It has been years since they've experienced wolfsbane, but they've never forgotten the acrid, bitter scent it leaves behind in their nostrils. Like the tiniest grains of sand scratching against their nerves. Arte coughs, trying to escape the burning in their eyes and mouth. A noose is thrown around their neck, and their instincts kick in without even thinking about it. They swing wildly, hoping to catch whoever had laid this trap for them until a blow to the head makes them collapse like a sack of potatoes.
Then they're being pulled along like a dog on a leash, and it is all Arte can do to not pass out. "W-wai--" It's like their body knows where it is and the bubble they have been living in pops as they are dragged outside of Port Leiry's limits.
The splintering of bone rouses them from their wolfsbane-induced disorientation and Arte screams as their hip dislocates from its socket. The shift is wrong, different from the turn they've learned to live with over the years. Now, they can feel the curl of magic under their skin, digging its claws deeper into their body as it twists. Unnatural. It's faster, like the curse is eager to pull Arte back into its grip once more. / @huntercam @elysiumkerr
Another gala, another morning spent trying to piece together memories as if they were made of ice melting in her hand, edges morphing, repulsed by one another. There's nothing to see, nothing to remember. Just the vaguest fucking bits of information she already came in with -- her dress, Cam's cologne, the compulsion they had agreed to. Trying to remember anything else is like splashing around in a puddle in the dark. It's all slipped through her fingers, run through her toes, and all she knows is she got wet.
"Fuck," she groans, peeling herself off her apartment couch. Elyse knows if she asks nicely, Cam will explain what happened. But, in a way, she's tired of asking. The artist loves learning from him, but this time... maybe they'd been foolish to assume their boyfriend's vampiric nature would protect them or afford them some sort of privilege when it came to the customary compulsion at the end of the night.
Here's what else Elyse remembers: that vampires and werewolves and witches and monster hunters are real. They haven't taken that, at least. Not like last time. She knows Cameron bit her, she knows she probably begged for it. She knows some vampire older and more esteemed than her boyfriend looked her in the eyes and had the choice to make, just how much of her mind she got to keep. She tries to remember the eyes and how they looked at her as they regarded her -- if they regarded her at all. They could have taken it all if they wanted, her name, her life, her ability to remember how to breathe if they were feeling that insane.
Anything else? Educated guesses, or nothing at all.
Elyse Kerr, the eternal student. Learning everything over for the first time.
At least they didn't take her art from her. She still knows how to hold a brush (even if she doesn't always remember the difference between her coffee cup and her brush water). Maybe even if her mind can't figure out last night, her fingertips can. So she sits, half-naked but fully exposed, in front of a blank strip of canvas that was hanging off her art desk. Yesterday's coffee on the left, Heather Chandler's favorite cocktail on her right. There's a notebook hanging open with absolute chicken scratch on it -- now that, they don't remember. What was going through their head when they wrote that? Now that Elyse gets a second look, it doesn't even look like her own handwriting. But she remembers the notebook. Or does she?
"Juuust paint the facts," they exhale. If ever she needed Elysium's knowledge, the power of dead things, it was now.
The sketch starts broad, in gestures, muscle memories. It's a slow process, and at some point she's not remembering -- she's rewriting the truth. Or her perception of it, at least. Best Elyse can do with her mind wiped clean. The shadow she's sculpting is Cameron, in his finery, fingers like claws poised and each wrapped in a silver string as thin as spider's silk, as strong as steel. Elyse forms herself next in strokes that build a marionette over a skeleton. Adding, instead of subtracting. The lines of Cameron's strings hold her in place like a ballerina on a jewelry box, but they're wrapped around her throat. Her fingers pluck at them like a harp and bleed on their razor's edge.
The shapes are still rough, and her critical eye pierces the canvas, scouring for some detail, some shred of a memory of the gala. Where is the rest of the scene she hasn't painted? What happened last night? Why would they take it from her? She could have asked Cam already, had her answer, and gotten on with it. But as much as she loves learning from him, she wants this world to see her as an equal. Elyse scans and scans, leaning in and leaning out, staring at the effigies of herself and her love, her bravura, talent evident in the very strokes themselves, laced with knowing. Elyse stares and stares and stares --
Until an eye looks back at her, the pupil in the paint.
Elyse once again attends a supernatural soiree on the arm of @huntercam, though some may note he's a changed man since the last. They have also officially established their claim on one another as boyfriend and girlfriend -- but tonight, their relationship is taking on a different sort of power dynamic. Vampire and human. The master and his plaything.
He might be new in his nightchild status, but his sway over Elyse is almost total tonight -- one look from her wide eyes to his darkened gaze and the compulsion scene of an afterlife began.
closed starter for @huntercam
when/where: khaos grand opening
"Sorry, should I be ordering you a pretentious bourbon, or whatever it was?"
Elyse laughs as she passes a drink over to Cam. She might be his plus one, but this undoubtedly feels more her element than his. Not that she doesn't love their quiet sessions, but there's something about the anonymity in a crowd and yet still feeling all eyes on you that lights her up.
There's something exciting, too, about knowing they've solidified their understanding of what this is. What they are. Boyfriend and girlfriend -- she's proud of it and wants to tell everyone. But being here when only they know... again, the duality is dizzying. As is the atmosphere here, holy fuck. Like someone found a way to put cocaine in the atmosphere (could someone do that?). She's drinking it in.
"Those masks are insane -- any faces I should recognize from the dance last summer?" Elyse tilts her chin at the wall while sipping her own drink -- these bartenders already knew what an Adios, Motherfucker was so it's a great sign. "And they said any subject? I'm guessing that's not inclusive of, like, a unicorn? Shit, are those real?"
She was proud of her work, of course she was. This was perhaps some of Elysium's finest work yet, but if Mr. McCormick were to even look at her wrong, she'd offer to set the paintings on fire if it would earn her even an ounce of his respect. She hated this, hated being dependent on the taste of others for the recognition their work deserved.
"You could be the juiciest plum in the ice box, and someone will still hate plums," her mother would say after her earliest rejections. But those were childhood games. Now, their work was an icebox plum compared to dust and gravel served on chipped plates. The problem was never with her vision -- it was half-assed would-be's putting others off the idea of provocative art in the first place.
But this time would be different. Elyse knew that. She had changed, her perspective had changed. The artist finally had something unique to say, whether or not others would be ready to hear it.
Come on daddy, haunt me
I know you're never gonna leave me
Indulge in your sick mind
And baby, I'm yours
You're stopping me this one time
So I tell myself I'm alright
I'm gonna lose my Gold Stars
And baby, I'm yours
While I don't think Elyse calls him "daddy" (LOL), this is absolutely for a scene of them torturing a vampire (framed from Elyse's perspective watching and observing and studying Cam while indulging in the violence of it).
She couldn't lie and say that being kidnapped was fun, it certainly wasn't. However, all that touchy feely stuff to do with Reid being alive had successfully flushed through her system and all she wanted now was revenge. Lis wasn't stupid, she knew she wasn't strong enough yet — lost too much blood without enough time to replenish it, and whilst her brain had thought of it she knew that going to her vampire friend could go south quickly in her current state.
"How do you feel—," she started, taking a pause to look at Cam, "—about hunting those that are technically human but did a bad thing. I'm not asking you to help, asking for your genuine feelings. Revenge has me wanting to murder but if I kill them am I just as bad as our little friends?" Was revenge the best thing, giving Nolan that much more attention to fuel his god damn ego? And why did she think Cam would know the answers? She supposed it was better than going to someone who would lose their shit immediately, demand to know the details about the one who took her and her time spent indisposed. Murder was such a fine line when you thought about it.
