ianncardero:
“She is??” Iann perked up suddenly, interest always taken at the mention of baseball. Granted, this wasn’t the time to be distracted by national sports, and he gave Fane a crooked grin as the vampire went on.
“Ahhhhhhh, that’s only because I make twenty theories all at the same time, so one of them’s bound to be right, huh? So it sounds like I know what I’m talking about. I’m the equivalent of a horoscope,” he said, nudging companionably against Fane as they walked. Despite the stress and danger of this situation, Iann always did relish the small moments where he could just…talk with whomever he was with. Made things less terrifying for him, to banter and converse as if this was normal. When he knew damn well there was nothing normal about this.
But what else could they do, but carry on and hope to find a way out?
“I just…” Iann’s brow furrowed slightly, as he looked sidelong at Fane, studying the vampire. Other than the mud, Savin looked as dignified as ever, that permanent aura of grace and elegance. Iann wasn’t sure if it was because he was a vampire (a species that were naturally graceful, once they honed their superior physical prowess) or because he was raised royal. Whatever it was, Iann believed the other man never dropped that stature until he was alone. Or perhaps now, when he was with Faye. Iann cleared his throat and continued.
“I just…figure it’s something you’d wanna prepare yourself for. When - if - or no, when we find her. Your mother, I mean.” Iann had noticed that Fane had yet to really say much about his mother, never mind acknowledge that she was in this world. As a ghost, but still, his parent. “This isn’t exactly a situation one would expect to find themselves, ah….like four hundred years after her death.”
When they found her, Iann could see Fane’s long pale fingers twitching, tempted to drag up his mother as easily as he dragged Iann up from the ground. Spinning from one side to the next, Iann looked around for something, anything that could try and fish her out.
Fortunately (or unfortunately?) his search was short-lived. Because the moment Fane spoke, her eyes suddenly opened under the murky water. Her focus was entirely on Fane; and she lurched up out of the water, looking almost vampire-like herself.
“No wait - Fane the ghosts can touch you here, they’re corpore–” Iann called out, skidding on the wet rocks to grab at Fane. But his mother screamed something in a language that Iann didn’t know as she grabbed the vampire first, and pulled him right into the water with her.
“She’s taken an interest yeah, been doing some throwing and catching with her. Though I’m pretty sure she aims anywhere but the hands deliberately. That child’s fierceness is her mother’s own brand I swear.”
“Well, that’s what makes you good at all this supernatural stuff. Your brain works on twenty tangents simultaneously and you can manage to keep up with them while equally deducing and removing the unnecessary threads.” He grinned as they went preferring to think on this sideline tangent conversation rather than whatever they were headed towards. “I couldn’t keep up if that’s how my brain worked, no I’m much better dealing with things one issue at a time.”
There was a fission of tension that seemed to ripple over him at the persistence regarding his mother. In all honesty he didn’t know how or what he was supposed to do. He’d been avoiding this entire fiasco for the last four hundred odd years give or take. Now he was being thrust right in at the deep end and being told he had to confront it? The stubborn side of him balked at the mere notion, rejecting it with pure might and resistance. “And tell me,” he began, voice a fraction tighter “how do you prepare yourself for seeing a woman you ran away from, whose heart you broke and family you led to ruin almost four hundred years ago and whose funeral you never attended?” The weight of the guilt was something he very rarely let himself dwell on, it was only the eventual curiosity about what had become of them that he even knew.
“What do you me- Woahhhhhh!” any further inquiry was silenced by the a familiar language and large splash of water that followed his submersion head-first into the black depths of the sinkhole. That, as he was dragged further under by the spirit? Was it a spirit? was discovered to be far deeper than first appearances. His hands clasped around the wrist of the watery wraith, trying to pry it free but the speed with which they moved left little room for leverage.
The pool where Fane had vanished began to bubble and churn, the dark depths infathomable. Suddenly, a thick black and purple suckered tentacle shot out, curling around Iann’s ankle and lower leg and began to yank him towards the very same depths Fane had vanished into moments prior.
