Topic: Moonlight over Moscow

Lerida

Date: 2006-06-09 02:45 EST
This is some background on Lerida before she came here. Alot has changed. Lerida was cursed for some time-ashen of heart, charcoal of soul, as she wandered the earth and time torn between two sides-Human and Garanle'.

Moscow is her escape, she has an apartment there which is where this begins. Exiter, who quickly enters this snapshot in time, is her oldest and dearest best friend, and is another character of mine, and is an NPC. He is Garanle' as well, but kindred too, so has quite a complex background that wil always affect his future..

I hope you enjoy this tapestry of images which explain somewhat where Lerida is coming from

Lerida's Writer

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The stench and song of the riots had long since abated, leaving a trend to the night air-an unusual electricity that was potent to sensitivity of a woman like herself. The smiles were long gone and the sheltered spirit of the soldiers now echoed an unequivical radiance that made children squint and mothers shield their faces. Blood was still fresh, and she breathed in the fresh kill with a familiar smile, her eyes tempered by amusement.

Hinting her black velvet form up the stairway she crept her hands within its generous pockets as a chill scurried up her spine, residing with a tickle to her elbow, and then shuddering into her chest where it nestled. She closed her eyes and smiled pleasantly. The chill she beckoned, even if her lips protested it's advances-like intimacies with a dangerous man, she could not resist its bite!

The balcony extending majestically across the plaza coaxed her forward to a view across the city. The Embraced would wander soon and she would remain idle, stuffed into the shadow tuffets awaiting her, ignoring the Summoning of their twilight smothered eyes. With a flick of her neck she turned and disappeared inside, locking the door.

No chill, dangerous man or kindred would visit her tonight, though she longed for the hit of leather and zip against her skin, her soul and flesh was best to rest, as the moon's tether to the sky whispered like wire in a storm, and promised stories she would see unfold, surely. But not tonight.

Inside she turned to the lamp upon the banister leering down at her from the wall. Flicking a match to life from a wink of shadow, she turned and walked to light only three other lamps, one of which was an open lantern, cracked and sharp from yet another break in, in her absence. They happened every time, but never could make off with much. And this she pondered: perhaps squatters had timed her tenures in various cities, and took haste as her heels left the city"

Looking around she took note of the dishevelled teal rug, turned at the corners like lotus leaves about to close, and the two chairs of the worn dining table upturned and one beam broken. Clicking her lips she ignored it and looked out the misted opaque window, drizzles of glossy melted snow easing down in herds of white. Transfixed and settled, she procured her thin cigarette and lit it, smoke rising in grey tendrils at her side...

Yes, the night called her name as the tap of footsteps began their ascent to her door. If they saw it locked they would turn. If they were kindred. If it was a thief, they'd wish they had chosen another apartment. Whetting her appetite with a bitter taste, the steps reached her door, from which she examined her side of it, with an inquisitive eye, lowering her lids, and expelling the smoke, as firm knocks rang out against the cold, the wood and startling her from her self-assured air.

At the door she lowered her cigarette and pressed her slight body against it, closing her eyes and arching her lips, trying to taste their scent through the pin holes of air that pocketed through the doorway and filled her nose with nothing but dried leaves, that cutting, metallic-hit of blood, and perhaps, could she detect...Leather"

Lifting her hand she pressed it too against the door and with all her energy probed beyond that wall of wood. Her smell could only detail so much, it was her reverberating her energy to whomever that was outside, and back, that would ultimately supply the information she sought-or it could be her expiry should they take a sword to the door..

But that was nonsense! Of course..

The wood surface trembled and shivers rippled across her flesh and through her blood, bubbling it in a frenzy of fear and excitement. With a flash her eyes were open, the door unlocked and her hardy spirit barely pinned in place as green orbs circle the perimetres for the Exiter.

She could smell his scent on any wind-rushed or slovenly, whatever the wind brought with it she could assume the nuances of, filter, then dismiss. This breeze was barely there, but its presence she was sure of as the silver drops chimed softly at her ear lobes and the odd strand of hair whispered about her shoulders. The silence was eerie and sexy-it stirred her like a cool cup of tea, and how she wanted the night to drink of her life.

Scratch

Looking up to the eaves above her she smiled a winning smile, as the boots crept along and her gaze slithered up the leg to the groin, to the stomach, chest and finally, the face of her old friend and much celebrated Kindred-he knew of one of her early lovers, Nezker, and had attmpted to Embrace before Resisting and tears broke his facade and he curled in a ball. Lerida had been his Keeper, his unspoken Protector for a time, his pillar of honesty, fortitude and with her strange and lovely talent for easing him, an almost divine comfort, the only woman he would return to with Eagle loyalty would be Lerida-in fact he had pronounced her 'Nyx' amid a blessing eve....But that was another tale altogether..

Lifting a gloved hand she watched as he descended, gracefully, his Mohawk black and his ponytail sliding down his back in inky sheen, braided and tied at the bottom with leather string. His dark brown gaze took her in, and his breath was stolen. He loved this woman.

"Why don't you just speak, rather than hide on rooftops, Exiter?"

He smiled and squeezed her hand, the leather of his gloves creasing and cracking in a a barely audible sound, as he then moved to embrace her, and she him. Both closed their eyes and breathed the other in. Time changed many things, but not the scent of the True ones. Not the sense that this soul was yours to Keep. She sighed and he opened his eyes, as they stood embraced against the night



Twisting his face into a leer, Exiter stared out across the plaza and the change in the electricity in the air. The night was a little warmer now, which was odd, but still the skin on his arms prickled at the thought of what may lurk. He knew he was to be feared as well, and perhaps it was that thought, and her recognition of his thinking that as their eyes met, that affected him so.

Together they walked to the edge of the balcony and looked across the plaza, both uneasy in their moments-a stiffness to their stance, and the blinking of their eyes-unsteady, worried. The air taunted them with promise of a sulking sky, about to rain at any moment, or perhaps the shadows on the roof tops were what was burgeoning more so than a stormy horizon.

Flinching as she removed her gloves, Lerida pocketed them and splayed her fingers and lifted them to examine, the lines in her hands were red and green, a map or insignia of the treasure she garnered inside, a tiny flame, incandescent within her ribcage.

"This is the time we knew would come", her voice was solemn and returning his gaze to the plaza he watched, still, not a movement or a flinch nor a blink. He felt hardy and readied now, but his face couldn't tell you that, the expressionless facade that it now was.

Removing her hat, she dropped it at her feet and she too acknowledged the plaza, and with that her skin turned ashen, her face, arms and nails grey. Her hair, bright red-orange and purple lifted into an unholy, ghostly breeze, shifting in the invisible and seemingly impossible breeze. Slowly, her skin began shifting until she stood, every pore black as ebony, her eyes crimson. Her clothes disapated so that her body was but a sumptuous canvas of black, naked but seemingly nippleless, much like a gargoyle-though far more attractive. Lerida smiled and he smiled back, as feathers extended from her shoulderblades, and from his the same, except his skin was still alabaster, but his eyes now too shifted to a ruby cast. The symbiotic nature they shared when Garanle' was a profoundly intense experience for the both of them, though tonight, now in their other forms, they felt a serenity and it sharpened their sense of smell, keen became their eye sight, and soundwaves were almost orgasmic for the first few pulses until the body adjusted to its tingling receptivity to the ebbing.

Taking one anothers hand-her right, his left, they rose to the balcony edge and slowly lifted up, the feathers batting against the eerie silence like gossamer against tile, as their hovering forms disappeared across the plaza, in pursuit of the nightmare on rooftop

Lerida

Date: 2006-06-09 02:47 EST
Landing on one of the cathedrals topmost turrets they crouched against the peeling surface, slippery too from the snow, and absorbed the scents and sounds upon the roaring winds that had begun to pick up. The winds still brought a relentless sordid taste with them-it was gut juice, it was fairyfloss from the far central fair ground, it was again-blood-rich and metallic and stirring Exiter's stomach like mad. It was all too much in Garanle', too much to take, the hunger imbedded in his eyes for blood, being a Kindred too, and in hers for that energy to tingle within her ribcage and send that tiny flame asunder, into fireworks-to tear through her leaving a trail of ashen stars, rebounding against her flesh (or at least what she imagined the Taste to conjure within her soul and anatomy against the dark of the moon, in time with the savage multi-fllavoured breeze everytime the ebbing blazed her with sensation).

"The Lycans scent is pronounced. They're Droving. Someone beckons them.."

Lerida placed a her index finger before her lips, signaling silence. Lycans heard the slightest decibal.

Exiter nodded, almost abruptly, shocked by his error, and looked out over the shadow doused villages, streets, trees and cars. Shapes broke up and joined, a jigsaw of silhouettes that hid their enemies and also their allies. There had to be Kindred who felt the triggering of Fear skirt their confidence. This war, sadly, was inevitable.

Gesturing to Lerida, Exiter crept forward, his heart settling into an even rhythem, as he grasped at the metal latch of the oubliette he was peeling back open. Lerida peered over his shoulder, as the snow drifted across him and obscured her view of what he was prying at. Retracting her wings from the flurry of eager flakes to get lost within her shoulder's plume, the edges of which fluttered softly in the air-there was a tenderness to her Terror beauty in this form, if you paid attention

Creeping forward moonlight almost seemed to rear back, aghast, as darkness and tendrils of light caressed at their forms, disappearing beneath the hatch, and into the cathdral, where sounds were roaring within, as snow drifted quietly behind them, quickly covering their escape from the cold and ensuing horrors entrenching on Moscow



Once descended both Exiter and Lerida clung to the walls, both on beams, overlooking the expanse of the Cathedrals interior. Both shuddered and rubbed their arms and thighs, shivering in the chill of the space. Exiter stole a glance at Lerida and smiled-she has been with him during every pinnacle moment of his adult life and he wanted to ask her if she would bond with him. This wasn't the time, or what would be, period of time, to ask her, but looking at her there, her lithe body pressed against the wall, her hair trickling across her front and shoulders and into the plume, it stole his breath. Her face was losing its ebon pallor and slashes of grey begin to assume all over her body. Her eyes caught in his in question, but he cast his gaze quickly away-she was changing back to Human, and so should he. The howling was louder, and some beast was moving through the floorplan below. Time to move.

Inching further down the outlay of wall and curtain and beam, the pair extended their hands and legs, acrobats of the night, flinging their forms quietly from beam to beam, wall to wall, crouching and diving with the agility of primate or leopard, and the stealth of a samurai, as feathers retracted into nothing and clothes reclaimed their flesh.

Finally crouched upon a lower beam, Lerida took in what her options were-candelabra, another beam, the organ top where the pipes tore upwards towards the ceiling, or...The drapes at the back of the stairs leading towards the assortment of furniture and gold that made up the Addressee's pit.

Grimacing she leant forward and narrowed her eyes, leaping through the air, talons splayed wide, as she hissed through the moon dappled darkness and caught herself, like a cat, upon the satiny surface of the drapes. All of them began to sway with her sudden weight, side to side, up and down, as she looked about, quietly re-forming into her Human self-since they were inside she had allowed the re-formation to begin. Being in Garanle' could beg too much attention, and stealth was utmost now. Leaping from the unsure sway of the curtains, she clung onto the imposing candelabra, and aimed her weight forwards, to land before the lecturn, the translucency of the moonlight through the glass brackets of the candleabra refracting in aquatic-like white shadow across her face and chest..

Watching as Exiter gently flew down she cocked a thin brow his way, unimpressed, with only jesting; a gentle smile lifted her lips towards him as they touched one another's hands, palm against palm, fingers upwards, and settled themselves from the throbbing that riddled their bodies.

Opening their eyes they nodded slightly and turned to stalk the roam and hunt down the possible Lycan in their midst. The smell of dampened fur evoked images of a bawdy Lycan snarling within the shadows. Both had a distaste for their nemesis, but had always accepted them. There was no use wishing their kind to die out, it was not going to happen anytime soon, and with Gangrels now seeming to un-evolve back into rabid, feral mongrels, it was not long before hybrids would come to be. Exiter and Lerida knew it, even now, in the early stages. The world was changing its patterns, shedding its skin, and Lerida couldn't help but smile as goose flesh rippled across her. She felt precisely that way, she was experiencing a rejuvenation all her own.

Seperating they went their own ways, looking under and over and within any outlet that may lave traces of the Lycan they sought..This was going to be a long night......

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The howls in the distance and the shuddering of footsteps roared in a wicked cacophony across the entire cathedral interior, resonating off the walls and in their ears.

Lifting her eyes to the large, opaque windows, refracting dull moonlight and bleak shadows across the pews, she snarled. The night was hungry for young blood and she was intrinsically connected to that urge, that devilish impulse that curved her heart into an axe and thudded at her chest, dying to be borne on the night air to cause havoc...To wheel at its own sluggishly doom pace.

But such feelings were easily controlled. She wasn't one for acting upon ridiculously inane impulses, and that feral hunger was insane. It got people further, but not far.

Exiter slung from beneath the now splintered confession booth and headed towards her. The glint in his eyes as that dull moonlight filtered across him, was pulp purple, they was heavy and full of promise and spoke to her of worlds and figures they were yet to see....and it sunk into her soul and she too became heavy with desire...to understand. To Hunt. To collect.

And they turned after a fruitless search and meandering through the shadowed sections of an empty building, a hallowed shell, and soon found the night air again as their bodies met the mist with shock skinned welcome, and appropriately they hummed their heat towards the river that seemed to call. It was a lonely, morose echo that only the Sensitive heard (or bothered to listen to), and the moon gave it's blessings as it lit their forms in white and they conceded to the longing and the mission, silently.

The darkness shifted as they moved on foot, their forms black outlines amongst the full brush of trees and taunting patches of thickets that stemmed from tattered fence posts, street posts and post boxes, providing obstacle to their feet tickling the earth hurriedly in anticipation of what they would soon see.

The thunder that had been rippling in the distance as they had scanned the city below on turret and roof top, was finally closing in on the city, and soon drops as cold as the air began to tilt towards the ground, splashing their boots and heels in mud and dried leaves as the moon was soon covered in blue smoky clouds and distinct shadows gave way to figures with blades as long as those broken fence posts, blades that lifted from the dark into the light, wielded closer and closer their way.....





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