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The cause and solution to your every problem.
_____ _____
Mythos-Based Muse
21+ Indi. Semi-Private.
Open to modern
and historical threads.
occasional cameos of
other characters from
folklore & mythos.
{{ Sideblog // varldsormr. }}
{{ Sideblog // victoriautmorse. }}
Written by JO (they/he), 21+, casual activity, selective. No affiliated fandom.
A semi-oc character based primarily on world mythos and the concept of interconnected mythology. Verses for HADES (supergiant) and MARVEL/DC. Available for both modern and historical threads.
ABOUT -- GUIDELINES -- PROMPTS
// sideblogs: varldsormr (jormungandr) & victoriautmorse (red hood, dc / au)
// if you get a follow, I may be interested in writing w. any of the above!
❛ i am yours. no refunds. ❜ Val&Havar /impish selection
❛ a sky full of stars, and i’d still watch you. ❜
❛ if you take care of everyone, who takes care of you? ❜
& Valentine's libations – accepting !
@eddapoetic // Havar
source (x)
Why would she get a dog when, even as she locks the bathroom door to go about her business in peace, there's the fanned edge of a crow's wing that slides underneath it, sweeping discreetly across the tiled floors. "Havar." Her voice is flat and stern as she stares at the gap underneath the door out the corner of her eye while her familiar clicks his tongue in mock surprise at having been discovered. "I will raffle you off." It's an empty threat, one of many that she issues on a weekly basis at the very least, or whenever the trickster gets carried away ruffling her feathers.
Valerie emerges some time later, clean faced, hair loosely plaited, in her dressing gown and lavish silk banyan, rubbing leftover lotion over her knuckles, and nearly walks head-first into a– "Qu'est-ce que..." So that's how he'd occupied his unsupervised fifteen minutes. All along the hallway ceiling, the corvid had hung frail little paper stars that dangled from bits of twine – dozens of them – employing his unmatchable speed but taking no care to cover his tracks: an old copy of the Yellow Pages lay gutted under one of the consoles, and a sewing drawer had been left in a state of disarray. She draws a long, patient breath, and moves around one of the stars to look at her re-humanised companion that lounged dandily against the doorframe, spewing cheesy pickup lines.
"Your luck resides in your looks, or I would have you in the doghouse for property destruction." Valerie plucks one of the stars, licks the back of it, then sticks it on Havar's forehead, brushing aside a chaotic nest of curls. For his effort. She conceals her amusement on the way back down to the lounge where the fire continues to steadily burn, journey during which Havar circles her like a cat, a torrential outpour of questions and comments to add regarding her pronounced fatigue and what had kept her out of the house for the whole day. Valerie volunteers some answers, but mostly opts to subdue him by distraction – scratching the back of his head while she pokes logs in the fire, inviting him under the fleece blanket where they can fit together on the sofa, heads on opposite armrests and legs in a tangle of limbs.
Who takes care of you?
She doesn't want to answer that. He doesn't need an answer, not when he's there so much of the time, watching, calculating, chiming in. The causes she throws herself into, the lost creatures she shelters in her home, the son she doesn't see enough of but worries herself sick over– there is always something to do, someone who needs her more than she needs herself, and time, time she has so much of, hours on an interminable stretch.
The weight of waiting.
Valerie retrieves her place in her current bedtime read and curls up so her temple is pressed to the leather backrest, the book resting on her lap, her free hand loosely cupping her pet's shin, offering gentle, mindless caresses.
The word sings of an ancient home, long-gone but never forgotten. Likewise, the ozone she felt from him reminded her of dozens of cherished homes, across seas and continents. Here was perhaps the only god other than Xiwangmu that she was fond of, and certainly the only one she'd ever worshipped. Those days of her mortal childhood in Thebes were long-past, but that affection for the trickster-healer remained in immortality. She took in his gleeful dishevelment, and then felt terribly foolish for not noticing his coin.
She shrugs at his comment. "Oh, I don't know, are we?" She points upwards with one hand and down to one side with the other, like a clock reading seven, brow furrowed in mock confusion. "I'd say we're about in the middle of our roaming lands.
"Ἀργειφόντης!" she says it under her breath, but the excitement is palpable. "Mirqurios! Lugus!" She's up off her wall and embracing the god. "The only one of those mountain-dwelling bastards who ever showed my father a bit of respect." Her embrace tightens. "How the hell are you, old friend?"
It had been centuries since she'd seen the god (as far as she was aware), so their reunion was a delightful surprise, a sugar-plum with a, well, obol inside.
When she thought about the amount of time since they'd seen each other, she truly realised how much had changed in just a few short centuries.
"I go by Orlando now, that was the name my great love bestowed upon me in medieval Baghdad, and I married a fellow immortal a scarce few years ago, and--" their thoughts a babbling brook, one gleamed diamond-bright through the haze.
"And whose invite did you steal to get in here?" They smirked.
The clock-wound gesture stings a little, unexpectedly; Called by old names, old history. No slight known or quite intended on her part, of course, he reckons. Nay, it's merely a start reminder of just how long it's been since they had met each other last, how the centuries have passed since then, how sparse reunions of old friends-- how bittersweet. Even so, the trickster snickers at her motion all the same (never one to miss a beat) and waves a hand at the semantics. It is true this is a queer spot, after all. "Aye, well, you know me, lass - never one to stay in place, same as y--"
--with a puff of air and barely a stagger, his sentence gets cut off by her veritable lunge towards him, the wrap of her arms squeezing him with palpable excitement (and notable strength--) which manages to catch even the former patron of such quickness half off-guard - amber eyes briskly widening and hands thrown up for just a heartbeat before his laugh cracks over the surprise, and his own arms come around to pat her back in turn.
Bit sluggish on the reaction time, there, bub. Is it the wine which makes him slow? Perhaps. Not so bad, this, though. A sense of strange old fondness reawakening as a quite refreshing energy permeates when Mrs. Lando pulls away, starting to recount her own adventures as of late at a speed which might put Him to shame, and then--
"Steal? Me?" A hand clasped to the open neckline of his shirt in a dramatic fashion, Havar sucks in a gasp in mock, frankly affronted and similarly scandalized by the implication of her words. "Why, I resent that accusation," he says, doing his best to put on a new expression of offense, only somewhat diluted by a double twitch of amusement at the corners of his lips, as well as the twinkle of mischief in his eye as the spirit pointedly leans in a little closer; "Who said I needed one, at all?"
With a wink and and another airy sort of chuckle he withdraws again, adapting a more languid stance as he slips his hands - and the obol - into his pockets. With some interest, he lets his eyes pan over the woman a little more consideringly, now that they've separated, cocking his head to the side accordingly as he regards her own disheveled state with growing curiosity. Eyes flicking from her, to the door behind her, and then back again.
"Aye, but what of you, missus? Congratulations for that, by the way. You here for work, now? Pleasure?" Another twinkle, and there's a slight shift in his voice, a singly brow quirking inquiringly. "Both?"
"The host? Do you claim to have my best interest at heart?" Her eyebrow twitches, perplexed by her familiar's suggestion that she could have a go at M. Marley. The mere thought of it brings a chalky taste to her mouth and her face turns momentarily sour. Preposterous idea swiftly swept from her mind, Valerie reclaims Havar's arm and accepts the invitation to mingle. Oftentimes there was no need for an elaborate hunt: they came to her, for better or worse. However, adorned with her own swashbuckling companion, the interest drawn would likely be skewed towards the fairer sex... but not entirely.
"I will dissolve into dust out of sheer tedium if you leave my side, pet. Just stay and look pretty next to me." The vampire squeezes Havar's arm reassuringly, flashing an impish smile his way, so brief it might have passed for a trick of the light. Beneath the drooping chandeliers the pair infiltrate the crowd discreetly, a drop of poison hiding in their collective revelry, scorpion ready to strike. Some faces spring to mind, some she recognises, others she doesn't, but it isn't until she spots the wide-set frame of one of Paris' emerging painters that a thought begins to brew. A bored bachelor, 'spinster' if born a woman, whose talent for the fine arts had recently come to view. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he had a preference for the male form, and had been seen and known to cast youth off the factories, whom he then scrubbed clean and posed to his will.
If only he stopped it there.
She turns to her friend, mouth reaching his ear in sacred confidence. "Taking my word that I would keep you intact, how much would you trust me to use you as bait?"
Chiefly he must bite the corner of his lip as to prevent himself from cackling just at the cheer look of disconcern which takes her face, that note of seeming genuine affront in response to what is by all means an innocuous suggestion. No, maybe not, perhaps, alas. Fine dress and polished practically to glistening that one, aye, but hard to say where he has been, what supple toxin might pervade him, willfully ingested; Thankfully, there is a smorgasbord before them, and between the two of them they have the keen to dine on something riper.
Not, mind, that he expects he will be doing much of the feasting.
"You're in luck, my lady - bit of an expert in that department." The toyish trickster winks, straightening up near to the point of preening once his arm has been so taken - and the smile he catches only throws fuel to his fire. Like a raven and a wolf out in the winterland, Havar leads them leisurely to prowl, his own sights soaring high over the foliage of crowns and frilly finery, while hers lay low, slipping beneath the cover of their barefaced masquerade. Liars, swindlers and adulterers are easy pickings to make out amongst the masses (if you know where to look) but the cruel dress up nicer.
Their languid path around the marble is a little like a coordinated dance; subtle, yet graceful, interspersed with little bits of conversation. A whisper here and a nudge there. A jest, when he believes she will permit it. After a round about the room he's in the act of swaying them both around the chiseled corner of a curve, when his companion turns close to him again, the embers of intention in the cool blue of Valerie's eye telling all he needs to reckon it is time for the first waltz to end.
She's made her choice, then.
"Oh, you may put me on a string and dangle me over the river, if it should humour you." Havar answers back into the space between them, offering an emphasizing quirk of brow and gentle nodding of his head. Tactfully, he follows her line of vision into the sea of guests towards a young and tawny haired gentleman - artfully disheveled in blue linings, looking disinterested, swirling his wine - then lets his hues flick back to her with a rekindled spark of intrigue. Voice, lowered. "What did you have in mind...?"
Obsidian Interlude
Κάτω από το ποτάμι, partner piece to heagorún, ca 2004, Paris.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
It's a pleasant night.
A strange calm has taken the city by dark - the starlit sky a celestial reflection over streetlights and sleep-addled noise, fading slowly to a haze of whispers behind the fog rolling in from the river. Muffled, but never truly silent. As the moon lingers her idle, museful gaze upon the world, the firebrand glow of living presence behind glass snuffs out in the wake of the mist. Laughter and passion and footsteps in the night, one by one, falling away, to bad choices and a morning they hope might never come.
Fruitlessly, of course. But fervently, nontheless.
An inkline trickle soaks and stains through the fabric of this space, painting it black with tastes of charcoal and ash, yet life goes on, unbeknowing. A million people, singing chorus with the breath of a ladden gasp. The scene of a crime, dressed for dancing.
And there he is without his good shoes on.
The trickster's figure stands a solitary frame, gently lit below the cast of a dying arc. Its silken curtain of dim illumination drapes tenderly around and it paints him an outline picturesque; a lily-white shirt with bare forearms to stone - freckled skin faintly warm to the cold. He leans his weight against the rail of an age-worn bridge, halfway balanced across the breadth of the seine while amber eyes throw themselves over the precipice, trailing tides of the water below. A worlds away, his fingers run absent circles over edges of gold, an obol nestled in the cloth-wrapped palm of his hand. Muted and far, he waits, and listens.
For his purpose, he could've gone almost anywhere. Why here, then, he couldn't say. Perhaps it'd been curiosity. Thinking a keen eye might find what somebody else overlooked. Perhaps thematicism, narration in cycles and repetition bringing a certain je nais sais poetry to the front of it all. Engagement with the telling of a good story. Always did have a sense for that sort of thing.
Or maybe he's just hopelessly dramatic.
In the end, it doesn't really matter.
Eventually, the sound of life within the city stops to flow beyond the reach of his luminous hollow, grown a distant, otherwordly noise. And when the fog drifts higher - a heavy, blanketing mist climbing up from the river beneath - he knows he's no longer alone.
A spectre steps out from the shadow, and he greets him with a smile.
"Heya, boss." His tone chirps, a smooth melod to the shrouded gaze which tilts his way - a single amaranth eye peering out below wide blackened brims, vast with the unfolded depths of which it views him. "Funny running into you out here. Come around often?"
The presence approaches, and there's a shift in the air as it stills within reach, the weight of them heavy and old, eternally stranger, yet achingly familiar. Like something forgotten, now remembered. He can't quite make out the slight raise of a brow he recieves for the cheek of his tongue, such miniscule a twitch in pale visage and poise, but he knows, intrinsically, that it's there. A faint amusement seeming to emminate, for all his associate's subtleties.
It tugs on the corner of his lip.
"Speedy work, I'll say, as always. Do you make them pay you by the minute, down there? Or are you just going out of your way to impress me?" He chuckles and trades one manner of lean for the other, rolling over to rest his elbows on the brick and flipping the coin in his hand with the motion - ignoring the way the uneven edge of the railing now digs awkwardly into his spine while he returns the gaze that is given. Meeting half-lidded gold to imperial mauve.
When he speaks the cadance of his voice is... playful. Easy. His posture, wrenched to practiced casuality, pushing for an artificial air of nonchalance to cushion the weight of the unspoken between them. The gravity of why either of them were there, at all.
Two travellers at the crossing of worlds. A bridge, from this world and the next.
A life, hanging coldly inbetween.
He wants to be hopeful.
What he gets for his effort is nothing but silence, poignant. A single look holding long and knowing. An absence that seems almost regretful.
He exhales slow through his nose, and pushes himself up from the edge.
"...Alright, whatcha' got?"
Together under the harbour of streetlight, Charon looms nothing short of grandiose above him, the ferryman's cascade of twined silver locks falling pale over layers of fine obsidian coat. A breeze sweeps over them both and it catches the trims of their clothes in a sway, making the man at his side appear to move as though waves of a void within the space of the midnight he occupies; Wrapped in vapor and smoke, the form of him, something endless and ethereal. The same as he was, when they had met the evening prior. The same as he has ever been.
He steps forwards, bending low, and for a moment Havar thinks he could drown in that darkness. Doesn't move but to accomodate as Charon's head slots into place besides his own, hovering hairs from the curve of his ear where his breath comes through as a whisp and hollow sound. An aurora of deep vibration. A song no voice could sing. An echo without origin, felt into the bone.
He swallows when his other withdraws - a thousand years seem to pass for every second he drifts back away - and fixes his gaze pointedly elsewhere, letting it fall into the fog of the night and vacant emptiness beyond it. Drifting out, his brow knots loosely with the knowledge imparted. His fingers, taken to itch with sudden restlessness, clenching tighter around the obol in his palm. He knows Charon sees it. For what feels like an age, they don't say anything.
Then Havar breaks the silence once more, sights dropping low before flicking off.
"Aye. Well. Guess that'll be me then. No time to waste. Figure the lad'll want to know, anyhow - he'll be digging himself into a moat by now." The trickster huffs an empty laugh that doesn't quite manage a heart to it. He spins sharp before there's time for further words to be exchanged and starts on down the cobble road at a pace no less than brisk, ill-inclined to let linger, non-intent to look back. By and all he's still a job to finish and a promise to keep, so it won't do to get distracted.
He got what he came for, didn't he.
He doesn't need anything else.
Dammit.
"Don't suppose you--?" Just as soon as he'd moved he's stalled, barely ten steps away before his voice chirps up again and he twists comedically on his heel right back around with new inquiry - just a thought, you know, off the top of his head. His bandaged hand shoots up to extend a pointer in signal for the other to hold-- only to stop abruptly when he actually looks upon the figure behind. The tongue in his mouth grown instantaneously heavy.
Charon's stayed on the bend where he left him; alone beneath the arc, above the rushing of the river, surrounded by an aura of ever-fading light. He makes no move to follow, parts no lip to call him out - but the ferryman's head inclines back in such a way and just enough to watch him go, that even through the smog of clouding vapors he can feel it. How the eyes of him lay clean upon his being. How he sees him just for what he is.
A lump settles thickly in his throat.
"... Nevermind. Silly question." Havar waves his hand, dismissive, letting it drop as he flutters to retreat, being once again prevented. A ghostly whisper of the wind is all he gets before a larger hold grasps his wrist in its confines, catching it before it falls and he is gone into the night. There's a blink of genuine surprise where his gaze snaps upwards in return, and suddenly he's face again with his associate, flush with a wall of impenetrable dark, looking back. Asking.
The hand on him is firm for mere a moment before it softens, and he doesn't try to pull away. Fingers rough and scarred smooth slow over the bare of his own, turned curiously tender, as though the skin of a god were something delicate. As though he's something that could break. Calloused, a thumb ghosts cold past his pulse and it finds the edge of wrap, bound tight around his palm, lingering there to trace its edges while an indecipherable expression passes brief across the ferryman's facade.
They're out of time.
Bared open, he plucks the gold within the messenger's clasp - engraved, his fare and price - and proceeds to gently fold the the smaller's digits onto themselves, before gradually, he fades, relinquished to the mist from whence he came and would always return. The touch of him, remaining, like a memory not yet forgotten.
Under parisian skies, only one of them is left when the fog at last rescinds, beckoning the morning and the world to come again, and dance upon that stage they set, unknowing. Laughter and passion and footsteps in the dawn, waking up to do this waltz all over again, as many times as it takes, to whatever end it brings them.
Havar breathes in, and closes his fist a little tighter.
Lando was catching her breath, outside the beautiful dark wood door where she had just sent the celebrated iconoclastic artist Mlle. Clotilde Saccard and her benefactress Mme. Ramond into paroxysms of pleasure with her tongue. The act wasn't what had her gasping for breath, it was that, in her infinite wisdom, Mlle. Saccard had chosen the silhouettes for herself and her companion of bold, sweeping bells, achieved by layer upon layer of damned French crinolines. Mlle. Saccard and Mme. Ramond were veritable matryoshkas of petticoating, which made it hard to get air when muff-delving, especially if your partner had grasping thighs. She found herself missing what it had felt like to give to Xiwangmu during the Zhou Dynasty. When she had knelt for her there were only ever fine silks (and the occasional tiger fur, and not necessarily a pelt…) Then again, it was perhaps unfair to compare a couple of French bourgeoise she was ravishing at a party as a free woman to the goddess she had concubined for millennia ago.
She swirled her crystal glass, and thought what she thought every few decades or so: I should write her. Indeed, Xiwangmu was one of the few truly ancient gods who was still widely worshipped, so she was definitely still around… but, every time she had that thought she remembered her fury at her precious Vita turning into Vito, and delayed it a few more decades.
Best to remember the good times and not return to the bad, she thought, charging her cup to the goddess and taking a sip of this divine wine. In it, Orlando tasted the homes they'd had over the millennia, and the memories of their great loves through the ages, as Bio, Bion, Vita, Vito, and now Orlando. Courtiers of pharaohs and Kansyore potters, citizens of Kor and Abyssinian sages, Trojan warriors and Xiwangmu, Roman centurions and Celtic druidesses, their dearest Sinbad, Gloriana and Sasha, Phyzante and Quasimodo, all returning their kiss as they had in life. She looked at her cup, sighing. The drink was wondrous, but the aftertaste was melancholy. With the exception of Xiwangmu, she could never see her loves again. Perhaps that was why she avoided the goddess; returning to her would remind her that she was the only love she could return to.
God, when did I become a melancholic? she thought, No more whinging like a centuries-old novice, come on!
She heard giggling from behind the door, and turned to see Mlle. Saccard, still flushed, poke her head out of the door.
“Orlando? Madame Orlando?” she called.
Orlando smiled. They had taken that name in Baghdad centuries ago, long before one needed a surname, and they seldom bothered with one, yet others often read it as such.
“Oui, Mademoiselle?” Orlando answered.
The artist smiled. “Would you be interested in returning to your pearl-diving?”
Orlando graciously shook her head. “Je le ferais, mais j’ai peur de me noyer dans l’écume de la mer. Amusez-vous bien, mesdames.”
Both Clotilde and Madame Ramond found that hysterically funny, bade Orlando a good evening and shut the door. Orlando stayed where she was, considering her next diversion as she swirled her fickle wine, watching the steady stream of guests pass through to the main hall or other cloistered rooms for private amusements.
That was when he caught her eye. A man with glittering hazel eyes and mousey curls, unremarkable in appearance, yet there was a mercurial energy to his expression, and an air to him that was… divine and familiar, were the words that came to mind.
“Hullo,” she said as he passed, loud enough to catch his attention. She leant up as she spoke. “Now there's a fellow ancient soul. Aegyptian, perhaps? There's something about you that reminds me of home.”
Silk and satin, blood and wine, pain and pleasure; In places like this where firm lines blur all of it tends to get a little muddied, sentiments both sweet and sour mingling together 'midst a court of fools, content to stumble through a haze of song and lips trying to find their gold. Their holy grail. A pirate's share of plundered booty (in many a shape), leaping at chances to forget where they had buried it, come morning--
Of course, the truth is it was never here at all, but who is he to judge a bout of play pretend?
A jester in his cap (and a bird amongst his feathers), the pad of his thumb smoothes over a glint of gilded promise in his hand - dexterous fingers toying idly with an obol as Havar shuts the door upon the scene behind him and slinks back into the hall with all its long-drawn, sweeping drapes. Never known and never missed during his temporary absence, which is usually how he likes it.
With his free hand he dusts off the hemming of his shirt - stained with some drops of wineish red - yet fails to correct where it has slipped untucked, oblivious as he starts whistling on his way, head in the clouds and barely acknowledging the pair of patrons who burst through another door stood straight ahead of him, lost in some throes of passion as they take downwards to the floor-- leaving the avian to simply step over them without so much as breaking in his pace, twirling the coin between his digits.
Only the call of something truly sudden succeeds in shattering his trance, making him look; a chirping voice, and a vibrant soul he has not felt in quite some time.
The trickster stops - brought to a slow and then a halt along the corridor, one after the other, where his gaze slides sidelong over his shoulder to the source of the familiar octave, and amber hues seek to the landing of a more familiar face. Familiar, aye, but unexpected. Unexpected, but not unwelcome. Or so at least he is inclined to hope as recognition strikes him proper.
"... Aye, now fancy that." Havar muses aloud, straightening on his feet and turning on his heel all the whilst his chin cocks up good-humoredly, a flash of something curious glinting in the eye which yet regards the other's image: that blend of soft and sharper angles, chestnut hair which almost seem a little reddish in the light of the decor, a waggish smile. Now here is someone who's been up to mischief. Someone with a story to tell. One almost as old as his own.
"Close, πουλάκι. Half a cigar. But we're both a little off from home, I'd reckon."
The raven's tremulous call for reassurance gives her pause, peering over her shoulder until he has caught up with her. She hesitates to give him verbal confirmation when a simple look will do – of course she doesn't mean to kill him. But she wasn't against plucking a few feathers if he insisted on underlining her troublesome temper. "Best to find a different subject for your jokes this evening, mon coeur."
Havar slots seamlessly beside the vampire once more and she motions to take the chalice as it is offered to her again, though upon noticing his glistening knuckles where a spill had gone over his hand, Valerie grips the underside of his wrist instead. In an act of innocent grooming, she relieves him of the chalice and presses her lips to his skin, kissing away any rogue droplets whilst her gaze travels through the crowd. "You could say so."
Valerie gracefully releases his hand and returns the brim of the glass to her mouth. The more she drinks, the more the wine's pull on the animal body is felt. With razor-sharp precision, she becomes aware of her many growing hungers, fire feeding fire in a room crammed with kindling. Impossible to want for choice when your guest list looks like this: so much entitlement, vanity and boundless greed under one roof. She draws in a slow, controlled breath, relinquishing the drink to her familiar, and focuses on a couple of faces that had already come under her radar.
"I want one of the smug ones today." Those that think money can replace decency, and that the world should dance at the sight of their coin.
A single look - a glance shared - is more than enough to pass between them; What faux impression of concern within his station he had mustered cracks just as easily back to a grin upon her reassurance - although he does not miss the pointed note of her unspoken addendum, the suggestion of a bite behind her bark, and of a mood that's ill-receptive at this current time to tampering. Not to fear. His self-preservation instinct has carried him some odd millenia - it will not fail tonight. Mmmost likely.
Another remark lain on his tongue withholds accordingly (saved for a little later). With the trickster resolved to best behavior, he extends the wine towards his company with the slightly forward-snapping implication of a bow, only to still as Valerie's fingers find a different grip, instead. A tender coolness put to his skin - his eyes, beholden to her with a flash of intrigue. He wonders for a moment if she will decide to have a nibble after all, a canapé to stir the appétit, not all that sure that he would stop her if she tried-- but a gentle brush of darkened lips against the pulsepoint of his wrist is where they part, and he is all the richer for it, still.
Terrible vintage on this one, besides.
"Well," Havar starts to say, withdrawing his hand after a subtle flourish before cradling the wrist over his chest like something cherished, playing the soft pad of his thumb against his forefingers as he regards her with an idle curiosity, "you won't be left for lack of choices, there, I think. Might even try our honored host, if you are feeling so emboldened."
The avian quirks his brow, and with a quick glance there and aback he cocks his head in the direction of the crowd, where somewhere certainly the very stage director of this circus show himself must be somewhere, milling around. Making the rounds. Though he is of course but one of the many of that sort, here in attendance, as he suspects the woman next to him has long since gauged with those keen eyes of hers. Bearing of a predator within that graceful poise there is, aye. A sharp kind of beauty.
"What say you we mingle for a bit, my lady?" After only the moment of a passing thought, Havar shifts, offering the veiled suggestion just casually as his elbow, if she'll take it. "Or shall I be a good birdie and bring you something pretty?"
His trickery lives in the little things: perfect lips pressed to where her mouth had been, the gaiety of youthful features staring her sullenness in the eye. Immediately she clocks the recognition on his face, detail that hooks the fatigued interest of a mind that had lived, in her books, too long. How rare for her to come across novelty. Valerie delights in merely watching her companion indulge, then listens eagerly for his review. She knows what he refers to, naturally, though she finds it hard to believe such a nectar had been brought down to the mortal plane without consequence.
"You go from flattery to mockery so ghastly fast." The vampire rolls her eyes with diluted exasperation at being told, for the second (or third?) time in the evening that she appears grim or some variation of it, thrusting the glass back into Havar's hands and wordlessly ordering him to fetch a refill as she turns to slip like a shadow through the crowd. The wine's enchantment is strong, but not necessarily euphoric. She would have liked to dance, given the opportunity, but at present the band only seems to further grind her frustrations with their cacophonous symphonies. She regards the sea of bodies and recalls M. Marley's letter. If she to be deprived of fucking, then let her eat instead.
"I do try, lass." Havar permits himself a little impish laugh as he sips and finishes the very last of what they've got, teasing yet warm and (hopefully) not alltogether all too grating on his poor mistresses' temperament. Always a fine chord to pluck away at, that, but he knows her limits, and despite his asking he suspects he can infer a cause or two of her malaise. He does feel for her. Perhaps its sympathy and a brush of well-meaning concern for his old friend which drives the older bird to be here, then, tonight. Or, perhaps they're two pods in a pea.
Either way he dutifully spins back to the fountain with their glass as he is prompted, tipping its crystalline edges back under the satin fall of sanguine, taking to humming to himself whilst Valerie shifts behind his back and almost missing when she speaks again, quite suddenly.
"Hm~?" He makes a chirp of vague inquiry, her comment taking a moment to register but when it does, the trickster's eyes flick from the fountain, up, then over to her. Parsing if he'd heard that one correctly--
"--Oh, not I, I hope? My jokes are not so terrible?" He offers over his shoulder (managing to sound demure) all the whilst their chalice fills to the point of spilling over onto his hand - which warrants a quick glance back as Havar tips out the excess to correction, then smoothly returns to his companion. Slunk around her back, he takes her side, where his light but not much brighter eyes peer a touch of darkness in her own, scanning the crowd. He offers her the glass.
Accuse my Muse of a crime. They can only respond with either ‘Guilty’ or 'Not Guilty’. (x)
anonymous sent: Guilty of having a juicy ass. / all of them .......
"--Oh, aye? This?" He does a double take, making a bit of an exaggerated show of looking over his shoulder at the prompting of this heinous accusation.
"All air I'm afraid, but if you like balloon animals I do fold up real pretty."
