Starter: Open to anyone! Location: A Communal drawing room in the Keep.
He had only stopped to read a letter, pressed into his calm but one of the Hands runner boys. Small and wide eyed, like he wasn't sure that what he was doing was right and was only made more timid when Laurent scowled down at him with an irate 'What?. He scurried of the moment Laurent had taken the thing from him.
So here he was, standing in one of the long and lavish public drawing rooms, the eyes of long dead Kings and Queens watching him read about the lack of funds for another Divine led vampyr hunting squad.
Fucking....true God above, he thinks, those flame throwing maniacs would be the death of him one day. Pushy and picky and frustratingly needed as they were.
He folded the letter back up, tucking it into the leather bound Filofax he seemed to never be without. He was tying the thing back up, looping the throngs around and around before tucking the ends down, when he eventually realised he was not alone. Perhaps he never really had been.
Laurent, with all the slow deliberance of a big cat on the hunt, lowered his folder and straightened his stance. Though it was all for show of course. With his hip jutted out at an angle that accentuated the trim lines of his waist, and one foot balanced in front of the other to flash the higher than normal heel of his boot. Those eerily pale eyes though, were unwavering as he regarded the person carefully.
"Terribly unexciting news, I'm afraid." He says dryly. "-unless you're a spy, then it was most damning to some noble retch or the other. Would you like to read it?."
hard to be impressed in this world. living torches, sun-made men, brutes and speedsters, miracle workers revered above all, granted station and privilege ( and suffering, of course, but that was hardly specific ) beyond what the simplest could afford ⸻ no, there was not much that would earn kou's acclaim at all. least of which were the petty governmental squabbles the small council dealt with day in and day out. she's always been glad for her work: creating potions was like a dance, requiring a certain amount of flourish and the right steps; diagnosing people was like putting together a puzzle. intellectual and physical stimulation in measure, and while her clientele weren't always the brainiest lot, kou could at least ignore them.
❝ why would i want to hear what a snot-nosed noble is complaining about now? ❞ she scoffs, only lifting her eyes from the tome in her lap for the briefest of moments. she could figure out the answer herself; that it was a better way to kill time than reading the first thing she could pluck from the archives, especially when she realized by the third page in that the subject matter utterly bored her.
she was here first. ignored probably because she was so still and so quiet that she almost blended in with the furniture. the thought amuses kou. she had nearly made a game of it, wondering when it would take him to notice her presence. now, if only he had jumped when he realized. ❝ unless it was a sordid love letter. then, i suppose, i'm all ears. ❞
