#valentines.

Name: Magdalena Petran Age: early thirties. Do you like to cuddle?: Yes. Can we make-out?: If you wish to. A night in or dinner out?: Whichever you prefer, I like either. Ice cream or chocolate covered strawberries?: Ice cream. What makes you a good Valentine?: I already know every inch of your body. Would you cook for me?: Yes, absolutely. Would you let me cook for you?: Of course.

The Lady Dimitrescu puffs on the end of her quellazaire, a grey papery stack of amber-lit charred cigarette growing all the longer for the time the Lady spent sucking in a calculating, considering breath. The Lady is sitting at her desk, golden half-moon spectacles upon the bridge of her nose, kohl lightly brushed about her eyes, and dressed in Magdalena Petran's fine work. Her expression is perfectly neutral, but for the eyes - thinking, measuring, assessing.

Name: ioana / josie

Age: underage kiddo

Do you like to cuddle?: yes

Can we make-out?: terrible plans for the e.nemies yes

A night in or dinner out?: night in definitely

Ice cream or chocolate covered strawberries?: chocolate covered strawberries

What makes you a good Valentine?: it's in their blood obviously

Would you cook for me?: anything for the queen

Would you let me cook for you?: it'd be an honor

"If I might make a suggestion, dear lady," Alcina stoops from her full, imposing, regal height, places a finger beneath the child's chin, and grins with adoration at her grandchild, "women of our station are waited upon. Let the maids fetch your supper, straighten up nice and proper, and we shall plot."

The Matriatch Dimitrescu rights herself again, having poked the small child's back into a rigid posture. "A toast, then: to granddaughters and grandmothers, who are better collaborators even than thieves in a guild, or kings and their knights."

It takes Alcina only seconds - up to the words "House Winters" to violently roll her eyes back into the pits of her skull. She takes a long-suffering sigh - eager to portray her annoyance at the existence of the other - before settling through the rest of the 'information' like a deeply unmoved judge in a child's beauty pageant. She has several witty retorts to each little comment that Mia makes: 'very few women have complained about my large mouth before', 'don't use foul language', and 'I don't know who Laurel Hell is, unless you mean Laurel Hall the prestigious girls’ boarding school and I assume you do not’, ‘aren’t you the prisoner here?’  - but she saves them all. 

“No.”  She minced many things; words wasn’t one of them. The Lady Dimitrescu was relentless when the need took her. Her giving in now was affection, begrudging and secret. Forbidden to admit to. “You talk so much I have a headache already, Mia Winters. Let me brace myself with some gallons of reliable wine and ask me again, then.” 

Age: 125

Do you like to cuddle?: Don't you already know the answer to this question?

Can we make-out?: You're not going to bend down, and I'm not getting on a ladder, so... No. Also, EWW.

A night in or dinner out?: A night in.

Ice cream or chocolate covered strawberries?: I'll take the ice cream. You can have the strawberries.

What makes you a good Valentine?: Two words: Intellectual. Conversation.

Would you cook for me?: Sure, but I highly doubt you would eat it

Would you let me cook for you?: Oh please. As if you would be doing the cooking.

"I see." Two syllables, said clearly and coldly. "I'll return for my platonic Valentine's evening with hard drinking and arguments should all other attempts at human connection fail." She folds her hands over her stomach, displeased and disdainful voice leading the way for her body language. "You are right on one thing: I would not let you cook. Whereas your "intellectual conversation" is an as-yet-unobserved claim - so are you right on that? Really?" Now she is teasing. If called on it, her smile will crack like sunshine through an overcast grey cloud.

"Thank you for the offer, Karl Heisenberg." In the aftermath of her daughters' passing, and defection from the cult, she could think of far worse ways to wile away the years than spending a night in with a brother.