— voracity;; @hlevett-blog - Tumblr Blog

vivette:

His presence felt familiar. Of course he wasn’t a vampire, most of her kind despised the gold blooded humans, and the other simply hated the stench of their blood. She belonged to the former, and was old enough to be able to ignore the latter, thinking instead of the crimson that ran through the veins of humans. Where could she have remember him from, obviously not from anywhere old, then a wall slid into place within her mind and she remembered leaving the crypt, the circle of bodies, her skeletal frame and ravenous lips that smiled and then tore towards the ballroom. So he was there, he must be of some importance , and yet he did not rub shoulders with those fat and over privileged animals as they mingled and told one another polite lies. How comforting to know that not all wanted to be in the company of those wretched fiends, the rose brushed against her arm and she turned towards him, features coming into her view, hands casually in his pockets, assured posture.

Politicians had not changed over time, they all had that walk, although adapted to fit the person there was one element that always stayed the same- what it was she could not name, but to her credit she could spot it. His profession wasn’t hard to narrow down, only few humans could be of a high enough status to be here, and amongst them he did not fit into any of the other categories but politician. What his place was, now that was something that eluded her, but she would find out, not by asking as one thought was the proper way to go about these things. Instead she would wait, watch and listen, as she always did. In the end everything worked in her favour, whether she worked for it or it was handed to her, willingly or not. “Isn’t it the intimacy of that same practice that make it all the more thrilling ?” her accent was aged, like fine wine that had many elements added to it, she had been many places , but she was Parisian, but from each place she had been, and from all the eras she had lived through, they all drew together to make quite the interesting accent, at times she even thought that she was confusing to listen to.

Stepping forward and sitting on a stone slab that was a bench, one leg raised allowing the skirt of the dress she was wearing to rustle lightly, the sound of the leaves joining it in a odd melody. Mnemosyne’s eyes watched him approach with a blank expression, behind her eyes she was thinking of what he could be, he seemed poetic in a sense, the way he talked and his gestures, a performer yet someone very comfortable in their station, but she could very well be wrong, her prediction on a person could be incredibly wrong, especially based on first impressions. However he was handsome, and she tilted her head- today a lovely ginger coloured piled on the top of her head in a knotted bun with coloured ribbons weaved through it. Now in the darkness his hooded eyes and heavy brows and the slash of his mouth, it all was seen in a differently now, and she could see the blue of his face through her tinted eyesight. She was right at least. “I was never fond of screams. They’re irritating, so you quiet them. Not like that.” she grinned at him revealing dainty white teeth, just a deceivingly small as the rest of her. “You shout something much louder at them, and make them shut up. No? However the difficulty with those whispers, is finding the ones which are true and the rest which are of course lies.” as experienced in whispers that she was, she did not find of those that reached her ears appealing. They were more petty lies than anything, never really amounting to much. “That and the fact they’re all terribly boring, nothing exciting or thrilling.” Trailing the thorn of a rose over her skin, she watched the skin break momentarily before stitching together.

Incredibly trying, he found it, to attempt to read her gaze and mannerisms which were so minimal to start. Of course, he was used to those grotesquely obvious gestures of royals, who were no more aware that they were being watched than a prime minister is of guilt. A kitchen maid who can’t control her gaze when questioned or a guard not at his post who wrings his hands too harshly together, they’re all cracked open with a champagne pop under his eyes, but not this one. She, like him, bides her time and watches heedfully. How troublesome, he thinks, limestone eyes narrowed out with a twinge of uncertainty. Then, like the drop of pin — inaudible, he makes himself scarce, and what a show it is, to watch one mask betray another as apathy is hewn into his expression.

A practiced adaptation of his features.

Henri is no more than a chameleon in times like those, survival met through that infinite metamorphosis of his ( and sometimes, even he wonders what his own face looks like, but it’s a buried expression at this point ). One hand still freed, he undoes a button in his suit, a gesture riddled with potential meaning and purpose but not divulging anything now. He hopes to put himself at a high ground in this way, to remind her who dominates their conversation, but that is a dangerous game. Not that he appears to mind, unflinching in response to her challenging ideals. “Intimacy doesn’t appeal much, not the rapport associated with it at least,” he drawled, his tone flat with disinterest. No, he certainly had no interest in that sense of harmonious companionship, but lust and passion were things he could identify with.

Not to give the wrong impression in such a tentative interaction, he omits such the afterthought; coquettish natures of conversation were not made for exchanges between deceptive women and voracious men. Instead, his gaze catches on the flash of teeth, and he wonders if this is meant to be a warning, a reminder: I can tear you apart in one bite. His indifferent gaze discloses displeasure as his lips settle into a thin line, even the assumption of her meaning enough to set him on edge. “Would it not be the sort of ignorance which results with betrayal or ruination that leads one to not listen well to screams and whispers? To not even feign consideration?” His own sort of reminder, not quite a warning or threat, but a verbalization which walks a line across thin ice. Someone had put her in that crypt, after all, and Henri wasn’t idiot enough not to make the obvious assumptions of this consequence, to use them to his advantage. “Yet, the wall keeps itself to my ear all the same,” he replies smoothly, his gaze unyielding against her. One more reminder as he refuses to relinquish his eyes from her — I am unafraid of you, do not forget this.

#mnemosyne #mnemosyne001 #// henri goes from mischievous to fuck with me in .2 seconds lmao

vivette:

She wouldn’t call it spying. No, she was observing the enemy in their natural habitat, and it did help that she had an invite from a young lord who had been dazzled by her charm, and had practically begged her to come. Only for the others to stare at her, sift flick of her wrist as she produced her fan and brought it to her face, and the way her eyes seemed to shift around the room slowly, taking in the profiles of the people that had gathered for whatever this was meant to be, were they meant to be sharing to trade gossip. She almost scoffed, but in these places she held her manners and instead excused herself from the chattering group of hens, what a disappointment , wish so many advances in their daily lives, the royals of today really had nothing worth speaking about , let alone listening to. It was all a mess of who’s husband was having an affair with which low life gutter whore. Who looked like they were growing terribly fat, which of them would be the next to fall from their pedestal , and herself.

They didn’t directly speak about her, more or less sputtered about the edges whilst sharing nervous looks and stuttering she her gaze would by chance meet there’s. She had stopped caring, and stopped listening a long time ago, only catching snippets of the conversation and making dry comments that made them all chortle in unison , it all made her terrifyingly sick to her stomach. So rising from where she had been seated, the fan had been flicked and folded immaculately into her hand, and she had simply walked away from their group who’s mood shifted as soon as she was far enough, and furious whispers pointed in her direction began. Sniffing, she let her nose carry her to the scent of lavender blooms, the small purple flowers covering half a wall, her fingers brushing them. What a complete and utter disappoint , a waist of time, and to think. She got all dressed for this mockery of a court, Goddess help her and help the nobility of this place.

It wasn’t that she hated the royals in there, which she did, or that she thought that they were spoilt, they were. Not even the fact that many of them were hideous despite the myth being that all of them with golden blood would be striking and gorgeous , they really weren’t. It was the fact that they disappointed her, and since she didn’t feel like spilling their disgustingly bitter blood, or throwing up the continents of her stomach, her disappointment turned to boredom. She ought to leave, yet something, an instinct if you liked , told her to stay. How she hated her instincts, horrid things , not to be trusted. Moving from the wall covered in lavender she began to walk towards the gates’ general direction , how she wished the days of riding away on a horse and simply returning it to its owner a couple of months later, now those disgusting oil guzzlers were her only mode of transport.

She didn’t start at the sound of the voice, instead she continued walking slowly towards it, as that was the direction she had been heading in the first place. “Rather the flowers than those fools.” her reply was calm, as she continued down the path towards the voice. Drawing nearer her attention was caught by a rose, a beautiful white with its petals outstretched to her, her hands came out, fingers gently pitching it as she tugged it clean off its place in a cluster of bushes amongst its brethren, she continued her walk, fingers pulling the leaves and allowing them to drop behind her. She did not go directly to the voice , instead she stood at the wall of where the gardens maze began, she preferred to be shrouded in shadows, the speaker could not be seen, face drenched in light. So they both stood, one in light and the other in darkness , she wondered if her own face could be seen then decided she did not care about such trivial matters. “and who do you commune with ? the night sky or the gentle breeze. perhaps the roses whisper to you too.”

Back before his greed had time to decompose, before he’d assembled himself into that wall of composure and apathy — he’s reminded of being a child. Not nearly as materialistic, but more so easily fascinated, his slender hands used to thieve rings from his mother’s vanity with a fervor: ornamented and aureate. Just as well, scorching a hole in his trousers where he’d shove them; he used to remember, as well as childhood, the guilt at doing such things: a lurch of his heart and twisting in his gut. Though, such things so easily die where morals have no place, where he resides. With enough of it now, neglect of the former, he’d unflinchingly snatch a cascade of emeralds right from a duchess’s throat, and do it with that oil spill smile that has excused all his monstrous acts thus far. But at that time, he’d been only a petty thief, marveling at the luster of a pearl with a cat eye’s view. So easily distracted.

Some twenty years later and he wouldn’t even flinch at a cache of gold if he’d so happened upon it. Though, he hadn’t decided yet if it were on account of that fact that he had gotten vastly more selective or if the world bored him altogether — each, a plausible reason. Not that any of it seems to matter in that moment, as his eyes catch on the first person to capture his attention in a long while. A crypt-born companion, who wields her own voice as a weapon and points it like something sharp at him. Already, a fascination erupts at their meeting, or at least the first in which both parties were fully conscious of each other, painfully so. His first impression, however, is not so favorable as the second, a juniper gaze swept over a half-dead creature and the cemetery encompassing it.

Now, without sullen cheeks and a stain of crimson at her mouth, he found the deceptively young woman to be well deserving of his gaze. Contradictory, though, he found her to be as well, with her petal soft, yet sword sharp edges. A beast worthy of the sun’s envy shrouded in shadow, but not enough to cast such a scintillating thing in darkness, with words which elicit heavy irony and mirth in the form of low toned laughter. “Such an intimate practice, I could never hope to take communion with much of anything, or anyone,” he paused, hands snaking into his pockets as he took a confident step towards the other.

“Yet, all that around me seems to revel in whispering its secrets in my ear — roses, the very breeze you speak of, the Earth itself. This place doesn’t even bother to hush itself anymore, did you know? It screams.” He unpockets a hand for a general, sweeping gesture to the space around himself and the woman before him.

#mnemosyne #mnemosyne001

Whispers —— the incongruously harsh grating of a lowered voice prickling the shell of a lord’s ear as a lady-in-waiting ushers scandal into his mind. He grins an uneven, gleeful smile at the words, a sweaty, meaty hand screaming around her bodice with praise, and her resulting wind-chime laughter proof of her pleasure to be of such use, especially to a man of deeply sewn pockets. Henri did not abhor a great many things ( to do so would be an immeasurable waste of time ), but he does grit his teeth at this awful cacophony of gossip.

He’s long tired of this chess match of tightly corseted vixens and a prideful cattle of men, with checkmate infinitively a few moves away — the shove of a stablehand or king across the board. There's nothing sating about an assured victory, the ease found in earning something. A Levett, by contrast, depends on that sense of struggle, the splintering of flesh and titanium under his nails and a worked ache in his bones which creaks with a chorus of triumph.

It touched on his thoughts as he pinched nonexistent flecks of dust from the shoulder of a velveteen coat, perhaps for the sake of gesture or, more likely than this, in that deceptive way with which all his movements were made, calculatedly. In another show of this same nature of his, always meticulous with thought and stratagem, he leant against an arcing entryway feeding into the palace gardens — looking no less poised in even such a languid position as he resolved to wait there in those following minutes.

Yet, the gunshot of disappointment in his gaze couldn’t be missed as an unanticipated figure meant to pass by him, not that malicious arc of a body which belonged to Lilith, but he seldom allowed an opportunity to pass him by regardless of unforeseen circumstance.

“Gone off to commune with the roses then?”