Notes [00:14:00] MalaikaLiza: (This is not the actual story.) Virgil and Dan are sitting in Virgil's room. Virgil just has a mattress, a stereo, and a desk with notebooks and pencils ;) Clothing's on the floor, a pile that smells clean and a pile that doesn't. They're sitting on his mattress smoking pot. [01:03:23] MalaikaLiza: Dan's short, about 5'4", and he's very thin, but it's a healthy thin, he's slender but has muscle, like a swimmer, maybe ... He has blonde curly hair and sideburns. He has hazel eyes, they're always sort of closed to the sun, pothead eyes, long eyelashes. Thick lips, usually smiling (more smirking, really), very sharp, very white teeth. [01:03:42] MistaCat11: Very sharp. [01:04:27] MalaikaLiza: Right now he's wearing a white T-shirt (not too baggy, but not tight, nicely fitted to his torso), khaki pants, and moccasins. [01:04:56] MistaCat11: That looks so cool in my head, in contrast to black hair and black jeans and a black tshirt and silly eyeliner. [01:04:59] MalaikaLiza: He wears a band of black leather around his right wrist. [01:05:17] MalaikaLiza: [grins] I like the contrast of Ephraim/Gabe and Virgil/Dan a /lot/ ... [01:05:49] MalaikaLiza: Short curly hair. Normal boy length. But long enough to see that it's curly, almost a modern pompadour ;) [01:06:07] MistaCat11: Yum! [01:06:10] MalaikaLiza: Enough to run your fingers through, at least. Virgil is 5'10", thin and not muscular. His hair is chin-length and slightly wavy, dyed from a rich dark brown to a flat black with very cheap dye. His face is very German, angular and rocky, with blue eyes. He wears black jeans, and black band tshirts, and, in the winter (short in Kentucky), long-sleeved tshirts or patterned dress shirts (he's a spookykid, but there's a little bit of thrift store style there) underneath, and a thrift store leather jacket, random spookykid band names + the Cure scribbled on in silver and gold Sharpie. He wears spidery eyeliner, and isn't allowed to hang things on his walls because his father is an abusive drunken idiot. He drives a battered '89 Chevy rust and primer pick-up, with "Disintegration" spray-painted on one side of the bed in purple, something he did once while stoned. There's a dog box and a tarp in the bed, left there by the previous owner. ---- Story Liza Ephraim and Gabe are not boys, although they have boys' names (however, Gabe /is/ short for Gabrielle, much to Gabe's chagrin). They are quite obviously female--but they are /not/ obviously a vampire and a werewolf, respectively. But that is what they are. This is so much what they are that it no longer strikes either of them as odd; it is no stranger than the fact that they are speeding down the highway in Gabe's Toyota Echo (Gabe is very small, and the small car suits her) blasting David Bowie and singing all the words. They are on a road trip, and although it's not a quest, it is a typical way to start a story. --- MC "SO WE BITCHED ABOUT HIS FANS AND SHOULD WE CRUSH HIS SWEET HANDS?!" Ephraim screams out the window, bouncing on her knees. "DA NANANANANA NA NA" She lurches forward suddenly, cutting off her screaming, and digs in a large canvas bag on the floorboard. She emerges with a bar of semi-sweet baking chocolate. Unwrapping the gold paper slowly, she lets herself expand to feel the car; the energy of the car itself is warm and slightly slow, despite the actual speed. She carefully pokes at Gabe's energy, trying to read it without absorbing it. Holding the chocolate tightly in both hands she shaves little bits of melty chocolate into her mouth as Gabe's energy tightens and vibrates nervously. She raises her shields again, cutting off the feeling. "You have a safe place in mind? To go?" Ephraim asks over the music. --- Liza Gabe hunches over the steering wheel, sniffing the air. She could /smell/ Ephraim playing (this is what Ephraim does; being a vampire doesn't always mean blood ... although she likes that, too), her senses keen and aware, and although it normally wouldn't bother her, she is on the defensive. "I don't know. Ah." The smell of Ephraim's chocolate is overwhelming; she wants nothing more than a pint of Godiva, and possibly alcohol (any kind, really). "I mean, we could get a hotel ... I don't know how safe that'd be. And even, uh, even if the building was secure, I'd worry about people poking around. It's ironic, I mean, I don't know if 'ironic' is the right word, really, but ... you want to take this sort of thing to a seedy little motel, one where people leave you alone, but those are the places with walls like fuckin' cardboard and shit. Um. So I guess I don't know. You can be mad ... I really should know better by now." Gabe's senses really are rather brilliant--unless you count her senses of timing and responsibility. There's a lot of puppy in her yet, and probably always will be. --- MC Ephraim shakes her head, licking chocolate off her fingers. "I'm not mad... just worried." She stares at the road, blinks briefly at a church sign. "Do others see Christ in you?" she mumbles, and giggles immaturely. She leans back, nestling in the comfort of a car seat, something she has always loved. Wrapping the chocolate back in its paper and tossing it carelessly toward the dashboard, Ephraim stares first up at the ceiling, then out at the road again. A broken-down trailer shorn up by posts jammed into the side of a hill sparks a memory, and she jumps. "I KNOW!" she shouts. "I know the perfect place! My dad sold it a while back. Keep going this way on this road. It's out in the woods on a hill and there's a cabin and it's perfect!" --- Liza The moment Gabe realized Ephraim wasn't mad, her body language was reversed: She now sits upright, nonexistent ears on top of her head pricked forward. You can almost envision a long canine tongue lolling between her soft lips. "I /like/ churches, they make me feel like things are gonna be okay," she says, ignoring Ephraim's slightly condescending smile. And although she's said nothing directly in response to her friend's suggestion, her mood and her driving indicate that she's more than happy with it. It would probably make sense at this point to describe our two travelers: Gabe is short, with a womanly frame (this is not a euphemism for "fat," she really is pleasantly curved and fairly light) and smooth face. Her tan is the sort of tan that comes only from being pale and playing in the sun anyway; there is nothing unnatural or glamorous about it. Her perfect curls bustle playfully in the wind from her open window, dark in some places and auburn in others (her hair is too thick to be completely touched by the sun), and her eyes are green with perpetually dilated pupils, expansive and haunted. She currently wears a red and white checked dress with sandals; her toenails glisten green. --- MC Ephraim is also short, with small breasts and wide hips. Her face is a very pale pink, Cherokee skin that no longer gets sun, and she wears no makeup. Heavy black rings like bruises make her eyes look sunken in, and she wears thick prescription glasses and very dark sunglasses. Her hair fades from blonde at the top to red at the bottom, with purple streaks framing her face, and hangs limply to her waist. Today she wears a pink-baby blue-yellow batiked shirt--all three are colours she hates--and a pair of olive drab canvas cargo pants. Her feet are bare, the toenails dark with dust and dirt, and her hands are battered and scarred. Ephraim smiles broadly at Gabe's change in body language, and expands again to feel. She lets go with a noise of glee as she feels the energy shift. "It'd be good if my dad still owned the place, there would be food. The guy who bought it... he's a Cancer, he looks like a snake," Ephraim rambles, tugging at her hair. "His wife looked like a goat. I asked her if she was a Capricorn, but she wasn't, she's a Sagittarius." She squirms in the seat, tired of sitting in the same place for so long. "This car won't go up the hill. I said hill, it's called a hill here because this is Kentucky. It's a small mountain. The car won't go, you'll have to park on the other side of the road. We'll have to walk up to the cabin." --- Liza Gabe wonders about Snake Man and Goat Woman, but says nothing. --- MC Ephraim twists her neck around, the bones producing loud popping, then twists her body around to reach into the backseat for a pair of boots. "There's rocks," she says as she wrestles the knee-high boots onto her feet. "And prickly things," she says, beginning the lacing. By the end of the current Bowie song, the 20 eyelets are still not fully laced, and Ephraim waves her arms around and shouts, "Fuck it!" --- Liza Gabe drives on a bit, finding a place to park, and the two begin sprinting up the hill faster than you can say "Suffragette City." --- MC Virgil squints against the smoke, holding his breath. He hands the joint to Dan and rubs his eyes, smearing spidery eyeliner down his cheeks. A coughing fit expels the smoke, and he leans back on the mattress. "I thought . . . I thought about the music. Wait." He presses his hands against his eyes for a moment. "That music we heard. Yesterday. What was it?" Liza "Fleetwood Mac," says Dan, smiling serenely as he takes another hit. A memory surfaces within him, returns him to a moment when he was thirteen and tried pot for the first time: It didn't work at first, and he smoked all week until a wall of bone white nervousness finally engulfed him, turning him into an inexplicable anxiety thing for several hours. He wondered vaguely what made him continue to smoke after that, how he knew he'd eventually reach this mellow valley of warmth. Maybe he just did it for his friends (this thought is a joke; Dan is far too headstrong for such frivolity). He smiles fondly with nostalgia, staring at the marijuana cigarette briefly (for days, it seems) before handing it back. "What about it? You were thinking about it. I wasn't thinking. But I heard it. I was hearing it." He shuts his eyes. MC Virgil sits up. "Can we . . . get it?" He asks, before sucking in more smoke. He passes the joint back to Dan and stands up, spreading his arms for balance. He totters over to the desk, opens the pencil drawer, and stares blankly at the contents. A loud crashing sound booms from the direction of the kitchen, and Virgil winces. "Fucken idiot," he mumbles, and picks a worn-down black eyeliner pencil from the mess. He looks up at the desk, gazes at a Sharpied stereo and punches the wonderfully large play button. He hums a few seconds ahead of Robert Smith as he shuffles back and collapses next to Dan. Liza Dan pushes towards his companion, feeling his body drag behind the intention of movement in his mind as he passes the joint back. He nuzzles Virgil's side, kissing his neck in a way that is somehow both sensual and completely platonic. "I have stuff, I think I have stuff, a CD. I have a Fleetwood Mac CD. Yes, we can get it." He pauses, backing up a bit. "I don't think we should go anywhere right now." He stops being paranoid long enough to kiss Virgil's cheek, saying, "I'm sorry about your dad. And by that I mean, I'm sorry you have to live with him. I don't like this. I don't like it. For you." He wonders if he's said too much, and looks at the floor. MC Virgil blinks as ash drops from the joint, marring his black jeans. He tilts his cheek toward the kiss and reaches for Dan's hand, not quite grasping. "I don't . . . I. Thank you." He sniffs, and blinks again. "He's Satan, he's evil." He sucks on the joint again, almost burning his fingers, and passes it. Even over the Cure, the boys can hear Virgil's father throwing things around in the kitchen. "I don't want... to live here anymore. Not..." He sniffs again. "Not with him, he's . . ." The tears begin rolling. "Satan, he's Satan." Liza The weed makes Dan ready to cry, but he is too proud and too concerned for his friend to do it. He peers strangely at the roach before staggering over to the desk and dropping it in a tin, then flops down next to Virgil again. He throws his arms around the quaking form, pressing his lips to his, so immersed in caring that he barely hears the footsteps outside the room growing louder, quickening. "I think things are gonna be okay." --- MC & Liza Ephraim clomps along beside Gabe, shifting her heavy messenger bag from one shoulder to the other. "Lalala," she sings between steps. "We strike Germans on their heads." She breathes in leafy green air and stomps on a dirt clod with her heavy boots, swinging a flashlight along the path. "We do this with large sticks," she sings. Gabe grins, making up lyrics of her own: "Then we join the FBI, where boys can dress like chicks." She punches the air randomly. "This is a nice place. I like places with trees." "I wonder," Ephraim says suddenly, "if the cabin's locked." She stops briefly to bite the strap of her bag, then continues speaking. "The guy was playing with his new cell phone instead of paying attention at the closing, he's a yuppie. I wonder if he's yuppie enough to lock a nothing crap cabin in the middle of nowhere." She kicks a rock. "But he's a Cancer, so he might say to random people, 'I have this cabin in the woods, you know where Lamaro is? You can go see it, it's unlocked.' But Cancer worries about money, too, so I dunno." Her partner's silent, taking in the place with trees. Ephraim suddenly clutches Gabe's arm to keep from stumbling. "Honeysuckle!" she breathes, and sniffs in jerky backwards snorts, using the underdeveloped human Jacobson's organ, grimacing like a cat. "Honeysuckle," she murmurs. "I'm glad you knew this place," says Gabe, twitching nervously. "We don't have a lot of time. I need a safe place to change. I hope there's a cage, or a room, or somewhere I can lock myself." Ephraim snaps her teeth twice. "I'm hungry," she says, and yawns. "Me, too. I could go for a big steak." "You're a vegetarian," Ephraim reminds her. "Not this time of month." Gabe smiles nastily. At the cabin now, the small building managing to loom surprisingly, in the dark. The cabin is crude, hand-built by Ephraim's father, trees chopped from this land, turned into boards by a gas-powered sawmill closer to the road. It sits on the edge of a ridge, kept from the drop by posts. Three steps lead up to the door, and Ephraim stands there, rattling the doorknob. "Ah," she says. "Yuppie. But fear not! I am a DC superhero." She leans over and extracts two carefully shaped pieces of metal from inside her left boot. She lowers herself to her knees, shoves her flashlight into her mouth, and begins to work on the lock. A minute and a half later, Ephraim growls and drops the flashlight into her hand. "Okay, so I'm not a very /good/ superhero." She tucks the flashlight between her ear and her shoulder, and tries again. The lock finally pops open, Ephraim squeaking happily as it does. Inside, the cabin is musty, smelling of fishing lures and deer urine. Ephraim fumbles for a light switch, feeling quite the fool when she remembers that there is no electricity here. Two windows on the south wall open to the valley and the sky, light from a nearly full moon streaming in. The next night, it will be full. Ephraim can see that the Cancer yuppie has been at work: There are curtains at the windows, a brown rug on the floor, a new couch in one corner. The walls are still open so that the insulation shows, but a ten-gallon water cooler lives next to a four-burner propane stove, and the milk crates her father screwed to the wall have been replaced by real kitchen cabinets and a pantry on wheels. "A water cooler!" Gabe yelps. She runs over and sticks her head under the faucet, wetting her hair. "Nice," Ephraim murmurs, and drops her bag on the floor. She wanders over to a ladder, and climbs up into the loft. "He's put in good mattresses, new sheets and all." She shines her flashlight on the exposed ceiling insulation. "I wonder if that rat still lives here."