The Black Sea at night, 1879, Ivan Aivazovski

Before they could utter a word of warning, a display of... whatever that was stopped them in their tracks. Wide-eyed, they watched as the stranger's hand hardened into wood, twisting and gnarling. before their eyes. They sat up straight in their seat, looking around to see if anybody else saw what they just did. The bartender certainly did, but he was in the know at least. After all, the guy worked here.

Standing from their stool, they leaned over. Uncomfortably close, inches from their ear. "You know, doing that kinda thing out can get you killed. Or worse." The warning came from a voice that carried no warmth or scent. Djahima would be able to feel the stagnation of the vampire's tepid skin.

"I won't tell on you. Can't be assed. That's not to say nobody else would. People around here are always looking for somebody to throw under the bus if it means getting to wear the driver's hat for a few minutes." They sat back down, but still leaned in.

"You and I aren't cut from the same cloth. I can feel it. Where did you come from?" Now, they were inquisitive. Kindred were all they'd ever encountered. All else had only ever been rumors to them. "If you don't tell me, I may just die."

ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱɴ'ᴛ ᴀ ꜱᴍᴀʀᴛ ᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ, ʙᴀʀɢɪɴɢ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴀ ʙᴀʀ ꜰᴏʀ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ-ʙɪɴɢᴇʀꜱ. Then, of course, the waving of her limb in the barkeep's face—all wood where flesh should be—before asking, again, for alcohol that probably doesn't exist. In the same instance, it also may not be wise to deny the belligerent intruder, for if it wasn't just some cheap parlor trick or a comfortingly familiar case of insanity, she might just turn herself into something much, much worse.

Thankfully (though perhaps to Djahima's disappointment), the bartender elected to do as commanded, though not without a glare that would make anyone else brown their breeches. It was during this small interval that a little voice came whispering in her ear from someone dead-cold and smelling empty (not nothing, because even nothing had a smell).

Djahima turned to side-eye the patron, giving them a quick once over. This was right before she gave a sudden howl of laughter at the willowy vampire's friendly warning of the establishment's plot to murder her. "Oh, dear. Is it too late or too early to be threatening such good times?"

She kept their branch-ing arm on the surface of the bar after ceasing the crackling discordant lullaby of cellulose contracting and expanding in ways it normally shouldn't. Though once her glass of whiskey was finally placed before her, and firmly, she chose to grab the glass by curling the trio of twig-fingers around it, all the while creasing and wrinkling the bark where it bent as she took her first sip. If the taste was bothersome any, she didn't make it known.

"Hm," she hummed before speaking up again, "I didn't see no buses on the way here. Guess they shit out of luck." She didn't even really know how many of "them" there really were; from the moment she came in swinging her dick around to when she took her seat at the bar, not once did she look up to survey her surroundings. Was it simply hubris? Or something far more troublesome?