots on her heels to face him. Every centimetre that makes her 6', bent on some ridgid, teeth clenching freeze. She is visibly frustrated, an expression that rouses her senses and sharpens her eyes:: SoniaDeliner (8:11:12 PM): "You don't work that game with a girl like me", it is spoken with the coolest calm:: SoniaDeliner (8:12:20 PM): ::She was a daughter of the underground. Her stillness, and all she might mean, exuded from that telltale gaze::

Ohrmazda: He pops one last cigarette in his mouth as he leaves, all his luggage in tow. "Oh, believe me, I have. I've seen your type before, you know. Chasing a dream, or living a dream, only one foot on the ground because they're reaching, reaching for something higher. It's all well and good to be above the world, you know, but no matter how much you stretch or how hard you flap your wings you can never really escape it." SoniaDeliner (8:14:34 PM): ::Broad, slow strides carry her over to the doorframe in his trailing shadow, until she has one foot against and her shoulders, the doorframe to her room. Crossing her arms again, to her ribs, she watches as he walks off, and says not a word:: Ohrmazda (8:15:18 PM): "It's been fun. Let's smoke out again." SoniaDeliner (8:16:41 PM): "When I said girl like me, I didn't mean that it was me you had to look out for. Faith isn't bulletproof, not in my world", and the door closes. The stirring smells of various incenses escaping to dwell and cloy in the hall, the only relic of her until it fades....::