TEMPUS EDAX RERUM

In a handful of crude words, life is fucking unfair.

Perhaps she should have seen this coming - this reunion or reckoning. But for Çaska, life is and always has been and likely always will be a perpetual brat era; one that has, since her release, visited itself upon the city with little room for pushback or any ear for protest. Her feelings, her stylings, her re-education in the trends and lingos and social cues of not just a new decade or century this time, but of a new millenium has been quick, for she has always been quick, for she has always lived a life and had a brother who necessitated quickness, lest she be caught up in his iron jaws more than she already had.

And now, that carefree, crude, and perhaps to all but her socially embarrassing era has come to a screechingly absolute halt with a single text.

The snow has covered for this, at least briefly - she has every reason to avoid the house in Waneoft Heights between Nadia and Madison and a sorority house full of beautiful idiot women and their beautiful idiot boyfriends and girlfriends and theyfriends with their mind-purchased sycophancy and delicious blood.

But now, it is a matter of time - He will find Her or She will happen upon Him and as all of their first meetings are past one of her stony wakeups brought about by her sister's pity, the city will know why it is that mingling Zakarias and Shalaçaska Lomidze are like mixing lantern oil with an open flame in a dry Chicago barn.

She does not want to be oil, nor does she want to be an open flame, and despite its sopping wet nature (either in terms of thawed snow or its newfound stifling humidity) she thinks a little more of this town than a dry Chicago Barn and so she does not want to leave.

And so - for all that, shades of her rumination echo in her eyes as she exits the latenight Uber with the look of a funeral mourner and walks into her family's home, winding her way towards her chosen bedroom - startlingly bereft of witchblood or its mousy casing, and hopes that her brother has the good grace to knock before he comes to read her his Lutherian Manifesto on every way she belongs back in a stone box.

A shadow casts across the page, lamplight blocked by a body stepping into the den.

Zak takes his time to lift eyes from the page to the woman standing in the doorway. He fears no intruder; it would be merely an impromptu funeral for all the trespassers near and dear.

Silence ensues, because he cannot comprehend if she has clawed her way through the stone he built for her, on her own, or if their darling sister aided in her release. Who else? It is not new, she is not feral with hunger, or begging for her brother to forgive her transgressions of lunacy and needless reams of blood down the throats of the unworthy.

“You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken [ ... ] Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts."

Plato is blaming Zakarias for all of this, and he is alleviating responsibility to the stonemason who came before him, old bones, four thousand miles beyond.

Shalaçaska looks well. Different, as immortality goes, and he stuffs down the instinctive irritation that she has returned at a time where he is in pursuit of something more distracting than even her antics of adoration, love and her neverending mistakes.

The Republic is closed, and dumped onto the side table with a slap. Suddenly, he's across the room, holding his sister close, arms looping around her, a hand tucked at her nape to embrace. A relief that they are together, once again.

"Sister." Zakar will forgive the potential conspiring. He supposes it has been long enough. Had their sister asked, and taken responsiblity for their youngest sibling's yearning to waste the sacred blood, he might've freed her himself. "I assume this is Viktoria's doing."

He dares her to try to lie to him.

Hands loosening from the hug, to allow her to slip away. A butterfly that got too close to the heat of a candle flame; dousing the sparks before they catch.

All he felt, compressed into a curt: "When?"

Did she weigh the odds of how long her secrets would stay buried, and the result of deceit? She sought him out without his knowledge. Nobody protects her, like Zakarias does. He'd kill, and maim, and do whatever necessary to save her from herself, all the same. The hardest choices. His. Hence, stone coffin, crafted from his own hands, and sealed to let her swill in the knowledge of how she can keep herself well, in the next century she gets to learn.

She hadn't prepared for him to meet Sadie.

The tiniest slip of his grip on her, and she takes the slowly fading body from him, cradling the woman close to her chest. "You've missed much while we've taken up residence in Port Liery. Let me fill you in after I get her to bed."

They can play with her later. She wants time with her family. Turning, she heads back into the mansion, and takes Sadie up to the bedroom they share when she visits. A bit of thousand-year old blood on the human's lips, and she's back with Zakarias in an instant.

Without the body between them, she allows herself true affection in giving her brother an actual hug in greeting. It doesn't last long, but it feels good to do so again after so long. She debates, though, on whether or not to tell him of the empty coffin the basement. It is her doing, after all. She decides against it, leading him towards the lounge.

"I've started building my vault again." She starts, pride on her tongue. "Taken a lover. Took the part of representative on the city council. I've also been working on deals with Reardon."

"You do like company to break. It's quaint; she came for you." He is not heartless with affairs of his sisters. Viktoria's pet had simply found the brother instead, because he had been hungry to know what was exactly wandering to a home with his name written in the stone.

The woman slides from his grip to hers in one swift beckon. Viktoria is soft, and he can see the consideration in her grasp. Thoughtfulness, even when there is no mind awake to rattle from its senses. What did it matter to coo a sleeping will-be corpse? Not at least, in the way his sister coddled, and cared for this one to tuck it in.

Zak watches, smiling curiously. "It appears I have."

Viktoria wastes no time with new sentiments, when she has the oldest waiting for her. Arms wrap around her, and millennia of memories flash between them, because it is as unchanging as they were. Viktoria is the grounding post, where Zakarias is the cement. Çaska is the hammer, testing the strength of the foundations. He will always miss them, in ways that are not so obvious. The world would sooner burn than he risk losing one to the permanance of the end.

But this is not the era of Shalaçaska; she is safe, exactly where she is.

Eyes track the landscapes painting onto canvas, lining the walls. Artwork, too, that he might not have chosen for the innards of the structure, but incredibly Viktoria by choice. A little phallic, in elegance and discretion.

At the mention of the vault, they are siblings, a thousand years younger again.

"Good. I have gifts arriving for you to fill empty shelves." Relics dug up, and tombs he had excavated for artefacts that he's yet to complete. Business outside of the typical arcitecture he prides himself on masoning. It isn't often like him to defile grand builds, without good cause. But he had molested some monuments, near their homeland. She hasn't been stagnant either, and his eyes gleam with interest, teeth edging out of a widening smile. "Is that lover laying on your bed, sister?" He already had his answer. No need for games.

She's always been the better spokesperson than he ever liked to be. But clan affairs were a political minefield that he didn't like to touch. Because when he did, hands came out red.

Viktoria could keep representing, and he'd trust no one else to speak for them. She would just no longer be alone in her beady-eyed audience, though. "And what would we possibly need Reardon for?" Not stupid, Viktoria isn't. But Zakarias sees nothing but a criminalistic enterprise striving to be the business owners of the century, slinging sacrilege. They were doggish, and they made messes. No taste.

He isn't insulting her choice, she's smarter. "I believe you'll make it worth our time."

Business aside, he craves to know the workings of what exactly his sister has accomplished in their time apart. Not political. Personal. What has she found outside of her lover to keep her entertained? "Most surprisingly, I passed a chapel, of no particular worth, less than a mile from here," Meaning, built by an amateur, in the latest century. Very close to Lomidze territory, "Missionaries in whatever passes for their cassocks these days,. You've spared them being speared on the fenceposts." Zak hadn't lingered to see if they were summoning some non-existent God, or praying to the same. The only reasons he could find that she would spare them were either, "Are they interesting, or were you simply waiting for me?"

Maybe they'd try exorcising them again. Viktoria had enjoyed that, the last time.

They could even bring his sister's pet, to watch.

Oh right, the illusory dot - the one she's placed somewhere in the middle of his face to try and merge the both of him into the one of him - it almost works before he leans in - like, too in, and she leans back- like, too back, and bumps into the narrow corridor wall with a grunt and then a laugh.

"Uh," she blinks, and there's a yellowgold gleam that glides across the deep brown of her eyes that fades just as quickly - the kind of a thing a human would chalk up to too much liquor or a trick of the light- as she blinks away hackles raised by the clumsiness and fogging up of her brain. "Uh, sure. I'm... looking for my friend Mads. She's like... fifty foot tall, kinda grunge but like if grunge was like, intentional?" She laughs. "So not grunge but like... you know. "Grunge"."

He cannot wait for the boat to sink, sometime soon. Faulty structure, and capacity more than exceeded.

There's no harm in playing along, whilst he searches for whose head is about to be ripped from their shoulders. "And where was our Mads, last?" Thoughtful, as beady eyes scan every face on the yacht, skirting across each intoxicated, and blitz figure that almost went overboard.

Zak almost gave one a helping hand.

But his fists stay slack in his coat pockets as he exercises restraint. It isn't so shocking that Zakar knows exactly what grunge is, and the greyed outlandish stereotype that came associated with it. He can say there's no Soundgarden playing on the ship. He probably knew it better than the high little wolf, giggling her way through the crowd ahead of him. But he'd say that about anything; he's lived it.

There is a figure, on the tailend of the yacht, standing hunched over a table, matching the girl's description. Even bent over a crowd, huddled, they were six foot at least.

He walks as though time is no element to the thief he is chasing. Long strides, unlike the stunted ones of the girl's partymates. A faux investment in the story of what might happen to this one, when he leaves her. Zakarias nods over at the busy table slamming cups, and rolling something on the table. He cares little for whatever they have invented.

"Now do we think Mads would get themselves into a game like that?"

She may have found her target, but he is yet to find his.

"He did, a long time ago, many times." Thao spoke, her held still held high. It didn't matter what he had done to her; all that mattered is she had ended it, the victor, able to handle her own whilst Skinner's minions skulked and hid in the shadows. A flash of a thought came to her mind that she pushed down violently: What if they had been a pawn, suffering the same as her and Birdie had, and Thao had chosen to end their life because of it without explanation? Though, would a pawn be so willingly cruel? So willingly vile? This one was acting of his own accord, she felt it deep down. He just found himself to be nothing without his leader... A free agent, ready for the consequences of actions long thought forgotten.

Thao was about to open her mouth to state she belonged to nobody, not anymore, but she supposed that wasn't true. She had always seen belonging to someone as a negative - being a belonging, or a possession. It wasn't like that with Kanemaru, with Birdie. It was a choice, and as cliche as it sounded, a family. One that had happily taken her in when she presented herself back into the world.

Hesitation still sits in the forefront, though. She knows nothing about this stranger, not knowing where he belongs and the consequences of her answer if it's wrong in his mind.

"I'm not a free agent." Thao answers diplomatically, giving no more than that. Surprising, considering her monologue when killing someone she considered her enemy.

The gap stays between them, neither moving to close it, but the stranger is between her and freedom; stood in the mouth of the alley. She imagined there were tunnels, perhaps that's where her victim had been heading, but she didn't wish to end up lost in the underbelly of the city either.

"Who do you belong to?" The question that she left unanswered turned back on him, eyes watching for any indication of a sudden movement and her mind calculating escape routes should she need them.

"Of course."

Zak is right, he can see the statement burning in her gaze, when her mouth opens to bite back at his assumption. And then, she reconsiders her answer, chewing on it for a while before delivering him some careful truth.

She is a pawn, and likely expendable to whomever she then claims agency.

"Do you think you can afford my patience?"

Perhaps she believes herself strong enough to dust two in one night. Zak, of all challenges. Try. He's yet to bleed anything tonight, maybe this would distract him from the hunt of his own. Though, it's not blood he's chasing. If the woman wanted to evade the simple questions, then she could do herself a favour and answer for the dead; she loves to do that, he's noticed. "Who did he belong to?" Not one of his, or else she'd already be fodder for the wind.

Zakarias has already made his assessment of where she belongs, because from what he's learned in his short return to Port Leiry, Oregon, is that it is riddled with languishing clans. Sprawling out of every concrete orifice like rats in the plague. Spreading their shit, and piss without a care for consequence, or for the ratcatcher who could stamp on their squealing little necks.

She's asking all the wrong questions, and he is tiring of the boredom.

Everything belongs to him.

"Find yourself a better purpose than moonlight avenger." Squabbles were wasteful, and the ones worth spilling blood over weren't for here. She should do out of sight of prying eyes. Zakar has known a millenia of wars, he's grown disappointed by new-age warriors playing the battle games of the ancients. Ones like her would bring down a greater number of foot soldiers to play bothersome heroes. "Make it your last, it'll work out better for you."

She's been running ever since. She's good at it; it's the family trade, after a fashion - Siltshore women have always been very practiced at being chased by witches, by hauntings. That's the part he doesn't understand, she thinks, Lomidze with his thousand years and his funeral patience. To him the chase is a marathon is a siege is a slow tightening. She wonders if he thinks he can simply outlast her, the way he's outlasted empires and clerics and whoever else's blood went into the mortar of his pretty foundations. He waits for her to tire. But jokes on fucking you ZAK - Caitlin does not tire the way the dead expect the living to. She gets fast. She burns hotter the closer the end comes, a star streaking white across the black, beautiful precisely because it is busy destroying itself, and far too bright by then to catch.

Georgia. Moldova. Romania. A smear of border towns she couldn't name now if you asked her, and wouldn't bother to. She moves by day, while he's tucked away from the sun like a coat folded into summer storage. The night is slow, and the night is his. Cait has stopped being interested in anything that belongs to him. Cait turns meters into miles.

But it is night now, months later. It is always night when it counts.

It is slow enough that by the time the shape of him finally cuts itself out of the dark at the edge of the graveyard, Cait has been keeping vigil for hours at the Siltshore mausoleum. She has crowned herself with a wreath of funeral lilies already going brown at the edges, and she has been talking to the dead women when the shadow of him haunts her doorstep.

There he is. Filling the doorway he was always going to fill, eventually. A silhouette poured into the threshold, funeral-black layered on funeral-black, every elegant centimeter of him as still and fucking annoying as a parasite that won't leave. He's just as she remembers. Cait inhales, and then throws her head back and laughs.

The sound tears up out of her and goes climbing the vaulting, doubling, coming back down at her in the voices of all her quiet dead - and for one bright unhinged second Caitlin understands, truly understands, down in the animal underneath her, why wolves must howl at the moon. It is so far past mirth it loops the long way round and comes back wearing mirth's stolen face. It is the body forcing the breath out so the everything inside has somewhere to be, so she can stoop and gather it off the cold marble and string it and draw it back and loose every trembling grain of it, elegant as an arrow, straight at the thing standing at the threshold of her family's land.

"Did you come all this way for little old me?"

The words come out warm, sweet as the rot of the lilies against her temple. He's followed her home to Port Leiry, then. When he asks - and he will ask - she is going to lie to him. She is going to look him dead in those drowning eyes and tell him she does not have the artifact he's looking for. She'll say it with the dial purring under her ribs. So let him. He can tear every stone of this mausoleum down to read her grave himself; Caitlin is very bad at staying dead.

Blackened eyes, charred like coal, watch her in her tomb; her voice is the beating of wings bouncing between bricks. A predator toys with its prey, on occasion. Who eats who? They'd disagree if asked.

But he'll bite, just once. "I had begun to believe you could have been the apogee of sorcery." Not close, but the point stands, and his lips curves. "In Moldova. Almost impressive." Le Fay. La Befana. The Endorian Girl, who had tasted of ripened grapes, and currants in a frostbitten winter. Aradia. Corey. The list of formidable practioners across centuries is extensive. He'd toed with plenty, and known the blood of even more. It's how his fascination has never dulled; his thirst for more than wine, and instead for knowledge of potential beyond the immortal stillness. But Caitlin Siltshore; she's untested, to him. Still a thief who would lose her hands, in another world. She already appears to have had a tryst with a small guillotine to have knuckles bare of phalanges. She could not afford to lose more, without making sacrifices that burrow deeper into the skull, and burn away pieces of sanity. It happens plenty, to even capricious minds.

Zakar has barely begun. Hands stuffed in pockets, and waiting to be offered a drink for their conversation. Siltshore hospitality amongst a graveyard of the rotted dead? He's on her grounds; that makes him a guest, does it not? Without that, he's merely a man without invitation, which means he can shatter the walls of her temple-tomb, if he so wishes. He's never quite done. "You remind me of someone I once knew; Renata, she refused to rot in the earth, too." Not die. She had done that, several times. It never held her, like it held most. Caitlin exhibits a similiar brevity. "Eventually, in the cross between your world, and the peeling of the layers. The mind withers, in small rivers, at first." Madness takes root, in all of them. "You know this as well as I, that you are inconsequential in our game. What you possess, however," he surveys the crass little scene, reeking of sulphur and decay, "There is a line needle thin, that will spare you." Zakarias would leave her to her devices, just to see what time does to her. But he would erase every connection she ever built, or desires to bridge between herself and another until the end of her days; until all she knows is herself and her own drive; nobody would know of her potential, except him, and her. What is worse than being remembered only in death? To him, it's never feeding a beast like ego, or glory whilst still being alive to feast; the kind of secondary power he believes that Caitlin pursues with a sword drawn, and a bloodied athame. Isolate her, so all she knows is that, and nothing else. She has even laid herself in her own grave, willingly.

There a hundred means of nullifying power, but none as mythic as the piece of one she is now hiding. He'll let her weave all the lies she wants, because he has heard them all.

When it is clear they communicate better in blunted terms, Zakarias smiles and a finger flicks at the edge of the masoleum entrance; the stone cracks through the centre, and the walls shake. Less magic. More ancient than her. Not a challenge; he's merely testing the boundary. Tittering, "Rats. Plague. You. Blood wasted. Need we continue?" He could, because if he wanted her dead, he would have found a witch to poison every path she dared cast upon; he would have spiked every drink she ever dared to make with his blood, drowned her in the crossing of countries, and watched the light of her power vanish before he reduced her to dust. Zakar thinks threatening is a childish act, when it's so very evident that they would kill, before they would concede. "Delusion is a killer, Caitlin." His hand flips, palm up, fingers half curled as if she's going to hand over what he wants as easy as that. It's amusing, if nothing else. "I have a sister to greet, and your lifetime is lessening by the second. Call it a night already." A beat, because he's jabbing, back to back, with a faux courtesy; he'll bear his vulnerabilities, because Caitlin is not a match for things beyond her young mind. He imagines she is not the type to be percieved as weak. But she is mortal, with magic that'll surpass her. Then, hospitality, just so she knows what it looks like: "You're welcome to come home for dinner. I expect she'd be delighted by you; we can see if she still hangs trophies on her wall." Perhaps a language she favours, then. Ab uno disce omnes. He thinks, if they were not on their respective sides of a veil. "Audeamus."

It was not the first time someone had come calling this week. Viktoria was starting to think she had become quite the popular clan representative (or other some such ridiculousness) in her time faffing about with the snow dragging the entire city down.

Her little human bug was supposed to be here later - if travel (and her husband) permitted, of course - which meant the large home needed to be heated sufficiently. At least the rooms in which they'd frequent. The fireplaces are lit, the gas stoves are on. Central heating and air was a blessing, but she often opted for cozy and classic. And, well, it wasn't quite as reliable with the power flickering as it tended to do with the pile ups of snow drift around their home.

She opens the door with a smile. It quickly fades as shock takes over. It's not that she isn't glad to see her brother, it's that she wasn't expecting him. Or the pile of crumpled human in his arms. Her gaze dips down to the shock of brown hair, and the bleeding on her neck.

For a moment, she forgets herself and nearly goes to grab the woman - Sadie, is she okay? What did you do? - from him, but stops. Instead, her hand finds her pocket. Her fingers find her phone, and without looking, she taps a quick warning to the youngest sibling: He's home.

"Zakarias." She finally says, no breath for sighs or shock. But she does step forward and kiss his cheek in greeting. "..I was expecting - Well. Her." She looks down towards the bleeding woman.

Zakarias wondered if there had been a connection between his little cultist and the Merlot, given his sister's name from a blueing mouth. Clawed hands had battered his arms, before weakening, and succumbing to the inevitable. He'd stopped, because his sister had more of a hold on him, than the half-alive woman cared to know.

He'd caught her eyes, between them fluttering closed and her confusion. Told her to walk with him to the doors. To listen carefully to what he says, and behave for him. She does. Because she had little choice in the matter. Fickle mind, but appealing for the delight in her blood; if Viktoria had a thrall, she has maintained reasonable taste.

By the time they had reached the door, the Merlot had been unable to stand. So she had become a new bride in his grasp. Eyes closing, and chest heaving; head hanging over an elbow. Zakar addresses his sister, as if they must remember one another, across the centuries. There is a sense of completion, in her company.

"Viktoria." A smile against her cheek as he greets her all the same. The dismissive nod comes quick after, gesturing to the woman, "A pet of yours?"

If she were important, he imagines that a sister would have come running at the whispered plead of her name. She hadn't. So, he almost drops her like a sack of bricks at his sister's feet; no longer worth the minimal efforts to determine her value.

Zakarias' thumb grazes over the hair, by the girl's ear. He wonders if she might continue to entertain, if Viktoria keeps her around. Her mind malleable enough that he imagines, under compulsion, she would dance for hours, until exhaustion. He comments, with little interest in holding the girl steady much longer, "She tastes better than your last one." a beat, "You can finish her off, if that's what you were waiting for, sister."

But, if this guy asked her, which he didn't and probably wouldn't, she'd say Port Leiry was kind of dead always.

Well, she'd ask who says banal first, actually - what had his question been?

"You'll have to excuse me, I am -turnt- the fuck up, my friend." She says. Her eyes do search for Paige, because frankly this guy gives Olympic Medalist levels of stranger danger and, well, she's not that kind of turnt. She slurps at the spill dripping down her hand and glass. "I mean, you're here, aren't you? Like don't that say just as much about you as me?" Banal. Psh.

"I wouldn't know." He does, because he has a young sister who has carved up his heart a dozen times. Pained him, when she forces his hand, despite the belief she might grow out of the childish phase of her misdirection. He sees a similar trait, in the scattering of this girl, clumsy enough to gain his attention. If not for the theft, he may have spent more time, wondering what cocktail of science runs in her veins.

What she does not know, in her assessments of him, and inebriation; the longer he stands on the yacht, amidst the rowdy desires, the more likely he is to slice the throats of every living, and dead thing that dares to cut too close to him. A reddened ocean, suits the sinking ship. A deck of ghosts has a story that he's glad to tie his name too; a favour in making it quick for them, instead of letting it lie beneath the sea, flailing bodies, drowned.

"Not quite enough, it seems. You still know where you are." So he presumes. But he allows her in on a secret; a jest, if there ever is one. He sips the drink in his hand. "I find the less you recall, the more creative the story your mind concocts for sunrise." Who knows what she might percieve this conversation as tomorrow?

"You're observant." It's the second joke, as he moves the conversation to his priority; it's not her. But she can be his scapegoat, if there comes need for one. "Shall we find our friends?" Back to the reason he is there, at all. "Mine have the tendency to lose their heads, if left alone."

Darkened alleys and tunnels through the city were a breeding ground for those who were hiding from the light of day, and those who had a reason to go to ground and stay hidden. Thao had envisioned a lot of scenarios since she had died, but not one of them had included laying eyes on one of Skinner's old crew. Anger flashed through her, and before she could really think things through, she was following the beast into the underbelly of Port Leiry.

Catching up to him, she attacked from behind, pinning him up against the closest wall and shoving his face into the brick.

"Be honest, did you ever mention my name?" She spat, shoving him again as though the brick would give way to the thick skull in her grip. "Do you even remember me? Are you hiding because you got sick of the shame? I remember you."

A growl left her lips, her free hand digging into his back, nails slowly breaking skin that gave way to flesh that should have been long since dead.

"You told me to stay put, reminded me why I was there. It was a chance to prove who you were, who you could be for him." Thao lurched forward as his hand broke through muscle and bone, fingers finally clamped around the heart in the other's chest as blood pooled around her wrist, dripping to the floor.

"Did you lie on your back like a whore?" The fledgling snarled mockingly, spouting his own words back to him, words he had spoken when he couldn't believe someone like Thao was at the right hand of Skinner. He was given no chance to reply, his heart ripped from his chest, his body falling to the floor with a thump once she let go.

She turned, almost unbelieving of what she'd done, as the heart rolled from her grip to join the lifeless body, eyes locking with a stranger watching her.

"He deserved it."

Zakar taps a cigarette out of a box and props it between his lips, eyes flicking up and down the alleyway, during the scene. The smoke stays unlit, even as the box vanishes into a coat pocket once again. He does not have the script or the blueprints to follow along with her story.

But it is no matter, when a heart sits blackened in an angry palm.

It would have always ended this way; the opening monologue had been needless. A youthful dead girl, still on the backend of a war she's refused to let go of.

"Well, which one of you laid down first?"

Deserve has no purpose here. Zakarias thinks that is an inconsequential detail. Dust does not get to have regrets, or a changed fate. Ash is ash. Did her man expect to taste brickdust, since he conceded so blindly to this woman. If that is the case, what is deserved is not an immortal existence if he squanders it with quick, lazy gratification.

There's poetry to a pile of dist between them, and it provokes Zakar to finally light the straight in his mouth. Fire is the start and end of many things; symbolic, magical, in some regions. A habit that is smoke rings, and half-smiles. In this case, it's boredom.

"And who would you belong to, that lets you roam so carelessly?" He says, around the smoke. She's making messes like she is an animal; if that s the case, she could eat and choke on the ash of her fallen, so she knows to clean up her trail of breadcrumbs. Two fingers pull the cigarette from his mouth, "Let me guess," It isn't hard. "You like to think you belong to nothing." A free agent, which means she is protected by nothing, too.

His shoulder remains pressed against the streetlamp, and his eyes train on the killer of her own kind. He's found that Port Leiry is a cesspool of ferality, and draws the shadowed belly of the underworld to whatever ley lines, and power linger beneath the soil. He knows why he has returned, but all else does not share his reasoning. He knows that, the same as he knows the stillness of his heart, and the violence of his mind.

Blue hadn't expected to be partying on some stranger's yacht in the middle of this weird fucking winter apocalypse, but you know, life leads you strange places when you hang around with vampires and witches and werewolves with more money than sense. It'd been Madison's idea - she hadn't expected to be hanging out with Madison either. It's a little awkward, given she knows Madison Paige mostly through two angles- someone who knows Remi's (because of course) and the fact 90 percent of their interaction so far has been her buying papers or the occasional brownie from the smoke shop across the street from a place she'd used to work at.

She's not super concerned - the party isn't a snoozer - better than the flatline you'd in the Port Leiry club scene with all this fucking winter bullshit. Seems like a fair few creatures are here too, which comes in handy both when you need the extra oomph to get fucked up and also in case somebody needs to hold your hair because you overdid it on the whatever.

So she coasts through the crowded boat, trying to decide if its the sway of the boat of her rapidly pickling brain that's making it a little hard to see straight as she tries to find her way back to the redhead for more of that alone together energy where she can hug the wall while Madison tries to find a neck to bite or whatever. She trips on somebody though, nearly spilling her drink before she manages to keep it classy. "Heh, sorry," she says. "Nothin' like a yacht party at the end of the world huh?"'

Who even owns this bucket anyways?

It would be a shame if someone's else's power painted it ruby. But the ocean will steal that right, before anyone else gets the chance to make art, he imagines.

He's not on board the yacht for personal entertainment, it's business. It often is. His family like this town — so he hears, in letters and messages, and already in the three hours he has landed, he has found it quaint, and uncivilised. A package stolen, which had meant to be delivered to a home his sisters have staked claim to.

He doesn't believe that the owner of the yacht is responsible — but a hand of theirs, trying their luck with a man on new soil. Underfed thralls were reckless, Zakar would know. It's the same reason he has a tracker on his case, that has led him to a party. He'll believe it is a mistake too, if that's the story he's told. Merciful, isn't it? He'll spare the culprit, because it is worse to know that they lived, whilst all the things around them are killed. Maybe they thought they were smart enough to win.

He helps himself to a drink, to stop idling hands from getting ideas. He’d draw them out, if he had to. Slipping between drunks, and dancers, he begins searching for the crew, or the owner of the soon-to-be-sunken yacht. Theft used to cost a hand, he remembers. Sliced clean from the wrist. He'd settle for that compromise, too.

A shoe knocks against a brogue, and he lifts a glass to avoid spilling it on himself, whilst he turns to acknowledge a girl and her clumsiness. His suit pants are safe, as is the sweater below the camel coat. She's lucky he's already occupied his mind with something else.

End of the world, she says.

Hardly. But he'll humour her, for the effort to salvage his favour. "Quite the disappointing ending to your story, is it not?" If her sarcasm is real, then he wonders why she cares to indulge the banal act of being present at all. "A yacht in the night, with strangers for company." A quirk of his mouth, hidden behind the tip of his glass. Eyes as dark as the sky, and hair slicked back in the shadows and neon. Perhaps their versions were different; most often, they were worlds apart.

And he's assuming she's alone, because of how aimless her direction had been.