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Vaughn Davis ([info]shebringscurses) wrote in [info]bellumlogs,
@ 2010-03-18 23:43:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:beast, beauty, black forest witch, plot: fables

Who: witchy!Vaughn, fuzzy!Daniel, and beauty!Ella.
What: Fable throwdown.
Where: R1.
When: Late morning of fable post. 11 am-ish.


She'd witnessed the sun in a whole new way. Bedroom window wedged wide open, and a witch sat on the sill. The cloak was shed to into the aftermath of forgotten carpet on the floor of 1002, but she wore a thin dress. The wind from ten stories up was quite strong, and it whipped long, black curls into her eyes. Yet, the witch wasn't disturbed from her perch. She quite liked it all the way up here, even if she was forced to come to terms with the fact that this was not her forest.

Or, maybe it was. Maybe the Black Forest had changed. Maybe all of these structures had once been trees. The lean carve of her frostbitten legs dangled out from all those stories up, and the witch tilted her cheek against the cool edge of the sill.

She smoked, but now found herself with a pipe rather than those confusing cigarettes. Everything was coming together. Everything in this moment, in this strange land, was bending to her will. Molding into her comfort, just the way it was meant to be.

The morning rolled through slowly, and by eleven there was really only one more curiosity to sate. The witch didn't bother with shoes, but the cloak and it's heavy hood were dragged back onto the brittle constellation of her bones before she set out. Ascending, ascending. Somehow, she knew the navigation flawlessly. Almost as if she'd made this trip before, although the witch was very confident that she hadn't. There was only a shred of Vaughn's awareness left in her, but it sang like a harp string. It was the lone voice urging her up, begging the witch to go see. Just to check. Just this once.

The witch complied. After all, it seemed like such a simple task, to simply open the door of R1 -- which she found unlocked -- and make her way quietly inside.


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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-19 05:17 am UTC (link)
His fear was palatable, and she couldn't imagine what it would take to scare him. He had not feared the wolf or the vampire, so to fear this woman seemed almost inconceivable. She stood from the couch, clearly wearing his clothing and smelling nothing but him and roses. She smelled no danger, no trouble, nothing familiar in the shadowed woman who she could not see, even with her perfect vision.

She touched the bristled fur on his spine lightly, and she surmised the woman must be the witch that kept him here. She took one step forward, but did not pass him. "What do you want here?" she asked, voice still sleep-thick, and she couldn't shake the feeling that, even in the shadows, she should know this woman.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-19 05:25 am UTC (link)
It was almost completely indiscernible as to where the witch's attention went from beneath the shadows of the cloak. A brief incline of the head might have offered a clue, but even those were minimal at best.

The Beast had her eyes initially. Such a conflict; the indifference of the witch met alongside the razorous, jealous edge of Vaughn. A Beast could stir nothing in her, so where was this turmoil coming from? "Careful, pet. I suggest you keep your temper, and your claws in.. after all, I gave them to you." And what kind of courtesy would it be to snarl at a hostess?

As for the young beauty, she'd remained ignored for the most part. That is, until the woman took it upon herself to scurry from the plush state of her concubine cushions and practically rival with a voice gone throaty from dreams.

The witch tilted her head, and drew back her cloak's cowl in a movement that was slow, although the effect was that of a flourish. Like bones rubbing themselves into pure satin. Where she'd seemed withered and cowering, she was suddenly staunch and beautiful.

"Nothing of you, maiden, worry not."

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[info]labete
2010-03-19 05:33 am UTC (link)
The Beast just froze, fur on end, radiating with fear and tension and a kind of rolling, impotent rage that grew until it collapsed in on itself for one icy moment before it began to grow again. He moved forward on stiff legs until he was another foot in front of the girl on her couch. He showed the Witch his teeth and ducked his head low until his shoulder blades rose in sharp confrontation. "What do you want?" The blue eyes were the same, intelligent, sharp. As the Beast stared at the Witch, Daniel stared at Vaughn. Their reactions did not conflict, but they were not the same. "I've done nothing more to you. Go away and leave me alone."

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-19 05:43 am UTC (link)
She didn't move in front of him again. He had enough to deal with, with the witch before them; she didn't want his attention diverted with concerns for her safety, which she somehow knew he would have done.

Still, even with that, the way she called him pet made her angry, and her eyes flashed with that anger in the apartment's dim light. Every fiber of her being screamed he isn't yours, and it was something that went past whatever was happening in the apartment at that moment, even if she couldn't explain it.

Her hand did not move from his spine, even when he moved forward, and though she remained quiet, her chin tipped defiantly and her eyes said, very clearly, that she would not be meek in this.

The fact that there was something familiar about the witch played at the edges of her consciousness, however. "Do we know one another?" she finally asked.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-19 05:52 am UTC (link)
The cloak slid down the elegant carve of her body, and the witch shrugged it's folds into the tuck of her elbows so as to not let it descend from her form completely. The dress she wore was pricey and well-tailored, incredibly modern if one lived circa 1700. Of course, it was simply a fabric of her creation and therefore echoed the time of her mindset. Thick, rose-patterned brocade and a black tufted underskirt. The sleeves dipped from her shoulders like tears of white lace, which vanished into the black velvet of the cloak she kept aroud her elbows.

The witch wanted to answer the Beast, but words failed to find her. While they were quick in coming, the young woman interrupted and ruined everything. The witch's attention wavered to the soft beauty like the slash of a sword, fierce. Cold and gray.

"You should think twice before talking to me, fairest!" After all, even the Beast knew that she could take offense at the littlest of phrases.

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[info]labete
2010-03-19 05:59 am UTC (link)
The Beast's alarm increased twofold. He swung around, and with frightening intensity, hissed, "Silence!" an inch from Ella's face. The word displayed two rows of teeth made to tear flesh and he was not joking. Spoken word it might be, but it was he who ruled this castle, not the daughter of a village tradesman.

Then he moved back around, all bear as he swung his whole body to face the Witch. "What more can you do to me? You have come to gloat?"

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-19 06:36 am UTC (link)
When he hissed and bared his teeth at her, she tipped her chin more, but she did not speak. She could tell from the tenseness of muscle under her hand, from the look in those eerily familiar blue that it was fear causing him to act the way he was. She didn't blame him for his actions; she blamed this woman in front of them.

She slipped her hand down his spine a little, where it would be harder for the witch to see the touch, and she slid her fingers into the fur gently, a touch that said she was there, and that she was fine. Reassurance.

That the witch thought herself beautiful in her finery was obvious, but the witch was also as cold as the stones had been underfoot on the balcony the night before.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 04:47 am UTC (link)
"No," she addressed the Beast's question, cool and immediate. The witch held no registry of alarm or tension in the morbid smoke of her eyes, even when the Beast whirled around to face her. What was there for her to fear in a beast? She could have just as well turned him into a mouse as this creature of claws and teeth.

"I'm not here to gloat." Her words were soft and assuring, although the witch made no attempt to explain why she was here.

Her attention lingered briefly on the Beast, but was more hard pressed to connect with the young woman beyond him. Her expression was keen and neutral, almost friendly with such innocent interest. "You live here as well, maiden?"

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[info]labete
2010-03-20 04:56 am UTC (link)
Her answer clearly startled the Beast; even the vague whisperings of Daniel's humanity were momentarily silenced as he stared at her. He did not expect her to fear him, he acknowledged her as the superior of power and had not even thought of physically challenged her presence, even with the defense of the tiger in his den--but still, he did not comprehend her presence except where it concerned him. Slow to catch on to the transfer of attention (threat?), he slowly lifted his head and then turned it to look at Ella, in unintentional curiosity as to her response.

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-20 05:01 am UTC (link)
The question made her furrow her brow in confusion. She did- no, she should, but she didn't. It was all jumbled in her mind; a mix of Beauty and Ella. She had spent the night, hadn't she? She looked over her shoulder at the sliver of the blooming garden visible through the drawn curtains. Yes, she had.

She looked back at this witch, this intruder, this woman who was almost familiar to her. "I am a guest," she said, because it seemed to cover all possibilities. She kept her voice polite, but she also did not move her hand from the Beast's fur.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 05:10 am UTC (link)
The woman's response did not enrage the witch or send her into a fit. Even if there was a rattle of disturbance in the back alley of her mind, Vaughn hissed at this breach of her territory, the witch did not recognize it as jealousy. Where Vaughn was overflowing with the chaos of fifty new emotions that had yet to even be defined through modern language, the witch was empty. More than empty, she was a chasm of such severe nothingness that, like a blackhole, it might just destroy them all.

"Interesting," she mused. Her pale eyes skirted back to the Beast, although the smile she gave him was on the opposite side of the fence from anything remotely friendly. "I would not have thought that monsters had very many guests."

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[info]labete
2010-03-20 05:19 am UTC (link)
At this point, the Beast was a little past having his tender feelings damaged, but he did not like the comment for the same reason he did not like mirrors in his castle. He growled softly and flattened his ears back, but said nothing in his own defense. Instead he said, tangled by teeth and restraint, "It is safer here than out there. She wants to stay." In a dramatic shift of body language, he turned the wide blue eyes to look back at Ella again, asking her for confirmation in a way he had never asked for anything before. Tell her, he said, silently, Please tell her you want to stay.

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-20 05:26 am UTC (link)
When the witch spoke, she expected some sort of cruelty. Every sentence the witch had said thus far had been touched with something unkind, and so it did not surprise her when she called him a monster. She would have argued with her, based on that statement alone, if he hadn't spoken and turned to her.

The pleading in his eyes surprised her. The only reason she had left her response as vague as she had was because something in the back of her mind warned her that it was a secret, her being in his castle.

"I very much want to stay with him," she said, the certainty and fondness in her voice unmistakable. "Though I could not tell you how many guest monsters have, as I do not know any monsters." The last was said gently, but firmly.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 05:40 am UTC (link)
The witch remained almost clearly ignorant of the Beast. Forgoing any interest in his silent pleading, so that she could watch the young woman's expression very carefully. When the girl spoke, her words drove the witch's eyebrows into high, dark arches of amused surprise.

I don't know any monsters. How endearing. The witch broke down in a brief fit of laughter; the laugh was very much Vaughn's, sweet as a sugarcube, sharp as a knife. For a moment, she strongly considered walking up to the young woman for a closer examination. But even she wasn't carelessly vain enough to step so near her Beast's claws.

"Tell me, maiden. What could he have possibly done to warrant such loyalty from you?"

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-20 05:46 am UTC (link)
The laughter sent chills down her spine, and it warned her that this woman was as dangerous as instinct told her that she was. She edged a touch closer to the Beast's side, closer to warmth and safety and away from the chill of that sharp-sweet laugh.

"I care for him," she said with a tilt of her chin. The movement dared the woman to try to argue with her on the matter. "He is kind and brave," she added, thinking back to the incident with Vlad and then later, his behavior in the apartment.

She didn't ask what her Beast had done to the witch, because nothing warranted what the woman had done to him.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 05:50 am UTC (link)
She listened to the woman with almost no reaction, and then her eyes slid coolly to the Beast. "Is that what you are now? Kind and brave?" It was clear from her clipped tone that the witch knew of no such traits to be correlated with the Beast.

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[info]labete
2010-03-20 05:56 am UTC (link)
Warmed by the beauty's acknowledgment of him in a way he had not been aware was possible, he pressed one side against her hip gratefully, fur slowly relaxing as he did. He looked back at the Witch, but he did not appear to have Beauty's resilience, and he let his chin drop a few inches. "The dead walk on the floor below," he said, in a low, sullen voice. "I did not want it--" he stopped, blinked in confusion, "--him--to hurt her. She is a Guest," he added, almost hopefully. If the Witch might acknowledge his welcome of Beauty, perhaps she might relent in her punishment.

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-20 06:00 am UTC (link)
When he moved closer, she smiled down at him a moment, expression unguarded and fond. Then she looked back up at the witch, her gaze shuttering almost immediately, becoming a blank thing. She knew it would not be wise to let this woman know her thoughts, despite the nagging suspicion that they knew each other.

She listened to his words, and she decided the best course of action was to follow his lead, though she did not understood why he said what he did to the witch. She tugged aside one shoulder of the loose shirt she wore, letting the witch see the red stained gauze there. "He speaks the truth. The vampire injured me, and the Beast saved me."

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 06:10 am UTC (link)
The witch said nothing for a long moment. Her attention wavered between the crimson stain on the gauze, to the young woman's face, and then down to the Beast. "I am not here to punish you," she murmured to reassure him once more. Slim-boned fingers hitched in the fabric of her cloak, hauling it's heavy luxury back onto her shoulders. It was obvious that she was preparing for a farewell, one that seemed to be leaving the two of them unscathed.

"If you believe her to be the one to break your spell, bonne chance." Somewhere, inside of her, Vaughn lashed out like a scream that echoed through her every cell. The witch tilted her head, wondering in that moment why she didn't punish the Beast some more. And the girl too, just for good measure. It seemed important, although she could not figure out why. The witch shook her head at the discomfort of such rivaling thoughts, and pulled the velvet cowl back over her hair.

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[info]labete
2010-03-20 06:16 am UTC (link)
It was Daniel that would have been blown over by a feather at that point. The Beast was... nonplussed. He had not expected the visit, as he had not known what to expect from her presence once he became aware of it. Yet now she did not seem a threat. Despite her power she was being extraordinarily civil, and he did not perceive a danger where he might have a moment ago, or felt at sharp moments from the more human part of himself. When she made as if to retreat, however, he took a tentative silent step forward, keeping his head low but tipping it up at her inquiringly. "But..." he said, urgently, "but it is your spell. Can you not--"

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 06:30 am UTC (link)
This was tender, uneven ground. With every passing second, the witch was becoming more and more on edge. Such rising turmoil at the base of her spine, climbing one vertebrae at a time, it didn't make sense to her at all. Half of the feelings she could not label or recognize, but they felt like distant shadows of betrayal, hurt, and anguish. Wherever this strange unfamiliar feeling was coming from, she didn't like it.

The Beast chose the wrong moment to make such an ill-advised request of her. When he spoke, the witch spun as if she'd been struck by his claws rather than his words. The thick hem of her cloak fanned out in a shadowy, wide circle.

"NO!" Her voice was an angry clap of thunder that rattled the windows and sent volumes of books flying from one of their bookshelves, as if swiped loose by an invisible and violent hand.

"I can, but I won't. You'd do well not to test my generosity tonight, pet! I have half a mind to keep you in this state forever, now that you're so.. kind.. and brave."

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-20 06:36 am UTC (link)
She knew things were going to get bad well before they did. She did not know if it was intuition, knowledge of the witch, a whispering from the flowers on the balcony. Somehow, she just knew.

When the witch's cloak fanned, she moved even closer to the Beast at her side. The flying books and rattle of thunder made her hold onto the Beast's fur and duck her head for safety against his softness as the books battered them. Even with that, she didn't scream. Above her mounting fear, the scent of roses could be smelled in the room, and thorny vines were starting to creep from the corners of the living room, unthinking things brought on by her fear that creeped toward the witch.

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[info]labete
2010-03-20 06:43 am UTC (link)
The Beast pressed back into Beauty so tightly that his ribs scraped against her hip and she could probably feel his heart drumming like hummingbird wings under his skin. His fur flattened entirely and he pulled paws and chin down to make himself as small as possible under the assault of the Witch's anger, a strange feat for so large an animal. Daniel would have become angry, but under the fear the Beast only had desperate hope, too much to ignore even in answer to the Witch's rebuttal. "It has been many years," he said, in a soft whine.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 06:52 am UTC (link)
"The spell knows when it's deed is done," she said as an air of calm came back to her. The explosive moment was wrestled low and tucked away once the Beast cowered so preciously. He did not need kindness from the witch in order to be free, the nature of the spell was one that would resolve itself.

She crossed her arms over the flat of her abdomen in a moment's strange consciousness. Apprehensive as she waited for the unfamiliar emotions to rise again, but in that brief crack of her anger, the unknown chaos seemed to have been sated. At least for now.

Movement in the corner of the room drew the witch's attention, quick and curious as any predator. She faced it, and blinked at the crawling thorns and vines. True interest sparked in her eyes then, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. "What magic is this?"

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[info]bookshelved
2010-03-20 06:58 am UTC (link)
The alternating calm and storm kept her from finding her footing. She didn't know whether to listen or duck, and she suspected that was what made the witch so dangerous; the not knowing. It reminded her of someone just outside the edges of her memory, and though she tried to catch the thought as it flitted past, it slipped through her fingers.

The Beast's soft whine made her angry at the witch, and with the anger, the vines inched ever closer. From every corner, they crept toward the witch's feet, stopping for a moment when she asked her question. She petted the Beast's fur along his spine, scratched at the back of his neck. "I do not know," she said. It wasn't a lie; she had no idea how it was happening; it simply was.

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[info]shebringscurses
2010-03-20 07:08 am UTC (link)
She contemplated the vines with a tilt of her head and a subtle tension between her brows. Those wintry eyes fell into a tight squint of focus. Although the witch had never known fear, she recognized that these thorns were not of her magic, and would possibly not even react to her magic. She didn't try to influence them; with strange spells, it was best to leave them be. The silence stretched on until finally, the witch took one slow, cautious step backward.

When her attention lifted, the dark humor in her eyes was all for the Beast. "It seems you have a witch of your very own, animal. Let her tinker with or remove my spell for you!" And with that, there was a new hiss of jealousy. It sounded strange and alien on the witch's tongue, but she did not think on it. Instead, she turned to leave them to their sad circumstances.

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