dirk rider (inatower) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-03-26 15:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, !plot: howaito dē festival, cecilia fennes, lutheria beoulve |
Who: Lutheria Beoulve & Cecilia Fennes
What: “Are you Lutheria Beoulve?” “Bitch, I might be.”
Where: Somewhere in the Bazaar district
When: Backdated to Howaito Dē
Rating: Tame
Status: Complete.
Maybe it was the dog. Cecilia, her hands full of small bags of food - so much food! - had immediately zoned in on it. Small. Fluffy. Sitting in the lap of a woman who seemed to have half an armory pierced through her head and a glower that was sending any interested parties away very quickly. Not Cecilia though; she saw the dog, and smiled, and brightened, and paid little heed to its owner, making quick and small steps to leave the entrance of the confectionary/bakery she had just exited to see the tiny baby animal currently snacking on what seemed to be the remnants of some baked good. “Can dogs eat cake?” Cecilia asked, peering into the face of what seemed to be a very happy puppy - then looking up at her less-than-thrilled owner. Lutheria's first response was, naturally, fuck you and fuck off. It was hardly like she had qualms about telling any potential dog-petters to take a long walk off a short pier—not five minutes before, she had looked in the face of a six-year-old girl making cooing noises at her "puppy wuppy" and threatened to cut off her hands. All she wanted to do was eat her multilayered coffee cake (chocolate, cream, cocoa powder, soft yellow cake, faramfuck, she was going to have to come back here) and watch the people passing by, cataloguing everyone from their hairstyles to the weapons at their sides. Gillian was always happy for that sort of information. Dogs probably weren't supposed to eat cake, come to that, and she reached up automatically to push the small white puppy's face off the plate, the dog making snuffing and whining noises until she scratched behind its ears. "Dogs can eat whatever the fuck they want," she said, looking lazily up at the speaker. "They're dogs." Although not invited, Cecilia took this opportunity to sit right next to Lutheria and fishing out a small white box. She popped open the little lid, revealing its own contents: a slice of chocolate cake with a white mound of something toasted on top. She took out the little disposable fork they had provided, attached to the side of the box, and began to eat, her eyes looking down at the dog and, occasionally, looking up at Lutheria as if she weren’t looking as if she’d like Cecilia to choke on her food. “Oh, I’m sure they can,” Cecilia continued, a spot of meringue caught on her lower lip, “I guess I should have said - ‘Should they eat cake?’” "Everyone should eat cake," Lutheria said flatly, stabbing her fork into hers with such force the dog scooted back on her lap into the relative safety of her armor. She didn't stop staring at Cecilia the entire time, her gaze as dead and irrititable as she could make it (which was considerable), as if she could will Cecilia to leave with just the force of her mind. It had worked before. But Cecilia just ate happily, smiling at the dog, who sat up and wagged its tail and lolled its little pink tongue out of its mouth—and Lutheria began to reconsider adopting the thing. This level of happiness was frankly upsetting. She wondered, vaguely, if they made puppy-sized berserker armor. "You can leave now," she added, after another moment. “Oh, thank you,” Cecilia said, giving Lutheria a small smile - not warm, almost cold, actually. There was something missing in it, a certain element of sincerity. She took another forkful of her cake and held it out to the dog, who sniffed appreciatively, before popping it into her own mouth. “I hear there are certain foods that dogs can’t eat,” Cecilia continued, mouth full of sweets. “Chocolate. Chocobo bones?” She wasn’t so sure. She took a moment to look at Lutheria again, this time her expression wiped clean - just those dark eyes looking, observing, clearly not bothered by Lutheria’s unfriendliness. She turned to the dog, addressing it seriously. “Do you like those things, dog?” "Don't answer her, dog," Lutheria said, in that same fierce, disinterested drawl, as if the dog would reply, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say to a dog. The puppy looks up at her in confusion, and then squirms forward on her knees towards Cecilia's cake again. "He's not supposed to talk to strangers." “I am not a stranger,” Cecilia said. She held out her hand to the puppy’s snout, letting it sniff her, and curled a finger under its maw to scratch its chin. “I have a name. I could give it to you, dog,” she continued, preferring to converse with the friendlier member of the pair. “It’s Cecilia. Do you have one?” Lutheria eyed her critically. "Are you going to lure him into your home with cake to kidnap him?" she asked, with all the enthusiasm of a wet cat. “Maybe,” Cecilia said seriously, turning her head to Lutheria. She could not imagine being able to sneak anything into the Mages’ Tower - too many curious eyes. Inside those stone walls, it could get quite boring. You make up your own form of fancy after a time, as Cecilia had done as a young scholar herself. But she didn’t want to be the subject of any scrutiny. Still, the dog was cute. She stroked it one last time, then pulled her hand back. It took her another moment of looking at the owner, but - “I know you,” she said after a moment, realizing. “I have seen you before.” For the first time Lutheria looked at her—really looked at her. Hesitation was not something the fell knight knew how to do, but something moved behind her face, shuffled in the black holes of her eyes, like a curtain, moving gently while players crossed behind the wings. Her face did not move; but her gaze raked over Cecilia in one swift up-down motion, her mouth a thin, still line. "I don't know you," she said, after a minute. “I know you,” Cecilia affirmed, seemingly not bothered by Lutheria’s lack of recognition. She could remember it clearly - before Emillion, back when she had been a blue mage. Eyes meeting across the cobbled road. She hadn’t looked like this then, true - neither Cecilia nor this stranger with her dog. “I remember you. Your eyes,” she explained, and she reached up and touched underneath her own, “they are easy to remember. I’ve never seen such angry eyes on a Holy Knight before.” Lutheria turned back to her cake. "I'm not a Holy Knight," she said, pushing the plate further out of the dog's grasp and rising. "Clearly." She glanced down at Cecilia with all the disdain she could muster, her kohl-covered eyes, her spiked hair, her tiny white dog squirming happily in her arms. The effect would have been dubious on anyone but Lutheria. She could almost feel the air chill around them, though Cecilia, bizarrely, did not seem to notice. Her blue eyes were still on Lutheria's grey ones, and for a moment, just a moment, Lutheria thought—she could almost see them across the street in Ordalia, dust rising off the cobblestones, the girl's hair long and fair. She had left all that behind when she'd joined the Lions. No one here knew Lutheria Beoulve, failed Holy Knight, and she wanted to keep it that way. She glanced down at the remnants of cake, and without another word, scooped her dog under one arm and stalked off down the street. |