Two in the morning. Her shallow breaths were drowned out by the light rain that had descended upon the city, though Lavinia could hear the sound of her rapid pulse in her ears, and with every passing heartbeat, more blood soaking through the thin cotton of her shirt. Faintly, she was glad for the cover of darkness that allowed her to pass for just another young woman stumbling home after the bars. And maybe in another life, she would have been. The idea brought a small laugh to her lips as she dragged one foot in front of the other, her eyes scanning the streets for any signs of the other witch. Or worse, any signs of her own coven. Because she’d failed, and failure had never been an option in her twenty-six years of life.
She had no doubt that she was paying for her fallacies in her own blood. Lavinia gritted her teeth as her vision began to blur at the edges. One hand reaching to apply pressure to the wound, she hadn’t noticed the outline of the person walking in the opposite direction and walked into them, a hiss escaping her lips at the sharp stab of pain in her side.
“Unfortunately, we do not serve Dog here as he is a minor, but you are more than welcome to a beer instead.” Bash did not feel the need to protect the duck or the woman, neither one of them were a threat to the other as the duck was sure to go bored at the other’s appearance once he realized they were only there for a drink. Or company. “We have plenty to choose from if you would like.” He glanced up from the book that he had set aside, as the bar was not yet busy enough to warrant his undivided attention while he manned the bar to let another have a longer break. They deserved it, especially considering how many times that he left others to pick up his slack when his thoughts wandered and took him with them.
He paused with a half cocked smile, eyes alight with amusement as he glanced between the two of them and their stand off before he moved to reach for an empty glass. “You have no fear of him. He will not do more than keep an eye on things.” It was in the duck’s nature, to pick up often what Bash didn’t think twice on in his old age where it was hard to find what brought him fear other than his past coming back to haunt him.
.
It took her a moment to orient herself. A duck named Dog and the man who seemed to speak with the dictation of a much older gentleman — all at odds with their surroundings, which was very much a typical bar scene. Yet all somehow comfortable, as if their presence belonged as surely as the wine glasses and shelves of liquor. She supposed it fit in well with Astoria’s charm and the promise of a safe haven to all creatures, though frankly she found it more disquieting than comforting.
“It is not fear I have, but hunger,” she spoke, though it was more to the animal than the man. A joke, though she could have sworn Dog seemed to stare back at her with contempt. With one last narrow eyed look at the duck, Lavinia headed over to the counter, settling onto one of the many empty barstools. “I’m new here,” she shrugged, shooting the man a leveled look. She gestured to one of the vodka bottles on the shelves by way of ordering, a corner of her mouth turning upwards as she regarded him. “Is this normal? Had I known, I would have brought along a pet snake.” She tilted her head in mock consideration. “Rabbit.”
“Do not mind him. He believes that he works here when in fact, he is a duck,” Bash called out when he heard someone enter the bar while he finished at the cash register. Most had already taken off as it had been a slow afternoon, giving the place a slow lull before the evening shift came in and picked up alongside with the customers. Dog was his constant companion at times like these, when he threw a fit about being left at home which made for a loud rebuttal from Bash that often resulted with him losing said argument. The duck won, and the latest arrival had come face to face with the loud mouthed duck before he glanced upwards with a hint of a smile. “His bark is much worse than his bite, or so I have been told. Can I get you anything?” @laviniasaiz
How could it be that normalcy didn’t feel normal at all? It had only been a couple days since her arrival in Astoria, but Lavinia already felt the stirrings of boredom in her chest, a dull ache for the adrenaline rush that came with living night by night, the blinding lights of cities and the shimmering edges of power, sharpened into claws. As she stepped into the bar, its dim lights and sleepy afternoon atmosphere just as lulling and peaceful as the rest of the city, she couldn’t help but feel as though there was a gaping hole in her soul — or what was left of it, anyway.
But the dreariness that had descended upon her was quickly sliced by a loud quack at her feet, and Lavinia found herself holding back her instinct to flee, though a small hiss sounded her from lips as a duck waddled towards her. Her gaze moved to the direction of the masculine voice before returning to her new (and unwelcomed) feathered acquaintance. “A knife,” she answered slowly, narrowing her eyes at the duck. And then, just in case it was a shapeshifter (it was better safe than sorry — Astoria was a haven for a variety of creatures, after all), she spoke to it, paranoid of its possible nefarious intentions, “Because my bite is just bad as my bark. And I do enjoy duck liver pâté.”
I’d call her a storm, or tornado, but they are destruction without purpose. Her? She look’ll you in the eye as she tears you open, just to see how much you’ll bleed.
Bright, golden light filtered through the window and flickered across Reid’s face. He fought the instinct to flinch away and glanced down at the ring on his finger, twirling it around several times before shouldering through the doors of the Blood Center and out into the light of the day. He buzzed with renewed strength, taking in a lungful of the fresh afternoon air.
And every muscle in his body stiffened at the scent that rocked him.
It shouldn’t have been so familiar to him. It belonged to another lifetime, a dull, muted version instead of this sickly sweet that tugged at his insides and washed over him like ice water. It wasn’t possible. And yet–
With remarkable speed, he turned on his heel and chased after it. Curiosity, he told himself. It was only the need to know that propelled him forward. Some long, dormant part of him was waking up, rounding a corner as the scent grew stronger. His hands were fists at his side, his body shaking. He felt alive in a way he hadn’t in many years.
And then he saw her. An echo of an unpaid debt, the brutality of their last night– the scent of her wrapped its warm fingers around his throat. Several long strides was all it took before they were face to face. And there she was. His brother’s murderer. The woman who still tormented his nightmares and ruled his dreams. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. The part of him he’d thought had died at her hand was suddenly resurrected with startling ferocity.
Lavinia stopped mid-step, as any further movement would cause a collision of their bodies. But would it have been so bad? It wouldn’t be the first time, certainly — two fiery galaxies hurling at each other, divine fire and destruction intertwined. An ending dressed in inevitability, the hunger of death settling in the air.
Yet he was here.
A part of her screamed that it was impossible. He had been beyond saving that night, even by the most powerful healing spells. She had made sure of it. “Griffin.” She held his name between her teeth like a secret that could only be whispered to abandoned churches and the eye of a storm. He should have been dead. But he wasn’t, and as she stared into his eyes, the burning cinders so familiar, Lavinia felt the gnawing instinct to run.
Because whatever power had kept him alive even after the carnage she had created was stronger than her, and she could practically feel it in the space between them, the age old dynamic of predator and prey.
But she didn’t run. She only stepped closer, a hand coming up to rest upon the man’s cheek, tender like the bruises they shared from their past. A corner of her mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile, her voice soft, steady. She supposed she should have felt fear. But fear had never been an option in her life. “Missed me?”
“Dunno, vodka usually does the trick. Think they might have some rum too, honestly, whatever tis ye want, sure they have some of it. Place’s more fancy than Lyons after all, no matter what they tell ye.” They grinned, calling over a bartender to put through their order. They figured she would decided by the time they reached them.
They held out their hand to her then. “Raine Morgan,” they said, one side of their mouth shooting up as they studied her. She was one fine human being. They liked to surround themselves with pretty people, it was a little shallow, but humans were just gorgeous. “Non-binary, they/them. Currently very stoned.”
.
“I see,” she murmured, pressing her lips together in mock disappointment, though her eyes held an undeniable spark of amusement. “And here I was hoping you were going to suggest something more exciting than alcohol.”
Lavinia gave a small lift of her shoulders, briefly speaking to the bartender and ordering two shots of vodka before turning back as the stranger introduced themselves. It was an interesting name, nondescript when it came to the person underneath, but the accent spoken more than made up for it. She regarded the outstretched hand for a moment before extending her own, lightly resting it on top of theirs — a rejection of the gesture of a handshake and instead calling for a more traditional one. “Lavinia,” she spoke in return, a challenge in her gaze. “She/hers. Currently very sober.”
set: friday night
location: skye bar
availability: closed | @laviniasaiz
Laurel was out with Sergio, one of her coven members that moved to Astoria with her, also someone who was important in the previous full moon for Laurel’s safety. Maybe this was her way of showing gratitude while buying a few drinks, she just didn’t know the place would be too crowded. Laurel ordered a mojito for her and a beer for the other mean before being indoors seemed suffocating enough and with that she leaned closer: “We should head outside,” she stated in spanish, which caused the other man to nod while they moved outside. The witch just wasn’t focused on their surroundings and she didn’t noticed when Sergio pointed out at someone while saying he had found his significant other. Laurel was paying attention to something else when she lost track of Sergio.
A sigh, she looked around, taking a sip of her drink and at the same time she felt herself bumping against someone. Perhaps it was the fact her hand brushed against the other person or the fact she was still caught up on finding Sergio that her first thought was that that person was, in fact, her friend. Laurel didn’t exchange words in English, she continued engaging in her first language. “Sergio, I was looking for you and…” laughing she scratched the back of her neck. Finally switching to english, “Sorry, I thought you were someone else. I didn’t spill any of my drink at you, did I?”
While she had never been one to crave human interaction (if anything, she abhorred small talk and the practiced charm she forced herself to don in front of others), Lavinia knew well enough that it was necessary if she wanted to find some semblance of supposed normalcy within her new life. But even after one hour of sitting at the bar, head tilted in calculated intrigue at whatever conversation had been struck upon her, the brunette was more than ready to retreat back into the silence of her home.
It was on her way out that she felt her arm brush against the body of another, and it took more restraint than she would have liked to hold back the hiss that instinctively gathered between her teeth. Instead, she reverted back to the polite smile she had worn for the better part of the evening as her steady gaze regarded the other woman. Her Spanish held a familiar lilt, though Lavinia couldn’t quite place it, as if she knew it only from a memory that was hazy and frayed at the edges. “I suppose Sergio is one of the better guesses for my name that I’ve gotten from a stranger at a bar,” she shot back breezily with a shake of her head in response to the question that followed. The Spanish language flowed naturally from her lips, though hers held a trace of a Catalan accent.
Midnight. Whispers in a dead language from torn lips, calling upon constellations stripped of light. Cold hands on the hilt of a knife and she sets its bare teeth against her delicate flesh, blood flowing out like honey. She keeps her eyes shut, the spell ripped from her skin and it feels like her flesh is being turned from the inside out, demons clawing their way out from her spine. Lavinia grits her teeth together. Even as it feels like her blood is boiling, tendrils of blackened smoke billowing from the cut, taking the form of the damned or holy — it doesn’t matter, not really, as long as she succeeds.
And then, nothing.
The world settles back around her, crisp and cold, water running against rock, the winds moving from the trees, as if tittering at the witch who lost her way.
Small tremors run through her body but she senses the presence, perhaps later than she should have — further proof that the magic within her veins is lost beyond repair. A quick flick of her wrist and the knife flies in the direction of the intruder, Lavinia’s gaze snapping to their direction.
Raine was five beers in, and two joints, both smoked behind the bar about a hour earlier with two blokes who had introduced themselves as the craziest Shifters in town. They had just shrugged and shared their joint because they just wanted the company. Slightly stoned, they walked back inside, ordered another beer, and sat down next to an unfamiliar face. “Hey there,” they said, Scottish accent pushing through what they had manufactured for themselves. “Can I get ye a drink, or do ye want to share a bottle of sumething stronger with me?” They grinned, leaning against the counter, their body opened up towards her.
It was her first official night in the unfamiliar city, and while under normal circumstances, Lavinia would have been more than happy to settle down early for the night, the thought of resting upon a makeshift bed comprised of a blanket and one singular pillow didn’t quite appeal to her. In the process of applying for citizenship and transferring her assets (which really, were just cleverly disguised substitutes for cash), she’d stayed in a hotel. But tonight was the one in which the keys to her new house had been finally handed over. A new house that apparently came unfurnished. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her, really, having spent the majority of her life roaming the globe and jumping from hotel to hotel. While she was had slept in worst places than the floor, it simply seemed indecent to do so on such a commemorative occasion. And so, she’d gone to the first bar she’d spotted, hoping to drink away whatever sentimentality had taken hold.
It was on her second drink that a stranger interrupted her thoughts, and Lavinia turned at the accented greeting, her posture relaxed, wariness hidden with a practiced grace. “Depends,” she shot back coolly, a slow smile hanging off the corner of her mouth as she regarded them, “what’s your definition of strong?”
Character Name: Lavinia Saiz (born: Lavinia de Silva y Mendoza)
Age/Date of Birth: Thirty; December 21, 1990
Preferred pronouns: She/her, Cis Female
Species: Witch, Cradle
Occupation: Independent curator (art; specialty in Renaissance to Neoclassicist)
Place of birth: Guadalajara, Spain
Neighborhood: North Valley
Length of Residency in Astoria: Just arrived
sorry about the blood in your mouth.
i wish it was mine.
CHARACTER INTERVIEW
Why did you decide to move to Astoria? Can you tell us a little about the last place you lived in?
“I decided to move Astoria in order to settle down.”
The night she was born, they say her mother tried to clamp shut her legs, sweat beading on her forehead, for she knew that her womb held a creature of hunger, of devastation. They say that the first life she stole was her mother’s, drawing her first breath as the older woman drew her last.
"Most of my life has been spent traveling the world, moving from city to city as my job dictates. I would like to find a home.” Her gaze follows the interviewer’s to the papers hidden behind a manila folder. She knows what he’ll read. Lavinia Saiz, citizen of the United States of America, graduate of Oxford, independent curator and occasional consultant to the Lourve. Her oldest forged identity, meticulously crafted. A daydream bathed in blood.
Are you coming to the city by yourself, with friends or family? Is it work related?
“I am coming to the city by myself.” Her features soften into a sheepish smile, a hand coming to rest on the nape of her neck. “But I hope that perhaps I can find friends and family here.”
She took her mother’s name, favoring the poetry of a life sacrificed for another. And oh, she was poetry. Beautiful, a string of constellations colliding into one another, a gentle smile, the smell of leftover dreams. Beautiful — and terrible.
What’s something about your past you could share with others?
Her lips are stained pomegranate and she offers him the seeds with every kiss, every quiet gasp that escapes. He holds her as if she is fragile, as if she is holy, whispering her name as a manta. A litany. A prayer. His breath against her skin feels like divinity, feels like worship. It rages a fire within the marrow of her bones that allows her to forget the fractures that have begun to form on their surface, the numbness that sets into the cracks every time she draws the life out of a body. She thinks to herself that this is her absolution, he is her salvation, ignoring the quiet laugh of her High Priestess under her skin. You foolish child, you beautiful girl.
“My experience,” Lavinia answers easily, her gaze meeting the interviewer’s for a meaningful beat of silence before she continues, “I have the seen the world, have seen the good and bad, the beautiful and the monstrous.”
Please elaborate on any violent circumstances you may have been involved with in the past.
The question appears to catch her off-guard and she widens her eyes slightly before answering. “I have none,” she shrugs, “I have taken self-defense classes, as a woman traveling alone. But thankfully, I’ve never gotten the chance to use them.” A peal of bright laughter escapes her lips and she shakes her head ruefully. “Honestly, I think I’d be too shocked to even use my learned skills, if I was cornered.”
The candlelight reflects off the dagger’s metal, glinting against the hollow of her throat.
His obsidian eyes watch her, malicious and steady, and she suddenly realizes it is victory that lies within their depths, not love, not tenderness. How many times had she stared into the bottomless depths and imagined slow dances in the moonlight, afternoons spent languidly tangled in each other’s limbs?
“Why?” she chokes out, ignoring the warm stream of blood where metal meets skin.
There is no pain.
He laughs. And laughs. And laughs.
“My love, what is the best way to trap a monster?” He brushes a lock of hair away from her face. “To make the monster believe it is not a monster. To make a cage feel like a home.”
What are your weaknesses and strengths?
His blood pools at her feet. She rests her fingers against his cheek, pulling screams like betrayal from his skin. She knows this could have been bloodless, could have been quick, but the blood that drips from her robes and matts in her hair, stains her figure like pomegranate juice and makes her smile. She kisses him and decides that his lips taste better dead than they ever did alive.
Lavinia tilts her head at the interviewer, her lips pressed together thoughtfully, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “These are quite intrusive questions. Aren’t you at least going to buy me dinner first?” she chastises lightly, a shake of her head indicating that the question is in jest. “My strength is my adaptability. I have seen enough that nothing quite fazes me anymore.” A short pause. “And my weakness,” her voice trails off for a moment, “I don’t have many friends.” She shoots the interviewer a saccharine smile. “Something that will hopefully change very soon.”
Your thoughts about supernatural beings.
“I judge by character, not by species.”
BIOGRAPHY:
Lavinia de Silva y Mendoza was born on a windy December night on the stronghold of the House of Mendoza in Guadalajara, Spain. The only child to an ancient and distinguished lineage of witches, her birth held great anticipation — surely the baby girl would grow up to be the next Head Priestess of the Mendoza Coven, as her grandmother, great-grandmother, and other ancestors were. However, as darkness blanketed the air and a baby’s wail was heard through the villa’s stone walls, nothing could have quite prepared the family for what happened next. Lavinia’s mother died through childbirth, the healers gathered, sweat beading on their foreheads, to no avail. The coven mourned the death of their Priestess and friend, silence descending upon the grounds. In the years following, many would retell the story as such: the silence had been so thick, grief so blinding, that no one noticed the disappearance of the baby, carried away in the dead of the night.
For the next eighteen years, Lavinia would be shepherded from country to country under the iron fist of her kidnappers. Titled the Coven of the Deathless, the secretive group held an obsession in dark magic and sought to create the perfect weapon out of their youngest member. After all, she already had the potential of centuries of ancestral power, unbridled power at her fingertips — and theirs. Lavinia was quick learner, deemed a natural. And how could she not be? When the night settled and cold seeped into her bones, magic was her only comfort, her only friend in the iron cage that followed her.
Even when she became an adult, she stayed in the coven. It was all she knew. Hell wasn’t so bad when it felt so much like home.
She killed as she was asked, maimed as she was told. She wielded dark magic like a silky glove, not realizing that there was a price to be paid, as there always was, as there always would be. Balance. With every life that she took, with every light that dimmed in another victim’s eyes, Lavinia’s own humanity slipped from her grasp, her emotions fading, her capacity to feel disappearing.
The final price came in a spell gone wrong, too much power drawn from the well, her magic drained, reduced to tiny flickers of flames from her fingertips that died without permission. Once, power had engulfed her every step, a tornado in the form of a woman, whipping winds and raging fires. But now, nothing. Her magic, gone. A shell without the bullet, soon discarded by the coven, hunted for her knowledge of their existence.
And so she fled to Astoria. A witch drained of most of her magic, a human that never knew humanity.
This is literally what I speak about every single day to my Hispanic actor friends: ‘Put your freaking head up. Times are changing. We can be anything we want to be. We don’t have to be prostitutes, we don’t have to be maids. We can be anything.’ Let’s be powerful Hispanic women. Let’s kick these bitches’ asses.
“i. sometimes i can’t stop my hands from shaking because my entire body feels like an earthquake, ten on the richter scale; that is to say: destruction in a physical form. ii. i call my heart a hummingbird that does not want to be caged. iii. there was a time i wished for angel wings until i grew the bird-sort myself and tried to talk and broke my beak in two and ended up with a smashed halo and glass shards underneath my claws. iv. (i said it was a shame, god told me it was revenge.) v. in my dream last night, i stopped praying; learnt to set fire to the world instead.”
— killing two birds with one stone // t.e (via prcserpina)
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