#moonfalliing

Olruggio is, as ever, a difficult person to announce almost anything to.

Already, Qifrey can picture the way this conversation will go in his mind—he'll admit to the desire to take on a few apprentices, obfuscating any part of the reason why behind some sort of selfless desire to be a better teacher than his master. Olruggio will initially be surprised, but will take the matter seriously when Qifrey makes it clear he's serious, and will probably acquiesce, grumbling, to the earnest request that he take on the role of Qifrey's Watchful Eye.

The earnestness with which he will eventually go along with Qifrey's intentions is what makes it difficult; even thinking about it sends an itch throughout Qifrey's entire body as something slithers and grows and writhes within.

You and me, Qifrey thinks, and a gaggle of apprentices I'm taking on more for myself than for them. And my secret. What a lovely picture of a life.

The snaking branches wither at the strained picture of what might otherwise be a nice reality. The idea that Olruggio must be made to believe in Qifrey's earnest desire to teach students and practically raise children somewhere isolated, free of the suffocation that comes with the Great Hall, is almost as nauseating as having to pretend as much towards those hypothetical students themselves.

But a teacher never wants for worry, and though he's looking forward to days spent under the open sky, Qifrey feels secure in the thought that he's just trading one source of stress and discomfort for another.

"Olly," Qifrey starts, a grab for attention.

That's almost the end of things there, because Olruggio looks at him as openly as ever, and Qifrey wishes he didn't have to abide the war of emotions that always brings up—happy, because Olruggio's care for him hasn't diminished even despite a second and third execution of erased memories on his part, and guilty because of the lies he knows he's going to have to spill one after another in the ensuing conversation.

When he looks away, he masks it as embarrassment; he paints a picture for Olruggio to scrutinize of a man seeking the validation of his best friend.

"You are mistaking me for human." ( from Blade )

"Am I?"

Perhaps the question leaves his lips far too easily-- just as the assumption had come about far too easily. In the centuries he has been alive, Adrian has seen a great many things within the world. Vampires, spirits of death and other facets of the world, Night Creatures that have been brought forth from the very depths of hell...

And, of course, humans. The holders of the humanity that he has valued so deeply from his mother, that he has learned to embrace and maintain so that he does not lose himself in the way that his father's kind tends to do.

He walks the earth as something neither fully human nor vampire-- Yet he understands both more intimately than either seems to understand themselves. ... Perhaps it is due to the amount of self reflection that comes from belonging to both and neither at the same time. That comes from seeing parts of yourself in both reflections-- Yet never seeing another who understands the world through your eyes. Not completely.

... And these eyes, that had been watching humanity for almost three-hundred years, had not been able to discern a difference.

However... Now that the idea that something might be amiss had been presented to him, there were slight things that he began to pick up. His eyes carried the weariness of a man who had lived far longer than any mortal man should. ... He had seen a similar weariness in his father's eyes, even when he was just a child.

The man's heart beat steadily in his chest-- Yet he found something strange about the pattern. The more he focused, the more he realized that his initial assumption may have been incorrect. ... Though one could not blame him for such a mistake.

This is a haunted place.

So say the residents of New York City, anyway, stumbling over themselves to make sense of a world that has turned itself inside out on top of them. Some digest the things they suddenly see with startling clarity, aligning themselves with the rights of the so-called newcomers to exist in the world. Others believe that everything, equally, is something monstrous—creatures sent here with only the purpose of lurking like a deadly shadow in the lives of the 'ordinary' and the 'human'.

Vindicta knows better; she is the only one who does the haunting. Everyone rambles on about the stark differences between the worlds of yesterday and today, but very few consider that the differences might be just as stark for those on the other side of their perception.

Most nights, she finds herself wandering the city alone—as befitting of a ghost who has not quite settled herself into the ways of the city.

This night—

"I hope you prove not to be like some others of your ilk."

—she stands across from someone whose name she knows only by rumor. The name Belmont has come up once or twice, said by all manner of beings in all manner of contexts. Vindicta knows three things; that they were monster hunters, that they were near-completely eradicated, and that a man who wears the family's name has been seen stalking these streets much as she does.

Vindicta had not been strictly seeking a chance to judge the intentions of this man for herself. But finding herself now before him, there could be no better place or time.

"I'm familiar with that crest you wear," she says, ghostly fingers running a smooth circle against the old form of her rifle. "Some individuals I've been watching very closely have a lot to say about it. What brings another hunter of monsters to the Cursed Apple?"