caskalomidze

[caskalomidze]

It feels like she's babysitting, at first. Once more, no date, no lover on her arm, and she refuses to cart that idiot Boy around at an event so important as this, to say nothing of actually going to fetch him. Augh! Saddled with Lana's sireling. The humility. Oh well, she reasons as she fixes the tiara into her dark hair. "No matter," she mutters; What's one more night of playing nice?

SHALAÇASKA LOMIDZE arrives, alongside @flashfanged, representing the LOMIDZE CLAN among her family. It is her first major event since being roused, seemingly prematurely, from a sixty year slumber. If there was ever a better opportunity to truly fetch the lay of the land and how its come to be shaped in her absence, it's this and she intends to make every bit of use of the evening as she can, even if she's begrudgingly offered to play handhold with Madison.

[caskalomidze]

Trap set, and impeccably, so, if the way her breasts sit in this dress are anything to go by, she smiles as the woman behind her draws the pull up the zip of the dress. She wonders, idly, if she'll have occasion to wear it anytime soon. Her eyes draw themselves over her body in the mirror and she realizes, also idly, that she's glad that particular human folk-tale is untrue; woe to any mirror that couldn't be graced with her image.

"The end-goal for any pretty dress," Çaska says as she spins, very close with Nataliya, whose eyes are also so very pretty. "Do you think it matches my eyes? Or complements them?" Authority weaves itself into her gave as she steps forward, butting her bust up against Nataliya's; 'Isn't this nice? A soft moment, for two new friends— stay still, and quiet, and calm— and we are friends, aren't we? Might you quietly bend your neck this way?' It's accompanied by a gentle stroke of her cheek to direct her, fangs extending behind barely parted lips. 'No screams, no fighting, this will be so gentle, and then will pass out of mind, like a dream.'

'Doesn't every pretty girl deserve a pretty dress?' Nat let out a chuckle and scrunched her nose at sentence that she was sure she'd heard from Gemma almost word-for-word. "If you say so, yeah," Nataliya herself had a much more pragmatical approach to fashion and very rarely dressed up, so she couldn't exactly relate but she wasn't going to question the other girl, who was clearly having a good time.

Çaska confidence was impressive to say the least. Nataliya averted her eyes on instinct, but even so she could tell there was something peculiar about the girl — though it was possible she only felt that because she still couldn't quite place why she felt so familiar. "That's a really nice sentiment," one that didn't quite apply to Nataliya for the foreseeable future, but she tried not to think about that for too long.

Nat joined Çaska inside her booth and did as she was asked, taking the liberty to also fix her dress here and there so it fit just right. "There you go," she said, looking at the other through the mirror. "One thing is for sure, whenever the special someone does show up, they won't be able to take their eyes off you," she complimented her with a smile.

[caskalomidze]

Humans are so...

Çaska thinks back, far, far away, to a different world entirely, where the dark of night was not so easily chased off with electric light, something this entire building is something of a monument to. When the mysteries of the world, real and false, were terrifying for the simple fact that you had aught else to go off of but what your two eyes could see at any given moment. A stray shadow in the night became as a monster. A sword, fallen from hand to rust in a field was a sign from a mercurial God. A love taken too soon was the world moving in its own mysterious way.

Immortality is the end of doubt in many things. Magic skews that, somewhat, but not overmuch;

It is just a shadow in the night. It is simply a sword in a field. it is simply that death comes for everyone, even the undead.

Morgan mists over and Çaska's head tilts to one side; the air tinging with lacrimal salt. She shakes her head, stepping away from the silly game cabinet. "Tell them you saw a very large spider,"

She eyes Morgan's hand, too, sees the pulse of blood in it, an instinct she has been cursed with an inability to ignore for two-thousand years, that those who are young or wounded in ways she'll never know might never be able to ignore, or quiet fully. Two thousand years, or near enough, is practice enough for any, and longer than most will ever get.

They sit here, the predator and the prey, in a city full of both, and Çaska wonders what a truce really means, because she's had truces before, with people she trusts far more than this woman with a temple of light and sound. Truces are for enemies in wartime to come out and collect their dead without fear of arrow or blade. They're feeble things and not meant to last. Noncommittal, almost.

So she takes Morgan's hand, feels the rush of life that moves from the core of the woman and into her fingertips and back again. "Truce." There's a smile to follow, there, wide. And then there's a rush of movement no longer than an eyeblink and she's gone in a singular misty step, the Arcade's door swinging shut.

She's struck by the harshness of Caska's words and the soft sentiment couched within. Is it stupid? Maybe to a vampire with more of a perspective on the world than Morgan (she really can't tell how old this girl is, but maybe it doesn't matter). She's never been the smartest in any rom by traditional standards, but when all she has to work on is her lived experience, is it so unfair of her to feel disillusioned and jaded by the behavior of all the vampires she's ever encountered, save one or two?

Caska seems to think so, at least. And it's not the name-calling, but the way she almost, almost revere's Morgan's limited perspective on her own life that makes the human woman tear up anew.

"I--" She thinks for a moment of mentioning that she did see Bradley, as a ghost on New Year's Eve, but it seems like a moot point. "...you're right. You... thank you." Morgan sniffs, wiping her eyes.

"I'm just hoping I get to put the pieces together, instead of someone having to piece me back together."

She shudders thinking of Reid's threat to leave bits of her in the machinery. Aria pressing the fork to her vein. Kiri promising that even Laure wouldn't be able to save her if she crossed them in any way. At least Morgan made it 45 years without much incident... maybe she'll get another 45 after this terrible, terrible year. She's getting grey hairs already, but she'll be lucky if she gets halfway silver before she bites it (or someone bites her, the big one). Silver was only for werewolves, right?

"God... god damn it," she laughs, a bubble of spit catching in her throat. It's a weepy sort of chuckle, as the game cabinet asks for more change. Morgan wipes her eyes again and looks at Caska, sighing and shaking her head. "C'mon, it can't be fun when it's that easy."

Continue?

"Look... it's late. And I'm tired, and... I've gotta figure out how to explain why one of my cabinets has a bullet hole in it before we open tomorrow," Morgan sighs. "But... come back some time, don't open with attempted compulsion, and we'll play something for real. Okay? I, uh... really am sorry about shooting you. It's not who I am, not who I want to be. I've just been... so scared. Truce?"

She offers her weakened, trembling hand as a peace offering to the girl.

[caskalomidze]

"I'll pass." Çaska says; even with the presence of blood, she's been so long without human food that it simply doesn't hold much sway for her anymore, and should she truly crave something other than that, a witch would do, and she's recently befriended one, so to speak. "But I appreciate it."

This girl, a fellow vampire, is certainly an odd duck, but there's a sort of intrigue in her apparent mania that keep the Lomidze's attention. "I suppose I am," she smiles, and her eyes travel to the corners of their respective sockets as she ponders just what the number might be, then leans forward, hands splayed on the table, tone hushed, and her finger traces the math through the air.

"I don't know the year, Pharasmanes was King in Iberia, if that helps. I suppose I've met many a privateer in my time but as to whether they'd accept the title of a pirate's quite another thing entirely."

Her hands lift, knuckles cradling her chin as she returns the question. "And you, little bird, when were you made more?"

"No I know that, I mean like real pirates. Like Blackbeard, or Davy Jones, or Jack Sparrow, you know? Someone who goes and commits one crime at sea and quits the pirate life isn't going to have enough salt in their system to taste any different, silly." Christy chuckled, taking a sip from her drink as she looked over at the other.

"Hm, is that something you often do? Mind clicks in during a conversation you don't recall? If so then... Yes, yes we certainly were." She grinned, pushing the milkshake forward, "Want some? It's quite tasty for a non-blood product." The young vampire takes a moment to look over the other, wondering how old she truly was. It was rare, she thought, to find a vampire that was at least somewhat in her age range. How long has she been forever in her twenties?

"How old are you? Old enough to have met actual pirates? Again, the real shit not the pussy type of pirates." She takes the shake back so she can have another sip.

[caskalomidze]

"Funny for you to be so concerned with niceties and etiquette, dear sister, given you're about to turn two people out of your house in the middle of a storm; but then what do I know, I've just woken up from a sixty year nap... maybe the etiquette is different in the twenty first century." She strokes at the tip of her chin with a finger, eyes looping in their sockets as if in considerably deep thought before they land once more on Svetlanad. "...though I can't remember who showed me to bed I'm sure they were quite similarly hospitable."

She gently pulls herself away from Viktoria's light grasp and gives a joyful little shrug, turning back to Kore. "Once again, a pleasure to meet to object of my sister's affections. I'd love to stay and chat but, well, on the topic of manners I do have two friends waiting on me; I should go and entertain them lest they grow bored and seek it instead from the storm outside."

She mimics the motions of a curtsy to Kore, before offering a nod to Lana and to Viktoria in turn, and then she skips off down the hall to catch up to her friend and her friend's pet pirate.

—exit Çaska

Their head turns as another voice joins them, and with all three sisters standing before them, the resemblance is clear. Their lips twitch slightly, getting this forbidden glimpse of Lana's life. It's a bit like getting to peek behind the curtain of mystique that surrounds the vampire. The very idea of 'sisters' brings her back down to the world where Kore can reach her. Like she's less untouchable.

It becomes only more apparent when they begin to bicker, like any other sisters that Kore has known. They don't mind waiting, watching the exchange with rapt attention like she could glean all manner of information from these handful of moments alone. They had known Lana was the eldest, but there is something different about watching her in this particular element. What sort of little sister didn't inspire a volatile reaction? Had anyone else dared to speak to the vampire as Çaska was doing now, Lana would have removed their head and/or their heart without a second though. Kore has seen it happen.

They find the briefest lull in the conversation and slide in with precision. "Thank you for inviting me into your home, as well as a few other guests. I'm sure they're all as appreciative as I am." They don't touch Lana again, acutely aware of the way both sisters' eyes linger on her curiously. "I've actually... not heard that much about you."

@viktorialomidze

[caskalomidze]

Looking on not-at-all enviously at Garrick and Frankie's hijinks, wondering when it was, the last time she, Svetlana, and Viktoria did something so frivolous and funny together. She can't pry anything like it out of recent memory. In that instant, as she searches about the room, she feels her heart sink below the surface of her soul a bit.

"Mm, no. I've known Lana for two thousand years, she's far too paranoid for a diary." She cants her head around the darkened dim of Viktoria's precious library before she settles into a more comfortable position under the blanket, storm raging uselessly against the fortified manorhouse. "Most you'll find is dry dusty chronicles that mention her in vague allusions and her own boring observations on the political movings of a given era. Trust me, I've looked." She shrugs, disappointed, though her mind wonders at what confessions she might find in such a book. Nothing that'd make her smile, she reasons.

She sighs then. "A truth then, tit for tat."

Rules out the door, she leaves it to either of them to ask it.

— @garrickc @frnoialles

What a silly little trick from such a vengeful pirate. A loud, scandalized gasp ripped out of her as she imagined all the different ways her beautiful, sexy body could’ve snapped like a sad little toothpick if she’d had the misfortune of human bones. Had that been the case, Frankie would be laying on that gorgeous floor, limbs sprawling, the chair thuddling somewhere behind her. But instead came the fit of giggles, the kind that shook her ribs and made her kick out blindly, where her bare heel had landed squarely into Garrick's shin with the boney, sharp part she liked to weaponize.

They acted like siblings, mostly. Siblings who'd lost touch for too long and only recently found each other again. It would make for a beautiful story, she thought —if Sash ever heard it, she'd definitelly cry. Frankie was sure of it. For a moment, she considered being dramatic. Telling Garrick off with all the flair in her arsenal, maybe push him out the door and dare the storm to strike him where he stood, right next to a very conductive tree, for ghosting her since forever.

But she couldn’t.

Not when she was here, on the polished floor of the Lomidze manor, surrounded by high ceilings and designer chairs, her closest people nearby. Sharing eternity together.

Dare.

Frankie was buzzing with excitement, her black eyes sparkling with mischief, as she twirled a perfectly curled lock of hair around her finger. "Oh, my brave, little princess. Okay, okay— let me think." That required a finger to her mouth. Thinking under pressure was hard for Frankie, especially with all the thunderclaps and the tree that just slammed into the window. She paused to glare at it, "Rude." That storm was so rude.

But then bam — mid-lightning round, inspiration struck. Her whole face lit up like a match.

"I dare you…" a slow, delicious sound, "...to find your sister’s secret diary and read a page out loud."

She dropped her chin into her palms, ankles kicking lazily behind her. A smug, radiant queen of the drama. Because, obviously, what ancient vampire didn’t have a diary? It was practically law in the 18th century. You weren’t anyone if you didn’t have dramatic entries about love, death, and being bisexual.

[caskalomidze]

She doesn't know much about the situation, just that it was driven by some blend of her sister's petty vengeful nature. What was done or was perceived to have be done to invoke Svetlana's furies was largely beside the point, as was any sort of 'choice' that might've been offered to this woman. But she has learned a little of the results. Would Kiri have, absent captivity making hearts wander, chosen the same? Were she not plucked out of her darling's arms and presented as a tombstone's permission for Laure's eye to wander, would she still chosen to forsake mortality and become cursed to consume human life? She doesn't ask this question, it merely passes her thoughts, because she's asked herself the same countless times— absent Lana's meddling, would she still be walking the world centuries upon centuries after her birth? Çaska's never been certain one way nor the other.

The question settles between them, and Shalaçaska shrugs with a sort of dismissive expression. "Somebody ought to express remorse, no?" Is all she has to offer in answer.

Then, on further consideration; "Often we who lives for centuries forget that the lives we upend with our horseplay are just that— lives. I've no real care to feel guilt over it, but compassion is another thing, don't you think?"

Çaska folds her arms before her, elbow in hand, crooked finger to the bottom of her lip, like she's deep in thought. "You're an interesting sireling," she says, "Lana's teeth find interesting targets lately." She'd come here with the intention to find a out more about this Laure woman, but finds herself instead intrigued by Kiri now, evidenced by how she closes space between them. "You've a knife for a tongue, with questions so cutting."

The boy disappears out the door of the greenhouse, and leaves Kiri's thoughts not a second later. The side of her mouth quirks ever so slightly at the vampire's reply. Some truth in her words. She had never had a sister, but she had a brother at one point. She last spoke with him before she left Aotearoa and she lost him before they ever reconnected. But she does fondly remember threatening his life, as siblings were wont to do.

"I suppose you make a salient point," Kiri tilts her head. The apology is surprising, but unnecessary. She refuses to see herself as some sort of victim or pawn in the schemes of other women. "But don't worry, little dove, I chose this of my own free will. Your sister has taken a great many things from me, but she did not take that choice away." Kiri smiles briefly. Was it exactly how she imagined? Surely not, but adaptation has always been crucial to survival.

"Do you often make a habit of apologizing for your sister's indiscretions?"

[caskalomidze]

Every guiding glide of Francoise's finger is stippled lightning across not just her cool skin but through her. Intimate, exploratory, like some sort of sounding bird sent to find land from a ship adrift at sea; because right now she's an ocean in tempest, all roiling whitecaps and shaking waves and unsteady legs on rocking decks.

"Take them off then," she moans again. "I don't mind."

She doesn't care about privacy right now. She doesn't even so much care about dignity. There isn't a dignified or honorable of virtuous thought in her right now, just a cloying desperate need to be naked and spent. Thoughts pass to what a soft bed would feel like in this horrendously touch-delicate state, where soft sheets gliding on bare skin and the oscillating press of lips and fingers in deep places might drive her genuinely mad in a way that not even Lana's gravest punishments could. "You're teasing me, you terrible little wretched woman," she says, her smile a begging, pleading thing. "Baise-moi, je t'en supplie, I need it, or I'll go insane."

She swallows the corner of Frankie's jaw in her lip, and then nips at the bottom of her mouth for good measure. Confused, even her eyes are darkened with surging blood, even her fangs have grown out in their ribald confusion as they straddled the edge of the coin where faces of two different hungers sit opposed. "Here, somewhere else, I don't care, I need it before I make merry with murder and leave a bloody sopping mess of your clientele."

A hand snaked around Çaska’s neck, drawing her in, pulling her closer and closer, while another claimed her jaw. Thumb brushed slowly over the soft pillow of her lower lip, as if to shut her up. It was usually Frankie whose mouth never stayed shut, but Çaska had never seen this side of her. Not the part that liked to take, and press, and claim. Yeah, she’d seen Frankie leave a girl wrung out and hollow, discarded like a rag doll after a bloody good time, but this was slower. This was intimate in a way that should’ve been forbidden, because it crossed a line that neither of them had dared touch for century or two.

Maybe the years have blurred it. Maybe it didn't exist anymore at all.

Lips parted just to let a whisper ease, "Tu es dramatique," It was cute, the way Çaska had moaned the French earlier. It tickled Frankie's ears with the softest touch.

Her hand, obedient and gentle, slid easily under Çaska’s guidance, fingers skimming along the shimmer of her dress like she was mapping out her body, getting familiar with all the places she liked to be touched. The soft sounds spilling from Çaska’s mouth were like music to her ears. Trapped between heat and gold, her hands were greedy things, dancing up until they reached the strap of that glittering dress. She played with it for a moment — teasing, twisting, holding back the urge to shred it right off with her teeth. "You don’t really need those, do you?" she breathed, "They’re just in my way."

[caskalomidze]

Oh no, Çaska thinks, realizing that now she has to talk about books. She's not read a novel since the sixties. Who is popular? What is popular? The woman's smile is austere, like the platinum cascade of her hair. "Oh..." she says, like she hadn't expected to actually talk about this, and she finds her elbow resting in the palm of her other hand as she considers what kind of answer to throw out to preserve the illusion that this isn't all just a ruse to cover up a mental stop-start brought on by the annoyance of dealing with Boy being broken by the sudden beauty of a singular face.

"Romance, drama, stories about... love." She smiles.

She thinks back to hr Salon days and the intellectual pedantry of the discussions found therein. "Or a good biography," she throws out, for the sake of variety, but she becomes, then, increasingly aware that she isn't speaking to somebody she ought to pretend around; in a building full of gentle quiet, heartbeats abound, but not here, not in her chest nor the woman's across the book cart from her. "Or poetry. Or..."

She keeps throwing them out there, babbling now, because she's quite taken; not to a blushing degree - twice a thousand in age, she likes to think she's more control than that. "I don't know! Something!"

Many would think, working at a library, you don't get to see more beyond the stories captured in pages and the comforting sight of well known covers. But Mila has seen a lot more than that, she's seen people break-down over papers and projects, people desperately searching for specific tomes to help them. She's seen people hiding away in halls and giggling to the stories they're reading in the safe space they've found for themselves.

She imagine break-ups weren't so far down on the list either. Even if they didn't happen inside the library. It wouldn't had surprised her if it did, though she's glad that it didn't. She hadn't mean to see it, but her senses had caught the confusion, the plead... and the mistaken name. And the amused smile that had reach her lips had been just as involuntary.

She goes back to her job just as fast as she caught the voices. Storing the books in their rightful place. A task often taken cafe of by Viktoria that she didn't mind doing, and stops just as she catches it again, the same voice. Soft and lovely and she can understand maybe why Jason... or Jacob had such a hard time understanding they were breaking-up.

Leaving the book in its place, she turns to the girl, a raised eyebrow and amusement and the start of a smile tugging on her lips. "A good book?." She asks, entertained already. "Well at least you ended up in the right place." She tilts her head, the girl is beautiful, and slightly familiar in places she can't put her finger on just yet. "What kind of books do you like to read? Or a favorite genre?."

[caskalomidze]

Çaska nods along, and nods along. She is listening, even if it seems flippant or detached. Eventually, she pulls her little phone out and shows her a picture. A quaint moment between two people - romantic and joyful in context. She goes back to the game while Morgan talks, and her face is a journey as Moss speaks - the notion that this stranger whom she will never meet doesn't matter to her - while not necessarily untrue in the strictest sense - strikes her, and there's a faint and almost imperceptible shake of her head at the notion. So full of assumptions. So quick to assume monstrous uncaring. That vampires are monolithically incapable of sentimentality or empathy. It is, she supposes, a fair assumption for something so short lived to make.

"I did," she finally answers, turning to Morgan. "And that's stupid." She shakes her head. Her turn to wax poetic. "It is supremely stupid, in my opinion, to say that that fighting to save your own life or avenge your Bradly's wasn't worth it. My vile little cousin or Svetlana's family creed aside, you've an eye's blink on this world, you idiot. Everything you do matters, whether to you or somebody you care about or somebody you cared about, it all matters, maybe more than anything somebody like me will ever do. I'll live a hundred more lives after this, and you won't. Don't you see? Silly. Very silly not to."

She scoffs another laugh out and turns back to the game, flying her little bird-knight around. "The mortal mind isn't meant for eternity. It changes - its thoughts, desires, all of it. Your Bradley is gone. Dead, forever, as like as not. You'll never see him again, not short of some magic or fanciful dream . But that is what makes that unremarkable man special - just how remarkable he is - was - to you. You'll never feel your heart grow cold for him. Never worry if it's you that isn't quite so in love or him. Never worry if its your looks or his mind, or worry that you might need to break his heart because yours has decided it wants something or somebody else. He's a piece of your brief story now."

She turns back to Morgan. "Just a piece though. Important, even essential, but so are other things." She motions around them. "You've so many more pieces to put together." Çaska bounces her brows and tips her head sideways to the screen, where it begs for another coin. "Also I've killed your bird again."

Morgan almost laughs at Caska's assessment of her, but the memories of that night keep her from finding much joy in the shadow it's cast over her. The word 'insignificant' isn't meant in a cruel way, but it's true. It's the same as she's been hearing all her life -- unremarkable, normal, middle-of-the-road. Now, lucky, she's not so sure about.

Still, she keeps playing the game, turning her head occasionally to speak with the vampire.

"That's not me. Never has been me," she says. "I don't want to hurt people... I... I only did what I had to to survive that night, a-and if I'm being honest, I'm not sure if it was worth it."

It has to be, right? Now that he's gone, now that this girl's older sister has been bartered off by Laure, she can continue to heal, right? Her hand was one thing, and the reopening of Retrocity has been another... but there's something that still feels raw and bleeding and worrisome. Maybe it's the idea that vampires heard about what she did to survive. The thought that she might have to do it again if she feels threatened or they feel threatened and... she doesn't have it in her again. But she knows she has Laure and Autumn and even to an extent Aria, who might be willing to fight for her -- unfortunately, she's afraid it will be a fight in memory more than in saving, someday. Some terrible day.

"Um... thank you. I really miss him," she says simply, struck by Caska's words. They feel genuine, even if Morgan isn't sure vampires feel the same type of loss as humans do. Or at least, they process it differently, with different time. Morgan's loss was her cousin's dinner. It's just not the same. The arcade owner pulls out her phone, though, and shares her lock screen image -- a photograph taken of herself and Bradley at a nice restaurant for his last birthday. There's a half-eaten slice of cheesecake between them, a single red raspberry still perched on top. Even if Caska will never meet him, she wants the girl to know he was real.

"His name w-is Brad. I know it probably doesn't... matter to you. I know you vampires watch hundreds of people come and go and kill just as many without ever knowing who they are or what their lives were like. But... I can't really explain this arcade and everything in it without you knowing that I see him in every inch of this place. This is what we built together for ourselves -- a second home, a second family," she explains. "A-and maybe that's why I don't mind taking the late nights. Maybe I'm not in a rush to get home, to my actual home, because... because it's a little more empty these days..."

She tucks her phone back in her pocket, looking back at the game cabinet, wiping her eye with the back of one hand. Morgan pauses, sniffs, and then asks simply, "Did you just joust my little guy while I was talking?"

[caskalomidze]

good girl / frankie

"Oo la la, mon cher bel ami" Çaska says, head popping above the sheets; curling up into the pillows on the plush bed dressings in some hotel room which, all truths told, she has no recollection of arriving at after the preceding evening of tawdry lust and poisonous masks. "Tell me again how good I am, Fran. And how clever a girl and how gracious and how giving!" The last words punctuates itself with a peppering of kisses; friendly adoring kisses for a friend and a comfort. Too bad then, for the sleeping beauty lying palid and peaceful on a couch nearby, a bit of a chase-away following a night of pure khaos.

[caskalomidze]

Does she want the sun? What an absurd question.

She's forgotten what the sun was like when they were friends, what it felt like, running barefoot through grass under a sky whose blue was not inky and dark but bright and broken by pure white wool, a bashful ball of light ducking behind trees or clouds. She's forgotten what it's like to spend too long in the sun, to have it's kiss on her cheeks, red and stinging. No, too long in the sun now is moments, not hours. It's crumbling ash and searing, soul-shriving heat, not stinging skin. It's harm and hatred, not peace and pleasantry.

They've all been creatures of the night for so long, and Çaska, apart from Svetlana and Viktoria, had not been given the choice of saying goodbye to the sun; she'd no last goodbye that wasn't the lashing whipstrike of immolation. She'd never had the chance to ask the noontime sky if she'd miss it. Part of her, buried even further below the resentment of stolen centuries, has hated a piece of her sister for that for a span of time that most people could not conceive of; yet another slight in a sea of them, but one that she'd thought foregone; dead and buried - it's clear in this moment, where tears of possibility well in the corners of her eyes and it comes to the surface like a phantom out the grave that the quiet grudge is still very alive. But this would undo it. This would give her real freedom, the means to exist outside of the miserable dark.

Overcome; even this long in years a vampire's emotions run loud and hot and wild, and for all the vile action Lana's hand has taken against her, she can't help but feel a sudden surge of hopeful something, something that overrides the bitterness and the desire to see Lana suffer the way she's made her suffer. It manifests as Çaska's arms flinging themselves around her eldest sister in a moment that - if past is prologue - she'll most certainly regret;

It doesn't matter though, and it never has; she's eternity to get over it.

She can see it happening, the change in her sister. Can read it almost like an old book of stained pages, fragile from the use. She's broken through Çaska many times before but even she knew this time was different. Her little sister had never once looked at her with so much unmasked rage before. But Lana doesn't concern herself with that thought, there's still nothing she wouldn't do for her, or Viktoria. Whether they believe her or not.

She smiles once more, soft still, inviting in a way she hasn't been in front of anyone else. Something inside of her twisting and turning almost painfully at the tone in her sister's voice, full of hope, small. The little kid she helped raise.

"Even with you?." She asks almost teasingly, even if the question does bother her. Can't Çaska see that she cares? That she loves her?. "You're the first person I'm sharing it with, you and Viktoria, if she wants it." Heavens know Viktoria liked her time in the dark, collecting little trinkets to expand her collection. Books and witches, and humans.

"Do you want it?."

[caskalomidze]

"That's good," Çaska coos, tilting her head. "Sometimes, just carrying ourselves with a stiffer spine brings out a different energy. New angle, eyes catch the light differently, bring the face to life."

Çaska's quite close now, some might say uncomfortably close, and while she has her attention, rapt and focused, her teeth show. "I'm always quite sweet, I find it's always easier to live life sweetly." Like a switch, the girl fades and the vampire arrives, tucked away in the corner of this little restaurant, intimate as lovers. "Sweets for the sweet, once was said." Blood floods into the white flesh of her eyes, the black beads in the center of icy blue rings consuming the rest of the color as she imparts the imperative. 'Hold still now, hold your gasps, and don't remember whats about to happen, you charming little thing.'

Çaska necks on Nadia in that moment, teeth piercing tender sweets with the precision of something masterful; nearly two thousand years (give or take a sleepy century or two) giving her a surgeon's precision and a gourmand's preference. Nadia's blood is fresh sourdough, of a flavor one born even in the last millennium could not know the wonders of, hot and dressed with oil and herbs and spices grown in her sister's garden. She only takes enough to make her feel treated and full, and her bite is as gentle as a bite can be, and any spillage is quickly - softly - laved away by an equally practiced tongue.

It's a quick thing, nothing drawn out, not this publically; like a stolen moment between two hearts - but while she indulges, it's a kindly finger that claws a slice into the fat of her own palm, drips a few drops into Nadia's drink, the wound full-healed even before Çaska pulls away, eyes drilling one last missive into the girl's mind as she lifts the straw to Nadia's lips. 'Drink.'

She gives some time for Nadia to recover, lets her hand - cool and dead - rest on top of the girl with the magical blood, thumb gliding over knuckles."I've got to run, though - but you've been sweet as well," She says with a smile, teeth still pink after her tongue cleans them behind closed lips. "Eat up before you go home, and I'll see you at class tomorrow?"

Nadia nearly jumps at the sharpness of Çaska's tone, blinking rapidly at her. Her eyes are caught again, and it's that same feeling - warm tea, cool breeze. Another blink and something's caught hold of her, she feels like she sits up a little straighter without a slouch. Confidence doesn't come easy, especially when she doesn't think there is anything to be confident on her best days.

But she knows she's traveled across the country with nothing, and has made it to somehow be a leader of a coven she didn't know existed a few years prior. "You're.. kind for sayin' that, really." There is some truth to it, maybe, but it's hard to let go of something you've heard for most of your life.

"You've been really sweet today."

[caskalomidze]

"I don't get it, what did I do?"

"Oh, my god, I've said it, like, thirty times, you didn't do anything." She says, with all the frustrated detachment of somebody who is, in a pair of words, over it.

"But I did, like, everything you said. And more!"

"Look, Jason."

"My name's Jacob."

"Alright, Jacob. You're wonderful, you're beautiful. Your butt is so cute and honestly perfect but you've sort of just long outlived your purpose, here." She cups his chin, voice soft, stares into his eyes. "You're going forget, this instant, every bit of strangeness you've seen of me, and then you'll to look back on this thing we've had fondly, but with the knowledge that you shouldn't be sad it's over, but happy that it happened. You'll wake up tomorrow, remember it's a mutual agreement that we just don't work, and then you'll knuckle down on all that course work for your degree and really just have a go at being more motivated. And you'll stop using that god awful body spray, it smells like an earthquake hit a cleaning closet. Here, have this, to remember us by, and then go home."

Çaska lays her lips on his, and gives him his goodbye, watching him as he turns to go, with a sigh, rolls her eyes and turns, heading into the library. She scans around, looking for her sister, and, not finding her, instead finds the first person who looks like they work here, and at first she's about to simply ask after her sister, but she's almost immediately taken back by sharp, elegant features. "Uhm, I was looking for a book?" She lies. "A good one."

—

@nivokova where: Growden Libaray

[caskalomidze]

⚡️how would you get revenge on lana if you could

"I know you want me to say I'd lock her in a tomb or kill everyone she's ever seen fit to love, but I think if I wanted to punish Lana in a meaningful way, I'd simply vanish into the wind and never speak to her again. But I love my sisters, and to cut out Svetlana would mean I'd need avoid Viktoria's pleas to return and so that would be punishing myself, too. I've spent hundreds of years wondering if she loves me back or if she'd even care if I were gone, but she could have ripped the problem out by the root at this point and still I sit here to answer this inane question. If she wanted me to be dead, I would be. If she wanted me locked away, she wouldn't suffer me being awake. So I think my revenge would be a life away from her that's happy and free of the tight close of her fist, but it would be a cold and miserable thing after a handful of years, let alone eternity. So that revenge will always be little else than fantasy, I think."

[caskalomidze]

describe your favorite Boy

"Asking me to describe my favorite Boy is like asking me to describe my favorite tube of lipstick; you use them until they're gone; sometimes you find one you think is a favorite, but really they eventually all just blend together."

[caskalomidze]

⚡️do you think youd ever settle down

"I can't say yes; eternity is such a long time, and hearts and minds are much more fickle than forever is short or mortal lives are long. It would take loving a single soul in a sea of beautiful souls, and if I've not found that in two thousand years then what can another two do, or another two after that? Love need not be eternal or binding, it can just be a beautiful moment as sure as it can be a lifetime or more."