Who: Paparazzi and Envy Where: Los Angeles, in a casting cattle call When: Thursday What: playing a game Warnings: TBD
Oh, Los Angeles. She could feel it in her bones, thrumming through her veins and bleeding out every pore. Her city, her sister Hollywood’s city, that silicon city, la Ciudad de Ángeles. Paparazzi survived, thrived even, in Manhattan, but she could not long deny herself the sun-kissed joys of her own personal Mecca. Being here, in the city of glitz and celebrities, she could feel and see it all: power rippled through her and she could see from the eyes of two dozen different paparazzi all over the city, snapping photos of celebrities walking their dogs, filming anticipated sequels, and (gods and goddesses, really?) smoking while pregnant, in one case.
Within minutes of stepping off the plane, she felt it, the process that was only now finishing two days later: the low-lying weakness, the fatigue since the monster attack ebbing away, replaced by her usual vitality. She had regrown a really alarmingly large part of her torso in the space of four minutes, and it took so much out of her- the movie shoots and fake tits were reviving her.
But now that her R&R was done, she could attend to the first, most pressing matter of being here: seeing her first and oldest friend, Envy. It had been years since their last meeting, and little Diana was getting lonely. The two might have been in different pantheons and different types of immortals, but the young goddess viewed him as almost her big brother, and she would enjoy making a game of his mortals once more.
She approached the large theater where the casting call was, the building positively buzzing with ambition, greed, and desperation, tinged with the edges of vampiric venom. A smile broke out over Diana’s face- she knew Envy was inside. The instant she stepped foot in the building, whispers ran through- a mortal couldn’t hear them, but she could; the cattle, so willing to commiserate just a moment before, turned to thoughts of “oh god, I heard she slept with the casting director” and “he does drugs, he could never carry a lead on his own.” It was beautiful.
Her friend was seated in the third row of the theater, an empty stage overlooking. Diana took him warmly by the hand and pulled him in, standing on tiptoe to give him the customary kiss on each cheek by way of greeting. “Cari Principe Invidio,” she said, keeping to the old name that she would never quite let go of, “It’s good to see you.”