symphonyofmalice

[symphonyofmalice]

Did seeing one (1) gif of Lestat holding a violin suddenly revive my interest? Lol. Mayhaps.

[symphonyofmalice]

Sorry folks

Hi everyone

Sorry I haven't been on in a few weeks. There's a lot going on, including some deaths in the family. I am ok, but my activity on this blog will be slow at best.

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas settled into his seat. He had seen performances of this particular opera many times, but it wasn't like reading the same book again and again. Even in the eighteenth century, Mozart had made changes to the Vienna premiere of his work. And stagings across the centuries had played differently with which songs were cut or included. And that wasn't even taking into account differences between singers and musicians in their performance. "I'm curious which finale they will go with" he murmured to Daniel.

@symphonyofmalice

Daniel was wandering the city in search of a story. He had no destination in mind. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for, but knew he’d recognize it when he saw it. He needed a real unique story, something that would make his career and that no one else could write.

The sound of music drew him in. He found himself watching a performer busking on the corner. The young man was ridiculously pretty. The melancholy music seemed to flow from his very soul. The violin was an extension of himself. Daniel was in awe. He’d never seen anything like it.

A small crowd had gathered, a few of them dropping money for the talented performer. Daniel waited until the other people had dispersed, then he approached the musician. “You’re incredible,” he blurted out, immediately embarrassing himself. “I mean, I’m a journalist. My name’s Daniel Molloy and I’d love to interview you.”

[symphonyofmalice]

Belatedly, Nicolas noticed the uncomfortable blankness on Mina's face. It was the exact opposite of how he had felt about the troupe. As in the memory he showed her, bonding with them, dancing and kissing and touching with them, had been like waking up to life from a stupor. Mina just seemed overwhelmed.

And then Laurent offered her his blood, and he was surprised to see her recoil. It was like seeing someone turn away in disgust from his favorite home meal. Of course she didn't have to, but Nicolas couldn't help but feel she was turning away from something that could help her. Once she connected to the troupe, she'd be supported, like trees with shared root systems. "You aren't obligated" he reassured her softly. "But it could help. You'd have more power, since everyone is older than you. And you'd feel less alone".

“Rumor”

((Rumor mill)) @minaharkerdailymirror

"One of them screams at people in the streets sometimes. Grabs people, shakes them like a madman, ranting on about the vampires being real. Crying about it. You think they pay him for it? To drum up an audience?"

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas shook his head. "I'll tell you my answer in a moment, really. But I want to hear your answer first." He could guess why the new member was being reticent. The burnt-flesh scent still hung in the air above them. "Look. You know when to keep your mouth shut, which is good. It makes you smarter than me" he admitted bluntly. "But of all the vampires in this theater, I'm not one you need to lie to and mollify and mince around. I am asking you because I want to know. What do you think the theater is for?"

Nicolas sighed. "Look, I'm the playwright, if that helps to hear. Think of it as helping me know how to cast you."

"Why do you think we do this, Santiago?" Nicolas asked. "Why bother with the theater at all? As we have just discussed, it doesn't feed us. Why not hunt as we already do for our meals, and do anything else with the rest of our time?"

Nicolas knew his answer of course. He knew the purpose that had driven his soul the night he named the theater, the night he called the others to him. But he was curious what the new member would think of it- just a way to stave off the boredom of immortality, or would he perceive a greater purpose?

[symphonyofmalice]

"Yes. That they often find the wrong answers doesn't make it any less troublesome". He had made himself a nuisance to Lestat that way, as a mortal, refusing to believe any of the cover story. But Nicolas had concluded witchcraft and sorcery were at play, not vampirism.

"I was...one of the founding members" Nicolas admitted. In his mind, he was the true founder, the one that summoned the others with his music and gave the theater it's name and purpose. He was there before Armand. "But I stayed only for the first few years" he said, a true statement if a somewhat euphemistic one. There was no need to get into all that ugly history here and now.

cold, sender places their jacket over receiver's shoulders.

actions speak louder than words non - verbal / action prompts from yours truly. (add a "swap" to swap the sender/receiver in the prompt (or just do it manually):

Bianca was miles away just as suddenly as she was aware of the cold she then felt a jacket delicately placed on her shoulders. Looking up at her warmer. "Why thank you."

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas spoke softly to Mina as they walked, reassuring her. "Remember you are not bound by mortal limits. Use the tunnels when they suit you, or travel along rooftops. There there are no crowds to disturb or distract you, and few witnesses to see you.". It was how Magnus had come and gone, how Lestat and Gabrielle had disappeared from upper-floor windows.

Nicolas was only happy when the troupe surrounded them. He was conditioned to find comfort in their crowding hands and honeyed words. "She makes an excellent vampire" he told them proudly. "She hunted on her own with no help from me and left neither witnesses nor bodies to be found."

He encouraged Mina to be with the troupe. "Go on. Get to know your family. Have them teach you to read minds." He wanted Mina to obnd with the troupe. Then, even if she came to hate him, she'd still have someone to love and be loved by, someone to be at her side.

“Rumor”

((Rumor mill)) @minaharkerdailymirror

"One of them screams at people in the streets sometimes. Grabs people, shakes them like a madman, ranting on about the vampires being real. Crying about it. You think they pay him for it? To drum up an audience?"

[symphonyofmalice]

"Oh, that's a difficult question..." Nicolas said sitting back to think about it. It was a kind of calculus he had never considered. He drank one victim a night typically, maybe slightly less. And if he could get away with it, every one of his victims was drunk, if not on stronger drugs. But even when he found some barfly to drink from, his victims had had more than just one beer or one glass of wine. Did all those drinks add up for Nicolas? How did one account for the indirect dilution of the blood?

"Every night" he admitted. That seemed a simple enough answer, and an honest one. He could describe the effects on him without having to get tangled in concrete numbers. "I'm French, you must understand, a glass of wine with dinner would be barely a minimum for people where I am from. I drink just enough to take the edge off, most nights. I'm not so drunk I'm falling over sick or anything like that" he assured her. Then frowned and amended it with "Mostly".

Nicolas shook his head. "No. I can't".

He had to keep a tight lid on his thoughts right now. It took up a lot of his focus and effort. He knew that his telepathic abilities had a way of getting away from him, especially when talking about moments like this. The last thing he needed now was to accidentally project an image from the eighteenth century into the thoughts of his therapist.

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to tell you much." That was true. Those nights in the catacombs were a piecemeal thing, fragments of sensory impressions and nightmares, strung together by the skeleton of what others had told him happened. "I don't really remember it. I was very drunk to begin with, and whatever they did..." he trailed off. "I don't know. It's just gone."

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas wondered how many decades it might take to get used to being able to kiss his lover in public. Part of him hoped he never did- that it would always feel thrilling.

He had already purchased tickets, so their entry into the opera house itself was simple. Before the show proper, crowds milled about, friends chatting. The opera itself was DIon Giovanni- it was a classic, it was Mozart, it had a touch of supernatural horror- it would perfect.

@symphonyofmalice

Daniel was wandering the city in search of a story. He had no destination in mind. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for, but knew he’d recognize it when he saw it. He needed a real unique story, something that would make his career and that no one else could write.

The sound of music drew him in. He found himself watching a performer busking on the corner. The young man was ridiculously pretty. The melancholy music seemed to flow from his very soul. The violin was an extension of himself. Daniel was in awe. He’d never seen anything like it.

A small crowd had gathered, a few of them dropping money for the talented performer. Daniel waited until the other people had dispersed, then he approached the musician. “You’re incredible,” he blurted out, immediately embarrassing himself. “I mean, I’m a journalist. My name’s Daniel Molloy and I’d love to interview you.”

[symphonyofmalice]

I believe I've answered all my drafts! I've tried to double-check, but I was a week behind, so things may have slipped through. If I haven't replied to a thread, it's because I missed it, not because I dropped it. Please, please let me know.

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas felt a flood of warmth in his heart as she insisted she wouldn't hate him. It was wonderfully kind of her to say. He didn't believe it- everyone hated him. He even hated himself. He knew he was incredibly easy to hate. But her stubbornness was too wonderful to see. And who knew? If anyone could break centuries of vampire common sense, it would be her. She was like the better parts of Lestat that way, an iconoclast.

He clasped her hand when she took his, squeezing gently once. "I'll stay with you, Mina" he promised. As long as she would have him, whether that was a week or a century.

He walked with her back to the theater. It was probably easier for her, at least a little, to endure the crowds now that she had fed. But the thirst of a fledgling was a beastly thing, and he didn't torment her any longer than necessary. They took a swift, direct path toward the theater and its quiet, sepulchral underground.

“Rumor”

((Rumor mill)) @minaharkerdailymirror

"One of them screams at people in the streets sometimes. Grabs people, shakes them like a madman, ranting on about the vampires being real. Crying about it. You think they pay him for it? To drum up an audience?"

[symphonyofmalice]

"Shall we, then?" Nicolas asked. He held out his arm as if to formally escort Daniel. There was no need but pleasure for them to walk down the street arm in arm. They got a few looks- Nicolas knew they looked fancy and he had not succumbed to the modern rule than men's could only be grayscale and dull, outfitting them both in the more striking colors that had been fashionable in his own time.

@symphonyofmalice

Daniel was wandering the city in search of a story. He had no destination in mind. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for, but knew he’d recognize it when he saw it. He needed a real unique story, something that would make his career and that no one else could write.

The sound of music drew him in. He found himself watching a performer busking on the corner. The young man was ridiculously pretty. The melancholy music seemed to flow from his very soul. The violin was an extension of himself. Daniel was in awe. He’d never seen anything like it.

A small crowd had gathered, a few of them dropping money for the talented performer. Daniel waited until the other people had dispersed, then he approached the musician. “You’re incredible,” he blurted out, immediately embarrassing himself. “I mean, I’m a journalist. My name’s Daniel Molloy and I’d love to interview you.”

[symphonyofmalice]

Paris, France is so many things to him. It is the site of his greatest joys and his most terrifying nightmares. But Audrey's voice doesn't belong in the dank graveyard and it's catacombs. It keeps him anchored in the present, with the night air and the flagstones and the body that was supposed to keep him from ever getting hurt again.

"Armand protects me. He keeps me safe". He says it uncertainly, not as if it it something he believes, but as if it is something he's been told. Apparently that was the tack the troupe vampires attempted, as they tried to convince and cajole him back home to the theater.

His mind is a battleground between two times. The past keeps trying to drag him into it's pit, pull him into memories, it throws the sights and sounds of the catacombs before his senses. But her voice is an anchor in the present. The words themselves only partially matter. But as long as he is talking to her, some part of him can cling by the fingertips to the present night air, and open sky, and the cobblestones under his feet.

As she talks of death and survival, he feels his own body around him, the weight and solidity of it. Seeing his own hands makes his heart race- the memories trying to snatch at him are terrified of stony marble skin, and don't seem to care that it's his own- but he tries to focus on the feeling of his own pulse through his veins.

"Where am I?" he asks, and it's more than a question of literal place. It's almost like he expects her to be some thread he can follow out of the darkness of the past.

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas shrugged. "I have been judged, found lacking, and executed by the court of vampire opinion already. It didn't stick". He could blame Lestat for his abandonment, or Armand for his torment. But deep down Nicolas knew he had made himself a terror, an infliction to his own kind. Armand claimed he had gone into the fire willingly, and Nicolas wasn't certain enough to contradict him. It was the nights that seemed they should be clearest- his transformation into vampirism, his near death- that were most fogged and loose in his mind. It had been a dark time. It was entirely possible he had pursued a mad impulse.

But they weren't here to talk about him. "It doesn't aggravate you?" Nicolas asked, when Louis brought up Lestat's music. "When I made the theater, he had the gall to call it 'petty'. And now he's doing all that and more, cavorting about to an audience on stage and screen. He wouldn't tell you his secrets when you begged, but he'll shout them to a thousand strangers." It was his performance at Renaud's all those years ago, all over again.

Nicolas didn't want to push Louis if he didn't wish to speak of her. He knew exactly how painful it cold be to awaken old wounds and summon old ghosts. And on a vampire's timescale, even a decades-old injury was raw and fresh. But Louis opened up, and Nicolas listened. He tried to imagine Claudia in his mind- Louis captured her spirit well, in his poetic turns of phrase. Complexity, rage, perception, obsession. Oh yes. He would have liked her greatly. They would have burned the world together.

“I can’t stop remembering it. I can’t stop dreaming about it. I can’t even stop thinking about it.” @symphonyofmalice

Louis knew well enough, better perhaps than most, exactly what that felt like. It was as though one was being hunted, no longer predator but prey to a greater evil than the one they wrought upon the world as blood drinkers. Claudia's death haunted him, the spectre of her ghost stalking every shadow cast by his body and step. He fancied he could hear the click of her heeled shoes against the cobblestones, could smell the delicate floral perfume that she placed on her wrists and in her hair. He could almost feel that gentle press of her mind against his own, her stretching her mental abilities in a way that Louis had not taken to with quite the same enthusiasm as she had. When he paused and glanced over his shoulder, he fancied that he could see a flicker of her yellow skirts around the corner of a building.

"Such a pain is not solely yours to bear monsieur for I feel it also and it is incessant."

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas felt Lestat pause and pull him up. Ah, so he had enough of his senses left for that, tonight. Nicolas followed the motion, flowing up Lestat's body like a fish following it's native river. He let his hands trail up Lestat's hips, sides, chest. Pressed against one another, he could have sworn he could feel Lestat's heart beating against his own.

He let out a moan as Lestat kissed his neck, and wondered if Lestat could feel the motion of the sound against his lips. "Yes" he replied without hesitation. His own voice was a little breathless. He was sure Lestat could feel just how excited he was, with how entangled their bodies were.

"I've been ready for you forever". It really felt like that. Which, logically, was absurd. They had scarcely been real friends as small children, and this shouldn't have felt that different from his dalliances in Paris, even if it could be repeated. And yet it felt like he had been waiting for this moment for all his life. "I am yours for the taking, my Lord" he promised, letting Lestat decide how he wanted him.

Continued from here with @symphonyofmalice

Lestat could agree with that sentiment easily and quickly. There was a great amount of things that he wished he could forget and would want to forget. He wished to leave the Marquis’ son behind him as an identity and simply be Lestat, a devotee to the beauty and power of performance and the stage. That was what he longed for and with Nicki as his companion, that dream was going to become a reality. 

“I will go when you are ready to go Nicki.” Lestat assured his friend, reaching out across the table to cover Nicholas’ hand with his own. “You are right as always my friend. There is nothing left here for us, if ever there was anything to begin with.” 

[symphonyofmalice]

Nicolas shook his head. It would be sensible to feed beforehand, so he could look more human, and have more blood to loose. (Because the red stains on his body and clothes were, of course, part of the art). But the game he played tonight was one of punishment, enhanced by the slight edge of hunger. "Feeding tomorrow will be all the sweeter for tonight".

Send me a (ง'̀-‘́)ง to find my muse in a bar fight.

Nicolas looked like a wreck. He had taken several solid hits to the face, leaving it a bloody mess. With his vampiric strength, he could have crushed the three thugs- each perhaps twice his bulk- easily. It certainly looked like he was fighting back, and throwing punches. He'd leave them with bruises. But to another vampire it would be obvious how much he was holding back, to keep from throwing them through walls or breaking their spines. His clothes- rumpled from the fight and stained with blood- hid the fact he was healing seconds after they hit him. He'd fall or crumple on occasion- at one point he ended up curled on the ground as all three of them kicked him, delivering blows that would have shattered a person's ribs. But he kept getting up. And he was laughing all the while. A mad laugh, a mocking laugh. That probably only pissed off the goons more, baiting their anger when they otherwise may have given up.

[symphonyofmalice]

"Then why are we bothering going to the opera?" Nicolas joked with a laugh. "We could sit at home and look at each other all day". He pulled Daniel in for a soft, slow kiss on the lips. "Though I suppose it's a good opportunity for me to show you off. We'll make every eye in the place madly jealous of the two of us."

@symphonyofmalice

Daniel was wandering the city in search of a story. He had no destination in mind. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for, but knew he’d recognize it when he saw it. He needed a real unique story, something that would make his career and that no one else could write.

The sound of music drew him in. He found himself watching a performer busking on the corner. The young man was ridiculously pretty. The melancholy music seemed to flow from his very soul. The violin was an extension of himself. Daniel was in awe. He’d never seen anything like it.

A small crowd had gathered, a few of them dropping money for the talented performer. Daniel waited until the other people had dispersed, then he approached the musician. “You’re incredible,” he blurted out, immediately embarrassing himself. “I mean, I’m a journalist. My name’s Daniel Molloy and I’d love to interview you.”