She was late! A quick, sharp rustle of silk at the top of the stairs, like reeds when the wind of the lake blows through them, announced the geisha's hurried pace down into the tavern. She had tarried too long and was late now for an appointment to meet her most important patron of late.

Downstairs the lazy lick of outsized eyes caught the blossom before she has sifted down a handful of steps; no words, only the mantid cant of Artsblood's head as the brown eyes followed.

Tiny, hurried steps brought Sakura down the stairs and over to the bar to bow deeply before the spidery woman perched like a skeleton owl on her seat at the bar. Her dark head bent foward, the vulnurable nape of her neck revealed in suplication. The blossom's voice was soft as rain.

"Forgive me... I am late, my Lady Koi."

One freakish hand, too long fingers spread, waved with sepulcheral elegance at the stool next to her.

"It is nothing to me, little flower, time is not among my primary concerns...."

"Of course...but I hate to be so rude."

Sakura murmured as she rose from her bow and stepped foward. The silk that encased her tonight was the shade of deep dark green that one would find only in still ponds fed by fresh springs, it's color littered with white lotus flowers tinged pink at their tips, tucked like suprises into each fold and bend...and here and there a flash of white and gold where the artist had painted a pair of koi, hidden in the depths. Sashed round with a magestic dark purple obi, the geisha had obviously dressed for the occasion, paying homage to Arts' sense of humor and her lucious, hungry gaze. Sakura smiled demurely and dipped her chin again.

"It's lovely to see you once more, my Lady."

Arts studied the girl, thin lips kissed against her glass, a picture of composure. And the costume did tease the tremble of a smile from the razor-cut mouth.

"And you are lovely as ever; so fresh, you seem more bud than blossom. Is that among your charms, to make each patron believe that only he or she can coax that bud to bloom?"

"Surely not, my lady...for not all of my patrons are gardeners."

The geisha returned with a smile as she tucked herself carefully into a seat beside her lovely patron. Arts' teasing words stung with the loving kiss of a lash each time, and though she recoiled unde them it was ever with a sigh of strange pleasure afterwards she found her own words rising to the occasion in return. And it was worth it as just the point of Arts' tongue tip touched the sugar wine slush; translucent lids dipped once over her eyes in silent applause for the giesha's reply.

"And perhaps I am not gardener but bee, not horticulturist but hummingbird?"

She watched Arts raise her glass to her lips, marking the way the sugar clung in the legs of the wine as it sloshed against the walls of the glass before memory struck her and she rose from her seat.

"Bee or hummingbird, both enjoy something sweet do they not? I have something new for you to try then, my Lady... a new nectar of sorts which I came across in the marketplace and bought for you."

Lazy as a lioness in the sunshine, and as observant, the moon eyes followed the girl's every move, almost studying. A dip behind the bar and Sakura returned, bearing a tray that carried two fine crystal sherry glasses, delicate on their long, fragile stems, and a tall, slim, skinny wine bottle, so thin it looked almost as emaciated as Arts' herself. The geisha set this down upon the bar and resumed her own seat.

A golden, slender wrist was revealed in a demure yet racy flash of skin as she held back the sweep of her sleeve and lifted the bottle, pulling out the cork with a flourish. The play of light on the cut glasses, and upon the liquid in the skinny bottle, pleased Arts eyes, as did the delicate wrist. The mantid cant of head followed all her motions.

"It is named Icewine, my Lady ..." Whispered Sakura in a hushed voice, "In the north countries they make this wine once a year... in the wintertime when the grapes grow small. The night of the first frost all are picked and pressed while frozen. It is a delicacy and when the vendor let me taste it, I knew it was ment for none other but you."

Like a blossom returning to bud, long fingers drifted toward one another as they folded around the crystal glass. She held it to the light, her Tor nature demanding that she wring every possible sensation from the experience. Each dark eye in turn blessed with the reflected light; and only then did the delicate gunsight blade of her nose drift over the glass, eyes closed now. Her thin shouldblades drew wings against black cotton as she inhaled.

Sakura lifted her own glass holding it like a fragile flower as her dark eyes watched her patron, her breath caught in her throat with anticipation as her gift was weighed and measured by the discerning beauty. She prayed that it would please. And finally, eyes on the giesha, Arts raised her glass to her thin mouth, and did not drink per se but tipped the liquid against her mouth, lowered the glass, and let her tongue drink the wine off her own lips. Lids drifted down, the great eyes closed in the intimacy of this tasting.

Sakura's own lower lip caught in her teeth as she watched, lent foward in her seat a touch, her heart constricting as she gazed at the woman's face longingly. When those enormous eyes opened again, the thin lips gifted a smile.

"Your own beauty only justs overshadows it dear girl. Showing me this treat is a kindness indeed."

Arts sipped, barely taking in a dribble of the exquisite liquid, and smiled anew.

The breath Sakura held let out in soft laughter as she dropped her eyes and blushed pink in her pleasure. She sipped from her own glass then, savoring the nectar-wine delicately before raising her dark pools to the pale beauty.

"For so many nights I've watched you pour sugar into your wine and sip at it unhappily as if you wanted something more....something better. I hope that this could please you. I purchased a case of it for the cellars here." She admited, favoring the truth of her convictions over modesty.

Wide eyes studied her, Arts own voice released in perhaps an unguarded breath.

"Something more..." She sipped again, "I will of course reimburse you any expense, flowerbud."

"Please...don't." Sakura's fingers boldly strayed to softly stroke one of Arts' slim wrists, fingers delicate against the sensitive skin. "It would not be a gift then..."

A fingertip in the icewine brought to Arts' mouth, strange warmth in the moons of her eyes. Freakish fingers spread to trap the bold little hand. For a moment she examined it, seeming tiny in the tangle of her own too-long digits. Holding it still, moon eyes rose to the girl's dark, bottomless pools.

"But to the business of the evening?"

The geisha only smiled in warm pleasure as her hand was caught in that tender trap, her palm turning downwards so delicate fingertips could stroke along the soft skin that lined the inside of long fingers.

"Yes, my Lady?"

Arts own fingertips spread and stroked, their span surprising to the flesh.

"I have a confession to make, flowerbud, for tonight, at least, I seek your wisdom more than the no doubt exquisite services at your command..."

The blossom nodded slowly, her smile fading from her pretty features as they reassembled themselves into a placid, peaceful expression. She was listening. For a moment the woman's great eyes drifted to the ceiling, overlong digits absently stroking, their span covering much of the delicate forearm. They returned to the giesha, and their brown depths seem more naked, more accessible, though perhaps only a fool would spelunk too eagerly into those caves.

A soft sigh escaped the geisha as her own eyes drifted shut for but a second as spidery digits left her sensitive skin tingling, electricity curling all the way up her arm to the back of her neck, prickling her scalp with pleasure. She willed her attention back as Arts spoke.

" As you might or might not have heard from the Stuart woman, my bed has been often empty of late. She seems to take some pleasure in pointing that out, so I only allow the possiblity that it has become her pillow talk...But this is not her story..."

A soft laugh, and a wave of one hand as if shooing a fly punctuated the divergence.

"Suffice to say that when Alice Toklas was twenty, her conquests were without number; when she was fifty she yearned for constancy?"

Arts gave a small shake of her head, she was Tor enough to take joy in this lingering of human foible.

"That is to say I have met someone and recent past indicated she will not share my bed too many times. How does one tease constancy out of a lover, giesha?"

Sakura's dark eyes flickered, lashes shadowing them for the breadth of a second and not a moment longer.

"My Mistress never speaks of you, my Lady...not to me."

It was the truth, and if Arts could feel the pulse throbbing beneith her stroking fingers she would feel its steadiness unfaltering. Yet she was brought up short as the woman continued. She sat back in her seat a bit, and folded both hands in her lap as she lowered her gaze and turned this question over and over again in her mind. Arts let her free hand fall upon a silk-clad knee, feeling for pleasure in texture and temperature, always the coniossour. The hand stroked, as it a creature with its own life, as she listens, old creature of a thousand lovers, hoping for a pearl she has not worn dull.


"Consistancy... is a quality I have always found in those enamoured with their lover beyond simple lust. One must create a pull, a draw like none other. Find your lover's greatest need, the singular desire that they hold above all others, and become the fullfillment to it, but do not offer all this fullfillment at once."

Sakura's words came slowly, so slowly...and she paused at the end of each sentance, her eyes unfocused, gazing downwards as if she were reading a page from hidden memory or off the very walls of her soul.

"Let your lover come to you... and give them what they desire in such a way that they must return again and again and again. If you cannot touch their heart to stir true consistancy then you must touch their deepest need instead."

Her own fingers came to rest over the stroking ones, stilling them as she raised her eyes once more, dark and serious pools with kindness and caution floating therein.

"But my Lady... love is the only true inspiration of consitancy... and you cannot force someone to love you...no matter what your charms."

Artsblood's huge eyes pieced.

"The heart, giesha, how does one hook the heart, I know needs, but I may have forgotten hearts, as much as I have attempted to hold onto such with every fingernail"

Her voice turned suddenly cold, like a whiplash.

"Love? There must be a way to capture it, a woman is a simple thing, geisha, no matter now ancient, and this "heart" is a stupid muscle. I cannot believe that love is but an accident at whose mercy I must linger!
And no, I will not use any...skills. I have no need of a slave lover."

The blossom only smiled under the sting of the lash of words and raised her fingertips to stroke the narrow, razorsharp jaw.

"There are no tricks to love, my Lady...and you should know that a woman's heart is never a simple thing...However..."

Arts' long thin body seemed to droop, as it the hand on the strings grew lax.

"Even your centuries of secrets have no poultice...." And then the huge eyes rose again at the qualification.

Sakura's fingertip traced the fullness of Arts' lower lip as she leaned foward with inexorable slowness to draw a small, delicate kiss from the corner of her mouth. So involved were the two that Sakura did not even notice the cool night wind that blew in the door behind the long, tall form of Oja as he entered.

"As my own was rewarded my Lady...for I earned a smile from you earlier, which is rarer than black diamonds and far more precious."

The geisha's reaction did not escape the notice of Artsblood, however.

"Is the ache not sweet, could I show you more clearly what I wish and fear not having?"

Sakura could barely catch her breath at the whisper, and she raised her dark gaze across the bar as she rubbed absently at her wrist where the skin burned of its own accord, as she glanced toward the tall dark shadow of Oja with a guilt that weighed upon her heart like an anchor. It took more strength than she knew she possesed, but the blossom shook her head in the negative as she drew her gaze back to Arts to give her a small, pretty smile.

"No...I do not need...a display, my Lady."

She answered in a husky whisper as she squared her shoulders and straightened her back once more, letting out a soft breath. Huge eyes widened still as Arts sipped the gift wine and studied the giesha.
Across the bar, Oja still watched as he tried in vain to drown his interest with wine. Arts' own eyes flickered over Sakura's watcher, wise, cold, and then back to the girl.

"I see you can do what you cannot teach? Shall I free you for the evening, flowerbud?"

Salura sipped her wine once more.

"Free me if you like, my Lady... but I do love your company."

There was little of kindness in Artsblood, and almost nothing of gentleness, she was old and hard and facing the loss of her humanity with an ugly persistence. One long fingertip lifted, and presses the rubbery pulse of vein in the side of the graceful neck, letting pressure stop and start that lovely faucet.

"Invite you lover to join us if you will, flowerbud. The lesson is over for this evening."

Across the way, Oja sunk against the bar, brooding. Sakura's gaze had not been impersonable, but longing, guilt-ridden and pleading. But it was gone in such a flash it was as if it had never happened, and the usual softly smiling geisha was left in its place. She glanced again now over to Oja and waved a hand in slow elegance at him, fingers fanning the air in a downwards sweep to entice him over to her.

"If it please you, my Lady. Oja...won't you join us?"

Oja shrugged it off, and after a pause and a sip he moved outwards, his coat tails fanning as he nodded to her in a deep bow then lifted his face.
Artsblood sipped at the gift wine again, the huge eyes seem to find humor in the interraction she had initiated.

As he came round the bar, Oja's long, long hand extended from the throes of passive gray, and he nodded to the woman

"I, am Bernie...and you?"

His sidelong glance rested on Sakura, before removing and flitting to the tall, pale companion.

"My lady...please meet Oj- ah...Bearnie Sorrow." She corrected herself, "Bernie..." She said the name with difficulty, as if unused to it, "Please meet Artsblood Shusburg."

Artsblood's own hand, freakish fingered, cool, easily as long as his, brushed as long as it was polite.

Oja nodded, eyeing this 'Blood' with a fond eye....one that drew in all the facets to the face.

"Good eve", he mumured, collecting her hand and shaking it firmly.

"Sorrow" He inflected it through gritted teeth, another look to Sakura, before a timid, no nuisance smile tipped his lips upwards, quickly, then disappeared. His hand sunk into a pocket. He was clearly uncomfortable. Upset.

The spidery woman could smell the blood in the water like a shark, and was perhaps less loath to bite then those spiteful creatures even were. Artsblood's huge eyes flicked from one to the other.

"Perhaps you show me what you cannot teach, giesha? I will muse on your wisdom, and upon the secrets of the human heart..."

Sakura's brow knit the tiniest bit at Oja's glance and meaningful inflection. She did not understand his apparent dis-ease, but Arts' cruel proddings made her ire rise with a dangerous heat. She lifted her chin to offer the woman a small nod.

"I'm afraid it's not a lesson learned from the sidelines, my Lady...especially if the spectator has lost the ability...or perhaps talent...to join in the game at hand."

Arts unfolded her improbable legs from thier spider cuddle atop her stool and addressed Oja.

"This flowerbud has been trying to teach an old dog new tricks, always a challenge. Is she safe left in your company?"

The thin lips twisted, wry that would cut glass.

She glanced up at Oja with a small smile, fingers aching to touch his, yet restrained within her lap.

Artsblood took a final sip of the icewine, her huge eyes lidded, and then one fingertip raised the giesha's chin, and the thin lips drifted to them, parted, and the point of her tongue traced the inner borders of the assualted mouth before she leaned away.

"Talent, never doubt it flowerbud...."

Artsblood gave a bow to this Bernie, her long hand drifting from the silken knee in silent challenge.

"I think I have learned what I can..."

The geisha was kissed, and throughly, before she had time to react, not that she could have pulled away anyway with the constrictures of manners binding her tighter then chains. She licked at her lip as she watched Arts move away, whether it was to clense the burn of the invasion or savor it was uncertain.

"Indeed my Lady...and no one should ever doubt it."

Oja looked on. He hid behind the bottle before lowering it.

"Gleaned" He let tumble, the dark pits of his eyes hidden behind his hair, now loose from its leather. He lifted his own chin, as the bottle was discarded to the bar top. He drew back, mellowing.

Sakura dipped a bow though the woman's back was turned.

"Good evening then."

Oja's eyes fell. His chest puffed in an intake of air, then fell beneath the creases of his cotton shirt. He lifted a hand to his chin, letting the interaction pass - for now.

Artsblood offered bow, barely a tremble of the delicate bone-box of her little chin, to Sakura and Bernie. It was a wonder she could contain a smile at her petite coup d'grace of a punishment upon the giesha.

"I leave you to the secrets of the human heart..."

Sakura watched the woman go, silence hanging over her like the sword of Damacles, ready to crash down upon her and strike her through at any moment, suspended by a tenuous thread. She could feel Oja beside her and his displeasure.