song to the moon

EVANNA MACTAVISH HARPER. mother. wife. 'the winged woman.' samodiva. 'la dame blanche.' jazz performer.

[evannaharper]

@alina-hennigar​

Date: Sunday, July 11th, 1920 Time: Around 10:00 PM Location: The back lawn of the Zora Estate

It all looked and felt like something out of another era. The members of the collective came from all places and from various time periods, and somehow, that was palpable in the air. With their oil lamps around, on the open lawn of the estate, playing their festive music, it felt like the people of Zora were inside a timeless bubble that belonged only to them. Alina loved dancing even though she knew she was far from being the most graceful dancer, and without her cane it was hard to keep up with melodies that had a quicker rhythm. But she always danced with a smile on her face, irradiating pure merriment. As the song came to and end the dancing couples broke away from their partners and formed circles, holding hands. “Come on!” the samodiva grinned to some of the people that were just standing there watching. “Come dance with us!” Alina said as she locked eyes on one person and beckoned them to leave their boring spot in the crowd to instead join the celebratory fun.

-

It’s been quite some time since she’s actively taken part in a celebration. Evanna can’t even remember when that last was if she tries, she vaguely recognizes while standing by the wayside. She’s borne witness to many, of course, between the jazz club and the antics within Zora. But gone are the youthful, carefree days of frolicking on dance floors and drinking to giggly intoxication. Or so she thinks, anyway, as she stands quietly by the side of the dance floor with drink in hand. Her only drink of the night before she takes the trek home, she surmises. At least she’ll be able to say truthfully that she was in attendance, however brief that attendance may have been. Evanna has just begun to look for her escape route when a dancer bumps into her and causes her gaze to turn around and – fortunately or unfortunately, she can’t be sure – meet with that of a younger samodiva. The girl immediately ushers her to dance, of course, but Evanna stammers some. “Oh, ah...” The woman falters a moment, green eyes darting. The fact of the matter is that she has no partner. Hasn’t for some time and likely never will again, in fact. But that doesn’t seem to matter at present as the throng of dancers are suddenly ushering her to join their ranks. As her arm is hooked without hesitation by another and she’s swung into the frolic, Evanna blinks hard. Despite her best attempts – and she would, really, like to think that they were valiant – she does stumble eventually. With a laugh that sounds equal parts hesitant and exhilarated, she collides with the younger woman who had called to her. “Seems to me that I’m not very good at this anymore,” the elder samodiva confesses, still managing another laugh despite herself. “Best if I go, maybe.”

[evannaharper]

@yohan-ernest​

Yohan flips the list back, memorizing the items she read. He doesn’t know what she means by ‘essentials’, but as long as he can find and buy them, it should be alright. His stare turns to her again, wondering if this is the kind of situation where he has to thank people. He blinks when she speaks up, though. “What do you mean?” He doesn’t know if he was making a pass since he doesn’t know what that means. Passing what? He thinks for a second, retracing his steps to figure out what is happening. “I… don’t know how to read. Does that count?” He shrugs, hoping that’s the right answer. “Do I need a reason to speak to you?” He asks, quite genuinely. He was under the impression that people can speak to one another without a reason or necessity. Silence is intolerable to some people, apparently.

-

Well, now she feels like a right arse. “Oh.” How was she meant to know that a fully grown man didn’t know how to read? Not that it’s horribly uncommon, but... well, maybe she shouldn’t be so defensive. Deflating some, Evanna sighs. “No. No, you don’t need a reason. Though I suppose, with the reading...” She looks back to the aisles she’d just wandered through with a sigh. “You’ll likely be needing some help navigating the store, won’t you? Right.” Adjusting the basket she’d been holding on her left arm to the right, the woman nods back in the direction she’d come from. “I’ve got some time to spare.” It’s true – she doesn’t go on until well into the evening. “I’d be happy to help if you’d like.” Consider it her service to the community – or at least the inn – for the day.

[evannaharper]

@loganscoutures​

Logan chuckled quietly and moved to hand Evanna the rag, though he quickly paused and looked down at it. Instead, he set it on the side of the sink and opened a cabinet to pull out a new, much cleaner rag. He handed that over quickly. “Yeah, no problem. Is it getting any better? How deep is it?” His concern peeked through his tone, even despite his slightly rougher exterior. Never a dull moment, indeed. “Not here,” he agreed. “I actually don’t know. I heard them say something about a woman, so I’m guessing it was something personal mixed with the alcohol. Speaking of, would you like a drink? On me.” He poured himself one as well, knowing he technically wasn’t supposed to but figuring no one was actually going to care. 

-

The rag is taken with a silent nod of thanks, and Evanna has naught but a furrow in her brow as she looks to her arm. “Ah, it will be just fine in a bit. I’ve had worse.” Certainly true. After a glance around to make sure that they don’t have an audience, Evanna goes on softly. “As it is, I’d been meaning to go by Circe’s tomorrow. If it’s any worse, I’ll fetch some banshee’s blood and be done with it.” The explanation for the fight gets a scoff but something akin to a genuine smile from her. “Isn’t it always that? Wounded pride or a woman. Or both.” She shakes her head, biting back a wince as best as she can as she moves the rag. The offer makes green eyes flick back up, and she hesitates a beat, but nods. “I don’t see why not. Thank you, Logan.” Evanna murmurs, watching quietly as he pours them each a drink while she keeps pressure on the wounded arm. She doesn’t bother with theatrics, simply taking the glass when it’s offered and sipping quietly from it for a moment before piping up an inquiry, mostly empty. “D’you think it’s the safest place to live? New Orleans, I mean.” Not that she’s cared much for her own safety. Not for a long time. “Feels like quite a few watchful eyes. Even more so than in Paris, at times.”

[evannaharper]

@yohan-ernest​

DATE: July 4 1920 TIME: 1:24 PM PLACE: a grocery store

Yohan stares at a piece of paper in his hand, standing like a maypole in the middle of an isle. One of the staff at the inn asked him to pick up some stuff from the grocer and Yohan being Yohan simply said ‘okay’. The trouble is, they gave him this paper called a ‘grocery list’, which he rather aptly assumed as a list of items he needed to purchase… but they didn’t realize that Yohan doesn’t know how to read. So he has no choice but to grab a random person and asks, “hey, what does this say?” He holds up the grocery list to their face while his eyes stare into theirs without blinking.

-

She’s prone to defensiveness, maybe. But who could blame her, after, well, everything? As for the list in her face, well, it may have been well received once, with a laugh, even. Nowadays, however, she reels back, giving the man a glare before lowering her hackles some. “Hmph.” No, just wants a list read. It doesn’t seem entirely malicious. Still, Evanna keeps her distance, taking a step back whilst her gaze stays on the list. “Right. Well, seems like the essentials to me... Eggs – quite a few of them. Bread. Coffee, cornmeal, sugar...” It’s only then that she catches herself and the glare returns. “If this is your attempt at making a pass, I can assure you it won’t work. After all, as I imagine you ken how to read, there’s hardly a reason to be speaking to me.”

[evannaharper]

@dinameijer​

La Dame Blanche freezes with the look of someone about to be ill and disappears as the crowd heckles. It’s not at all what she expects from her previous experience in Club Entre Nous only a few days prior, and she frowns, toying with an cup of pop. One she can’t drink, sure, but it makes her feel more human. Or it didn’t until someone is yanking her arm away. The cup slips, shattering on the bar, the noise lost among the next act by everyone save the person meant to pick it up. It’s hard to feel human with a shard of glass sticking out of your hand you hardly feel, and Dina curls her fists to hide it. “Is this how things work in America? The singers take you away without a word for - what, the fun of it?” she asks stiffly, palms still curled. The glass doesn’t bother her, labor was certainly a great deal more painful than what feels like little more than a sliver, but the lack of blood is… alarming. Dina blinks, yanking her arm away from her grip. Her eyes are wide, darting from the woman to the exit. “How do you know that name?” Plans race through her head. The woman is nearly half a foot shorter than her, and Dina imagines it wouldn’t be hard to shove her way past her. She eyes her, contemplating it, wondering if she has something up her sleeve. If she was in her family’s shoes, what would they do? Weapon, another freak, what? 

Her lips part with bafflement, leaning back from the strange woman. Not her family, then, they’d want someone less… weird. “What do you mean, who am I? Who are you? You’re the one who dragged me back here, not the other way around!” Taunt her? Dina bristles. “My name is Dina Meijer, I’ve only lived here half a year and I certainly don’t know anyone well enough to taunt you on their behalf. There, I answered your question.” Her anger shifts, and she tilts her chin, attempting nonchalance and failing. “How do you know that name? My mother has no friends in America.” It’s why she chose here rather than somewhere in Europe. It was a risk to her and Katinka’s life to cross a sea, but the promise of safety and anonymity proved too tempting.

-

She’s tall. Tall and slender, like Seona was, in that way she’d envied so in their youth. If the height and the flaming red hair weren’t enough, well... everything else certainly would be. Staggering, isn’t it, to see a ghost like this... Her reverie is broken by the inquiry. Valid, maybe, but the interrupting annoys her, and so her response comes about snappishly: “Do I sound like an American? Hell if I know their hobbies.” Her eyes narrow as this other girl’s eyes widen, and Evanna nods to herself. Right then. Suspicions confirmed. “Seona was my sister. Is my sister, maybe, if you’ll tell me what precisely she’s been up to as of late.” Squaring her jaw, Evanna locks eyes with the girl again. Hard to use persuasion with eyes the shape, if not the color, if your sisters’ looking back at you. But if she must... well, maybe not just yet. “So I’ll reiterate my inquiry, if you please: how do you know my sister? One of her bairns, are you? You’re practically a spitting image.”

The wee thing – well, not quite wee, considering the height, but either way: she looks as if she may turn tail and run. Which is no good, no good at all, not when Evanna will be left with yet another trail to follow. “I’d prefer if you answered my question first.” She says plainly, in a tone she’d used on many an occasion to signal to her children that she meant no nonsense. Still seems to have its charm, too, considering how the details come spilling out of the girl. Meijer. “Hmph.” Not a Rolland, then, though Seona may very well have married into the name. As she had MacTavish. Clearing her throat, Evanna shakes her head. “No, if the people of New Orleans have their issues with me, they tend to face them with me themselves. I was leaning more in the direction of family.” The shadows and smoke of the club do little to lend a good light on the girl’s face. But Evanna knows her sister. Knew her, anyway, and sees her staring right back. So she sighs at the inquiry and shakes her head. “Och, aye. She still doesn’t, I’m afraid. My sister and I... we hardly ended things on good terms. But that was many years ago. So I suppose I’m wondering why you’re here just now. If not send by her, or by the family... what brings you in this direction?” Best not to spill the details, isn’t it? She may be the winged woman, seemingly so feared, but that doesn’t mean she has nothing to be afraid of. Maybe the Rolland blood has thinned enough that the wee thing in front of her is nothing but a mortal. Quite a shame that’d be. Or perhaps not. Safer that way.

[evannaharper]

DATE: July 3, 1920

TIME: 1:15 am

PLACE: Club Entre Nous

@loganscoutures

She’s been mainly quiet since it happened, two men tumbling headlong into the backstage area engaged in a brawl. Quiet even when someone pointed out to her that her arm was bleeding from the subsequent tumble she’d taken on colliding with them. Blood down the arm meant running the risk of tarnishing her newest dress. That would be an undoubted waste – and so Evanna sits upon the bar now, bare feet dangling far above the ground. The patrons were ushered out after the skirmish, sent out their back alley ways so as not to be seen. But the employees remain, cleaning up the general mess and each other. Evanna nods toward the increasingly familiar bartender that she’s nearest – or, rather, she nods toward the rag behind him. “Would you mind passing me that? Napkins aren’t quite cutting it, it seems.” After a quiet nod of thanks and a huffed sigh after applying pressure to the offended forearm, Evanna shrugs. “Well. Suppose they’re right in saying that there’s never a dull moment. Not here, anyhow.” The curve of her lips isn’t a smile – not quite. “I’ve been privy to a fight or two in the past,” she admits. Quite the understatement. “But never something quite like that. Did you catch what they were on about? Or was it just the drinks that got to them?”

[evannaharper]

DATE: July 2nd 1920 TIME: 10:30 pm PLACE: Club Entre Nous

@dinameijer​

The full moon comes and goes without incident. Incident beyond the norm, anyway, what with the inevitably sprouting wings and arguably archaic rituals. But such has always been the way of life, and causes little disruption nowadays other than Evanna’s one night absence from the stage. This evening carries on as usual, though, and La Dame Blanche ascends to the familiar stage of Club Entre Nous to smatterings of applause and whistles from regulars. All of which is greeted by a simple nod and, perhaps, a wink of one green eye, but it’s there and gone in a flash, the musician simply settling into her set without any grand introductions. It isn’t until after the second song that she pauses for brief conversation with the audience, her voice low and smoky and inevitably accented. The accent gets mixed reviews occasionally, but the other things seem to satisfy, and she’s here to give the people what they want. For the most part, anyway. Satisfied they are not, however, when La Dame Blanche halts suddenly in the middle of a song, the color draining from her face. But how can she help it? It’s not every night that a ghost stares back at you from the audience. A ghost you’d ended things on awful terms with, both of you near starving, saying things that no family and certainly no siblings should ever say to each other. “Oh, Seona...” 

It’s a heckle that finally breaks her from her trance, some demand to get on with it already, but Evanna can’t seem to find it in her. Clearing her throat, she steps away from the microphone. Part of her wants to retreat, to recede into her dressing room and be done for the evening. But another part, the fiercer part, wants the truth. And so she makes a pit stop before going backstage, taking the girl’s arm with what she hopes is some gentleness. It isn’t until they’re away from prying eyes (for the most part, anyway, as coworkers peer around pillars) that Evanna blinks hard and starts stating her own truths: “You aren’t Seona.” That much is made clear now in this new light. After a muttered curse in Divi, La Dame Blanche presses her crimson red lips into a tight line then tries again, locking gazes with the girl. If inquiry won’t work, persuasion might. “Who are you, then? Did she send you my way to taunt me?”

[zorarpg]

I have died too many deaths that were not mine.

- Audre Lorde, Sequelae

NAME: Evanna MacTavish Harper BIRTHDAY: February 26, 1580 GENDER: Cisgender female SPECIES: Samodiva OCCUPATION: Singer at Club Entre Nous YEAR JOINED ZORA: 1885 FACECLAIM: Emilia Clarke

HISTORY

There was never a time before turning. Not for Evanna, the first child of the powerful Rolland clan and keeper of their legacy. Their clan wasn’t the typical sort speckled across the Scottish Lowlands, and thus their pride was different as well. They were of the samodivi, sworn to secrecy lest they lose their lives at the hands of vengeful humans. It was a threat they had already faced once, what with Evanna’s grandfather being of samodiva blood when his own brother was not. Divides like this left their clan sworn even more to legacy than to confidentiality, one could say, and thus their daughter was presented with a crucial task. She was hardly an ideal leader, more partial to making merry and music than legislation. But there was no choice. By now, Evanna hardly remembers the life she took in order to earn her timelessness and her flight, though she does remember the sight of blood upon her hands. Yet the memory that she has always found more striking is the sensation of feathers sprouting from her shuddering shoulders. These wings, symbolic as they may be, were overwhelming in size and painful beyond her young mind’s comprehension. Yet they made her whole. Finally, she was a proper samodiva, and thus, a proper Rolland. As it was, these names and titles were put to the test much sooner than anyone had anticipated: within a decade, witch hunters stormed the fragile refuge that the Rollands and their followers had turned into a home. Like Zmajkovo so long beforehand, their small semblance of a realm was destroyed, and their new leader was hardly equipped to cope with the fallout. Not even a century old, so pitifully young compared to others, Evanna was one of the few survivors and one of two keepers of her name. This new leadership was not an easy undertaking, and those under her haphazard care wandered off or withered within three years, including Evanna’s younger sister, who left without so much as a glance back. It was after that final brutal departure, when the scorned samodiva had given up on her skills as caretaker and leader alike, when she was utterly alone in the midst of the human world, that circumstances changed.

Meeting Conall MacTavish was like turning on a light after decades of darkness. A mischief-making friendship tumbled headfirst into romance and then, somehow, into family. A caretaker she’d failed to be once, yet there she was, content with her husband and children. It was a simple life, tucked away from the rabble that had the potential to disrupt their quiet peace. But interrupt it did. The memory of that day is burnt into her like the scar of a hot iron, seen every time she closes her eyes, even a century and a half later. Witch hunters stormed their quiet abode, and Evanna, fearful and pregnant, fled clutching the hand of one of their two children. It was the last time she would see her home, which was but ash by the time she returned. The last time she’d see her husband, too – there was no sign of Conall upon her return. What there was, however, was sign of their only daughter. Like a girl made of marble, she lay in the snow, looking practically untouched and utterly dead. The son that had fled with his mother suffered a similar fate not longer after, hastily succumbing to illness that Evanna could not mend, no matter what she tried. The baby she carried was lost as well. Due to stress, or shock, or the sheer power of grief – she’ll never be certain. All that Evanna knew then and knows so well now was that once again, she was utterly alone, surrounded by lives snuffed out all too quickly.

Little can be said of the years after that – much like the time before her turning, the time before her grief seems almost nonexistent. Stripping herself of her married name in an attempt at anonymity, Evanna blended into the shadows and became someone else entirely. This was an era of vengeance, wielded mercilessly and quietly. Her newfound legacy traveled in whispers: the ‘winged woman,’ her shaken survivors dared to call her. But as much as she valued the fear, it was never felt by the right people. Evanna has yet to discover the group of witch hunters who laid such terror upon her family so many years ago now. Proper tracking takes time, and she lacked it, working with a messy rage that led to her having to flee more often than not. Zora was a refuge she was pulled into by force by a recruiter hoping to guarantee her safety during one of these flights. It seemed less than ideal at first, but really, Evanna uses it as a safeguard: here, she can take her time, seeking information. No one is free from her searching, not even the New Orleans patrons who visit the smoky jazz club where she performs most nights. Not that they tend to truly know that they are privy to such persuasions. All that they know is that the notorious singer La Dame Blanche has a remarkable gaze and a charming, sultry voice. When she turns her attention to you, you almost want to tell her anything she wants to hear. Almost.

CONNECTIONS

Dina Meijer - Evanna’s niece – not that either of them know that just yet.

STATUS 

Evanna Harper is taken.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied…

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from Collected Poems (via violentwavesofemotion)

[racquelthen-blog-blog]

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[evannaharper]

I'll be seeing you In every lovely summer's day In everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way

I'll find you in the morning sun And when the night is new I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you...

[joanna-lannister]

I find that a lot of the good acting comes out when you’re physically being pushed: your brain turns off and just deals with the situation at hand. You get to a point where you’re exhausted at the end of the day, but I quite like that.