clara "fish for dinner" bauer (perfectclarity) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-12-15 13:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1979-12] december, aquila avery, clara bauer |
Who: Clara Bauer, Aquila Avery, (npc)Gulliver Bagnold
When: Sunday evening, dusk
Where: Arkfith Park, Dorset
What: Clara and Aquila enact dread rewengy on Millicent for locking up Fenrir
Rating: PG-13-R
Status: Complete
The air was chill around the camp and even Clara, who usually seemed oblivious to harsh or inclement weather, was catering to it tonight, clad in a long, thick dress and a pair of boots that were slightly too big for her around the foot. She did not particularly like the boots, but while she knew well the ground around the camp, ranging out fairly far, and thus knew where there were patches of briars and gorse that should be avoided, she did not know the place they were going. A-quiver with anticipation, she was currently tromping around impatiently, waiting for Aquila to come so they could do the squeezy-thing to the Minister lady's house.
It seemed a fairly straightforward mission, and one Aquila was not about to turn down. He wasn't sure whether the intention of the mission was to maim or to kill Mr. Bagnold or even if this was the Dark Lord's business or the revenge of an army now down two of its leaders. He didn't care. Boredom bred a certain eagerness that had him grasping at just about anything he could do that wasn't perusing books. He did not care for books, not like so many others, useful as they were. He was a social creature, a man of activity, and this life of seclusion and papercuts often put him in a temper.
He was cheerful now that he had a mission, especially one with the little vampire girl of whom he found he had a strange sort of fondness. Her kind intrigued him more and more as he learned more of them. Their bloodlust in this war of blood struck him as apt, and he often thought he could relate. He had a certain bloodlust himself, though it was more of a strange fascination, an intrigue, beyond even his regard for the purity of it. He had begun to recognise it in himself but had no idea of its origin. He did not question such things. He imagined everyone had something similar in them that was called from their baser natures.
He Apparated, his mask held in his left hand, to the edge of the Dark Army's territory. He was only metres away from the curious girl, whose pallor he knew was not the work of the moonlight. "Good evening," he greeted softly, and reached out a hand.
Normally people did not address Clara in such low, gentle tones; the few occasions in which they did were generally when she was up a tree, crouching in bushes, looking wild and ready to flee at the first sign of sudden movement or unexpected noise. She was not so fragile tonight, predator instead of prey, and at Aquila's sudden appearance she simply blinked at him, gazing at his hand for a moment before taking it. Hand shaking was funny, a ritual of meeting and measuring up like dogs sniffing each other or horses blowing in each others noses to express dominance but she did not really know what it measured except for how warm his hand was and how well she could see the veins on the back of it.
"Everyone is resting," she announced. "They ran a lot last night and they're all tired and boring and Aaron is really really angry at them all the time so they do not want to play. This will be fun!" She did not think it would take very long either with a magic person with her. She didn't want to fight the man a lot, he might hurt her because he could do spells and she couldn't. "You can do a spell that makes him not move without him being asleep right? I don't want him to be asleep."
He marvelled at the smallness of her hands, her arms, her stature. That such an apparently fragile being could bear the teeth and strength to pull volumes of blood out of a witch or wizard - or indeed other beings - was a magnificent deception. He briefly considered kissing her hand, but he was sure such manners might be lost on her, wild child that she was. Instead, he shook her hand a little, squeezed it gently, and released her.
"I imagine the full moon must be tiring," he responded, his voice a mere whisper. He had no intention of drawing the werewolves from their quiescence; in fact the very thought of meeting one made him uneasy.
He took a step toward her. "Yes, I can do that. Whatever you like. Come here, then. You've done this before?" He reached out slowly to close a hand around her arm.
"Fenrir takes me sometimes." Except Fenrir wasn't here now. The thought crossed her mind darkly again and made her all the more impatient; she was glad the squeezing thing didn't take long, not because of the discomfort, as she could bear that like the boots. But she had a strong desire to be at the house now so she could make the man come out and scare him good or maybe kill him, she hadn't decided yet. It didn't matter if he recognised her anyway because she was going to tell everyone what she did so they knew not to do bad things!
She felt the air tighten around her for a moment before opening up again, fresh and cold and brushing against her skin like the tendrils of some invisible creature saying hello to her, and it was not the air around the camp. She did not know how it worked, or want or need to know - it simply was, "magic" being the only explanation there needed to be. Leaves were green. You landed on the ground when you fell. The squeezing thing took you to somewhere else. She had no clear idea where they were, honestly; it could have been five miles from the camp or five hundred, east or west or north or south. Ahead of them, though, was a large house, a big house, the sort of house she might have liked to live in once. Seeing it made her scowl. The Minister lady had this. Why did she have to take away what Clara had? "Is there spells so we can't go in?" she asked; she'd heard lots about those spells before, and was vaguely wary of them. No one had ever mentioned how they stopped you going in. "Do we have to make him come out or can we go find him?"
Having slipped on his mask just prior to Apparating, Aquila's expression was hidden and he was silent for several moments as he surveyed the house. Finally, he looked down upon her. "There are wards, yes. I might be able to tear them down, but it would take a long time. It might be easiest to lure him out." He looked about until he found what he was looking for - a pocket of trees that provided enough shadow for him to hide in. He pointed. "Why don't I go over there for now, and you can - well, you can do your thing. Scream, or what have you." He knew Clara was no beginner.
Clara had always found "luring" to be an easier task than some of the other vampires she'd met; she knew it was due to her appearance, like birds who would pretend to be weak and injured to pull predators away from their nest before flying away to protect their babies. People thought little girls were weak and needed protecting. They weren't scared of her. They didn't see what she was inside, only the skin stretched over her cold, silent heart, because they didn't know how to listen or look at what was really around them. It was sad for them. But very fun for her. She waited until Aquila was "hidden" in the clumsy, awkward way humans hid, but then humans looked in a clumsy, awkward way as well, so as much as she wanted to correct him and teach him to do it properly she thought it would be okay. The man was married to the mean Ministery lady, anyway, he had to be pretty stupid!
Taking a few small steps towards the house, not wanting to risk finding out where the spells were, she imagined herself a baby animal, too far from its den and without its mother and scared and alone. She pulled the thoughts over her mind until she felt the fear, as effective a mask as Aquila's, and opened her mouth to let out a wail of hurt and pain and terror. The man would hear it, she knew, as it echoed over the landscape in the quiet night. He would want to find the hurt baby. And then Aquila would spell him.
In the sprawling house - specifically the old-fashioned, book-lined study at the rear corner of the ground floor - Gulliver Bagnold looked up from a tangle of parchment and books with a frown creasing his forehead. His hair stuck up at all manner of angles and his cardigan was buttoned askew and he'd had it, he'd nearly had it; bother. He reached for his wineglass and started again: if thul, then the corresponding rune on the widdershins column must be... His wineglass was empty, and when he set it aside irritably, a haphazard pile of tombstone rubbings slid sideways across the empty plate that had held the bacon sandwich he'd had for dinner. Millicent would've scolded him, but Millicent had been all afternoon in at the Ministry again. Gulliver wasn't ungrateful for the opportunity to actually finished this chapter. Theoretically, anyway.
When the cry came again, he realised that was what he'd heard the first time; curlews over the upper Nile at dusk; a child in need.
The study windows looked out over the back lawn of the Park, where it sloped away into copses of trees. It was a pretty view, but even when Gulliver stood at them and stared out, he usually wasn't seeing it. Tonight he peered out into the gloom, just able to make out the treeline against the almost black sky. Useless, really. Couldn't see a thing.
It took a moment to find his wand amidst the muddle on his desk, and then Gulliver crossed the hall to the parlour, with its large glass doors leading out onto the terrace. He levered one open with a squeak of hinges and poked his head out, holding up his wand and calling a spark of light to its tip - didn't illuminate much more than the terrace itself, really. "Hello?" he called, his voice seeming to fall into the dark in a not unfamiliar manner. "I say, is there anyone out there?"
The darkness wasn't an obstacle to Clara's eyes like it was to the man, and she scowled when she saw the little light, hovering at the door of the house. Stupid humans clinging to their insides and lights and fake-safety and thinking it meant there was nothing dangerous. She cried out again, piteously and with slightly less urgency this time, but enough to tell the man that there was someone there, that he hadn't imagined it. She didn't know how close he had to be for the magics to work but she guessed Aquila would do it when he could, and that he'd be watching too.
To be fair to Guppy, not only was he not paranoid by nature (he was an academic, for Hermes' sake, and not in something dangerous like Defense or Muggle Studies) but he was a father (and hoped, one day soon, to be a grandfather) and certain sounds were hardwired into his brain. Distressed children triggered an almost pavlovian reaction.
He closed the parlour door carefully behind him, then strode across the terrace, holding the little illumination of his wand over his head. Its circle of weak light spilled over the edge of the terrace as he neared it, running away down the gentle grassed slope beyond. As he stepped up to the very edge, it picked out the slight child from the dark, shining in her eyes as she looked up at him.
"Goodness gracious!" Gulliver exclaimed. His shoes slipped on the dew on the grass that would turn to frost not much later in the night; this was no sort of weather at all for a child to be out alone, so far from anywhere and wearing as little as this girl appeared to be. "However did you come to be here?" he asked as he stepped and slithered carefully down the slope towards her. "Have you family nearby, my dear? Are you cold?"
Aquila watched in avid fascination as Clara worked. Her wail even had him cringing some; no one liked the sound of a crying child, he was certain. He certainly wasn't immune. But he, unlike Gulliver, knew that the creature making the noise was not a child at all, however she looked, and so he lay in wait. He watched as the tousled-looking man emerged from his safe house and into the night, and he couldn't help but shake his head. That a man could be so foolish in such times made part of him want to laugh, the other to sigh. He extended his wand slowly and uttered, "Petrificus Totalus!" That should do.
The man toppled to the ground and Clara couldn't help but make a delighted noise, jumping up and down in her over-large boots (tromp tromp tromp) and clapping her hands in glee. If she could do that hunting would be so easy! Though, she had to admit, she liked the struggle sometimes. That was how predators operated. Tonight was not a hunt, though, it was a lesson, and she trotted towards the man with no real care for slinking through shadows or stalking prey.
It was funny looking at his face, seeing that he was aware of what was happening but could not stop it. For a moment she felt his thrill of fear rippling through her, the sudden knowledge that the thing he'd thought had been the long grass moving in the breeze had turned out to be a lioness who now had her teeth at his throat. She dropped to her knees beside him, picking up his hand and raising it to her mouth; when she was closing in on prey it was easier to grab them full-body, take it from the arteries in the neck, but he was prone and lying on the cold ground and enough blood came through the wrist for her purposes. She bit down, and the first spurt of blood filled her mouth, hot and thick and rich, rolling down her throat and filling her up from the inside out.
Aquila watched, paralyzed with fascination, as Clara took her prey. It wasn't the violent sort of attack one might expect in the throes of battle, but as deliberate as a lady settling herself to eat a four-course meal- this fork for salad, this fork for dessert- well, maybe that was just his own fancy. He held his breath as she drained him, fingers quivering on his wand as he wondered, not for the first time, what that might feel like.
The man was big, with lots and lots of blood in him, and Clara had eaten a few days ago; as she drank she considered letting him drain completely, the excess just spilling onto the ground so it would help the grass grow. This patch would probably get all healthy and green from the food and people would wonder why the weeds always grew faster there. It would be nice for the ground. But when she went past full towards bloated, she pulled her mouth away, ducking back forward only to run her tongue over the wound on his wrist, licking up the blood that leaked slowly out in her absence. Then she let his hand drop, sucking the last traces from her fingers as she rose smoothly to her feet, leaning over the man. She wasn't mean like the Minister lady. She would leave him alive and he could tell her that. "You're too big for one meal," she told him kindly. "So you can tell your wife lady to stop being mean and let Fenrir go! Otherwise I will be very angry!"
Her turn was practically a flounce as she headed back towards Aquila. She could write in her book when they got back to camp and tell everyone what she did and then the Minister lady would come and he would tell her what she said and it would all be good. Even if she didn't let him go they would get him back, probably they would make a big fight like the one at that castle school and then everyone would have to listen to them. "I'm all done," she announced. "Can we go now?"
He stood, eyes leaving the man on the ground to focus on her. It was best not to linger for too long. He reached for her and Apparated quickly from the scene, a hand gently cradling her elbow. He removed the mask as soon as he was back in the territory of the Dark Army and looked down at Clara with a half-smile. "Well, there we are."