Jezebelle Calista Marino (roseblood) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-09-06 15:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | #flashback |
all these lessons that we've learned here have only just begun
Who: Jezebelle and Laurent
Where: A Party; Rome, Italy
When: Spring 1893
A party was no place for a pregnant woman, as there was only so long Jezebelle could stand to be on her feet. Her belly ached with the baby inside twisting restlessly, and it didn't help to have ten pounds of clothing weighing her down. She would have rather stayed at home, but Vincent had wanted to show her off and brag about the son he was to have. There was no arguing with him, as his temper was quick to come to a boil and fighting only upset her more. So there she was, dressed in a gown of pale green and ivory, unable to conform to the set fashion of the time. At least no one expected her to wear a corset while she was pregnant, though her feet ached from her heels.
After her third trip to the bathroom, Jezebelle slipped into a side room, pleased to find it empty, and even more pleased to see that it was full of books. Reading was her escape and dark secret, a way to take in knowledge that would never be granted to her otherwise. Vincent didn't like her reading, but he did not keep watch over her every second of the day either. Jezebelle was a firm believer that what he didn't know couldn't hurt him. She scanned the shelves, then selected one to her liking before taking a seat. A few minutes of reading couldn't hurt. No one would even know she was missing.
Italy was interesting. Sometimes Laurent wondered why he had ended up here but then, like most places in the past century, he did not have much of an idea. There were a few interesting vampires in the area and somewhere he had come across a library with an old book he was certain had to be written by an Azraelan. Now remembering where that library, or room, was located was a bit of a problem. This isn't the sort of thing one things about while at a party, Laurent reminded himself as a polite smile came to his face in response to a passing lady. Had he come here with one of those? Most likely, but for whatever reason he could not remember what she looked like so she was probably just another member of his House and therefore not as consequential as if there were an actual connection there. "Excuse me," he said when he realized that there were, in fact, other people near him. It was not that Laurent was absent from reality so much as, with all of the time that he spent in people's dreams and astral projecting, that he could forget he was really there. He had yet to master the ability to balance and fully distinguish the differences between the two.
Somehow he found himself walking out of the main room and into a hallway that led who knew where. Pausing briefly he caught the sound of a door closing and, probably because he had nothing better to do, followed it. Pushing open the door that he had heard the vampire glanced inside, sniffing lightly and picking up with no difficulty the scent of a human. Like most people at these parties but it was still good to distinguish between them and his own. Oh, not just a human but a woman. Judging by the faint heartbeat accompanying the stronger she was also pregnant... and reading. Odd. Did not appear to be anything physically wrong with her so why she was not dancing or with her husband - she had to have one seeing her state - was a mystery. Laurent had never done well with those. "Excuse me," he said after a moment, stepping into the room and letting the door close. "But I needed a moment away from all that and it seems like you think the same way. May I ask what you're reading?"
Jezebelle didn't realize she was not alone until Laurent spoke up, at which point she jumped and immediately glanced at the closed door. A private conversation with a man that was not her husband would be considered scandalous, even more so considering her state, and yet the protest died on her tongue before she could voice it. He'd invaded her privacy, and if anyone asked, she would say so. In a day where women were supposed to be too stupid to know better, Jezebelle decided she'd milk it for all it's worth if it became necessary. Upon realizing that he'd asked a question, she looked down at the book. Shit. Couldn't she have picked up a book of poetry? It'd be far more believable than what she was actually reading. "It's called Proceedings of the Natural History Society of BrĂ¼nn," Jezebelle said, turning in seat to face him. There's an article by this Augustinian priest on Experiments on Plant Hybridization." God, she needed to shut up before he laughed at her or had her committed to an asylum. "I like plants," she added with a little smile. It was more than that, but he didn't need to know so.
Had Laurent actually paid attention to the rules of the world and polite society then he would have known that it was not proper to be alone with a woman in a room. But he had never had much of a mind for that sort of thing if he were being honest and the years since he had needed to observe the rules had erased most of his knowledge on the matter. Far more interesting was the fact that this particular little pregnant woman seemed to have a mind inside that pretty head of hers. Well well, look at what the Italians can do, make thinking women. In addition to not paying attention to the rules Laurent had also not had all that much contact with women after he joined the military. And vampire women were a lot different for whatever reason. Likely the extra years of life or the fact that they were simply different. Weak wills did not make it for all that long. "I'd never have guessed that you liked plants after what you're reading." Laurent knew next to nothing about plants. He usually read books about things like military strategy, his favorites being the ones that dealt with the French army when he was a part of it, and had he flipped through that book she was holding he would have been lost after at least two paragraphs. "I'm sorry, I forgot my manners at first, I was so startled to find someone else here. Laurent Rousseau. Are you perhaps the lady of the house?"
His response made her smirk, as if he knew she was trying to cover for reading beyond what she should be capable of. Jezebelle hated the idea that women could not be intelligent, yet knew trying to prove it would get her in more trouble than staying quiet. At least in silence she could get away with more. She'd already proven that once in her life. "Jezebelle De Luca," she said, rising to her feet, something she should have done the moment he entered. No one greeted someone sitting down, but her feet were so sore that she'd been slow to react. Now that they were having a proper introduction, she could not stay sitting. "I'm afraid to say I am not, but rather a tired wife looking to escape the women's gossip and find a place to rest my feet. And since I take it you're not the man of the house, what takes you away from the party?" Surely he would be missed. He looked like he could be a favorite on the dance floor.
Laurent immediately wanted for her to sit back down because he would have sworn he had heard something somewhere about pregnant women needing to stay off their feet. But it was not a topic he was very intimate with so he did not say anything and stayed where he was, hands grasped firmly behind his back where they belonged. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. De Luca," Laurent said politely, giving a deep bow. No matter how long he had been dead he was first and foremost a gentleman with manners ingrained so deeply they would hopefully never go away. "If you're here to rest your feet then you should sit down and continue to do just that. If it makes you feel more at ease then I can sit as well." He moved closer to a chair, ready to sit if she did but waiting for her to do so first. "I was simply bored with the dances and talking," Laurent admitted after a moment of thought. He had never realized that he would reach the point where mortality seemed dull to him. "Books tend to be more interesting overall."
"Thank you," she said, relieved to take a seat once more. High heeled shoes, dancing, and the weight of a baby did not go well together. "What do you like to read?" Jezebelle asked. "I grew up on books. When other girls were playing with their dolls, I would sneak into my father's library and read whatever I could get my hands on." Sometimes it had been fiction, but as she got older Jezebelle found value in reading the sciences. Without that material, she was certain she would not have lived this long, though she refused to think about what might have done her in. All she knew was that her brother's death at her hand had been a blessing brought on by chemistry books.
Once Jezebelle had seated herself Laurent pulled a chair out from a nearby desk and settled into it. Hearing about a girl growing up on books was almost refreshing. Sure there had been his sister who had grown up in much the same manner as her, except for those times when they were getting older when their mother had dragged her off for things that Laurent did not need to know. Oh, maybe that had been learning how to take care of a household or something. "I like the read strategy," Laurent confessed. "Military things have always been my weakness and passion, though anything on the world of dreams is fascinating as well. Surely there's something you like that isn't just everything... a more specific liking?" Not whatever she was reading now, that seemed dreadfully complex.
Did she lie or try to tell the truth? He'd been honest with her, but his interests were within those acceptable by his peers. If Jezebelle tried to discuss her favorite reads with other women, she'd be shut out of the conversation entirely. Men would have laughed and assumed she was joking, then frowned in displeasure if she proved she was not. "While it's not a world I'm privy to, I find chemistry and medicine fascinating. The advances we make each year allow us to do more than we even believed possible the year before. I also enjoy the works of Mr. Edgar Allen Poe," she said with a smirk. Perhaps it was dark and dreadful for a woman to like, but she much preferred it to the flowery romances that seemed far out of her reach.
Emotions of pregnant women were something that Laurent had learned relatively early on were not something he wanted to be privy to and so, on instinct, he kept his shields up. Though after a few moments of listening to Jezebelle he let them down bit by bit and was amazed to find that Jezebelle seemed to enjoy just mentioning science. Women can be the oddest things I swear. Laurent was certain that he would never be able to understand them no matter how old he got. Some seemed to have minds filled with nothing but fluff and then there would be ones like Jezebelle seemed who knew more than decent few men with 'educations'. "Color me surprised," he said after a moment. "Italian women seem far better educated than the French are. Do you have a favorite of Poe's?" Laurent himself was not a big fan, but he had read a few things in passing. Science he had never had much of a head for.
"Well, don't tell my husband that," Jezebelle said with a laugh. Vincent did not approve of learned women and, therefore, Jezebelle could not be counted among them. It would only make their strained relationship more difficult than it already was. "I am rather fond of The Tell-Tale Heart," she said, her lips twisting into a smirk. "The imagery is beautifully done, and the story itself sends shivers down my spine." Some called Poe's stories vulgar, and many disapproved of women reading them entirely, but his were the sort that Jezebelle could read again and again. There was a page-turning perfection to them that had yet to be duplicated, in her opinion. She only wished there was more to read than he'd left behind. "I dare say it's the darkness that I enjoy about it. I feel that he writes of the world that no one wants to see."
Laurent nodded his head and hid a smile that would have shown his fangs. "Just our little secret." He doubted that her husband would approve of the two of them talking alone for that matter. Laurent had no ill intentions in mind, despite his natural inclination towards them, but he was a man and he knew how society viewed the two sexes interacting. As something that should be done in the company of others only. Proper supervision. This girl is different. Or rather, Laurent had never met one who tended so towards darkness. In certain company it could have been called morbid even but not to him. He was a vampire who lived off of blood and had basically killed people for a living before that. Morbid was something he had always been acquainted with. "You want to see it, perhaps?" He asked, genuinely curious. "The dark world that the light doesn't touch, or rather a different sort of light." He supposed that vampires were considered a part of that world, even though he had met quite a few religious vampires who insisted that they did indeed have souls. If we want or need them.
And who says I haven't seen it? The little smirk that crossed Jezebelle's lips was all she willingly revealed, well aware that going down that path would be a poor choice on her part. She knew well of the darkness that lurked in human souls, had seen it first hand and had her own pulled out to fight. While she hoped never to go there again, there had been a certain power to giving in that she accepted. Should she need to, she could go there, and would. Should she need to... "Everyone has a little darkness in them, men and women alike. To pretend they don't would be lying to yourself." She paused, tilted her head slightly to the side, examining him. "You said dreams interest you. What about nightmares? Do you think the mind preys on what it's given, or do you think it's capable of creating it's own fears within?"
A smirk? More to the girl than meets the eye. Laurent would have confessed himself intrigued if anyone had asked, but since they had not he only admitted it to himself. He knew himself well enough to know that he had put humans down a few levels on the chain of, well, what mattered. They were a good food source and potentially made good vampires, but other than that they just lived for such a short period of time. Soon enough he imagined it would seem like nothing more than a blink of an eye to watch one pass by. "If everyone has darkness then everyone has light as well," he pointed out. As a former fire elemental he could not imagine nothing but dark. Where was the fire, the fun, if that spark was gone? A person without a spark was a candle without a wick, a useless lump that could be shaped but never truly alive. "And nightmares, well, they feed on our fears and our reality, the worst always being the ones that could truly happen. Think of it, Mrs. De Luca." Laurent had leaned forward a little, a flicker of passion that came only when the world of dreams was being mentioned evident in his eyes and voice. "Your worst nightmare will forever be one based on something that did, or could happen. Not of something that will never be because it couldn't exist. Just like the truly terrifying monsters are the ones that smile at you. We make our own nightmares." Not that he was able to have even those anymore.
Jezebelle nodded in silent agreement. Everyone had light; that she did believe. It was the front that most people put on, unless they wanted people to think they were evil. Even the darkest people seemed to have another side to them. She couldn't imagine what must occur for a person to be one hundred percent in either direction. "Everyone should have nightmares, then, because everyone has fears," Jezebelle said. "I would think that what separates us is how deep those fears run, and how far into the dark we've seen, allowing our mind to venture there on it's own." If she could wish away her nightmares, she would, but they came on their own, disrupting her sleep with screams she couldn't explain away to her husband. He thought she was ill, sought to find reasoning behind it, and Jezebelle could not explain what she did not want him to know. He never appeared to have nightmares, but perhaps they were silent. If he did not wake screaming from them, then it was hard for her to know. "Dreams are fascinating. We know so little about how they work, and yet we try to determine what they mean and what to draw from them. I can see why they would interest you."
The idea of a completely dark person brought to Laurent's mind an image of what most people thought of vampires. If they thought of them. Everyone did have nightmares though. When he had wandered through dreams he had always come across nightmares. They were just as common, if not moreso, than actual dreams. But he had never come across someone who seemed as though they thought of it too much. Perhaps Jezebelle had not had the easiest of lives. That would explain why she said things like that and enjoyed the works of someone like Poe when most ladies Laurent had known would flinch away just from the mere thought of such readings. "They sometimes seem more of a reality than life itself," Laurent remarked almost absently. "Do you dream every time that you sleep?" He found that most everyone did, they just did not remember upon waking. He, on the other hand, remembered dreams he was in as easily as day to day life since they were his life. Some people would probably think it was sad but those same people had never been in a dream. And could probably sleep and have dreams of their own.
She wasn't sure that she agreed with him entirely, though she did know that while dreaming the dreams seemed more real. Jezebelle could not live in dreams, nor did she usually want to, as it often felt like she'd lost what little control she had within them. Dreams were far more unpredictable than reality, and often she needed to know what was coming in order to prepare for it. "If I do, I don't remember," she said. "Normally, the best and the worst stick with me into waking hours. Since I've been with child, though, it feels like I dream every night. Or maybe I'm just more restless than usual, so I wake up amidst my dreams." She would never complain about being pregnant, but it did have it's drawbacks. Cravings were one thing, and comfort was another. She looked forward to being able to hold the baby in her arms rather than carry him around inside of her. "Do you dream often?"
That raised a question that Laurent had often wondered about. Did babies dream before they were born? Perhaps they did, perhaps it bled into the mother and caused her to have more dreams. Jezebelle saying that she dreamed every night since she had gotten pregnant made him think that maybe that was what happened. Maybe I'll have a look and see if there is any difference. Dreams did vary drastically depending on the age of the dreamer after all. One influenced heavily by a baby who had no scope or view of the world past the womb it grew in would likely be... simplistic, if tinged by the mother. "Ah, no I don't," Laurent said wistfully. His own dreams were a far away memory from the life he had lived, his last being that morning before Phillipe had finally turned him. It had been about fire and his sister. Two things he had long since lost. "I often think about dreams, sometimes so much that it seems like I'm dreaming when I'm awake." Which he always was. But he doubted that revealing he never slept was a good idea, seeing as how it was definitely not a human trait. "Someday I intend on writing a book about dreams and their significance on our psyche, whether we acknowledge it or not."
It seemed sad that he would have such an interest in dreams, yet not have them often enough to analyze this own. Then again, maybe that was what peaked his interest. She could certainly see how it could feed a curiosity. "I hope you do," Jezebelle smiled. "I would very much like to read it." With the high interest in spirituality and seances that was going on these days, it might even be something she could attempt to discuss with the other women of her class. Lord knew they needed something to talk about.
"Jezebelle?" A voice called out from the hallway outside and Jezebelle instantly rose to her feet, eyes wide. Her attention shot back to Laurent for only a second, smiling despite the nerves that had suddenly hit her. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rousseau. I very much hope that we should cross paths again, but I've got to be going. If you'll excuse me..." She gave a short little curtsy, then hurried towards the door, speaking as she opened it. "Sorry, darling. I just needed to rest my feet for a bit..." The door shut before any more could be heard, at least to human ears.
"Perhaps you will." Or perhaps she would be dead by then. Laurent still did not feel like he knew enough to proclaim himself any sort of authority despite entire decades spent dedicated to night else but that. Well, and astral projection, but he was not going to talk about that with a non-vampire. Especially not in this day and age where people believed in some things but not others and the last thing he needed was to be proclaimed possessed or something of that like. Though at the sound of a male voice from outside it seemed that the conversation was at an end. Feeling a slight bit of disappointment, that was the most interesting time he had had at a party for quite awhile, Laurent still rose to his feet as Jezebelle left. His empathic shields were still down so he felt the nervousness and was quite confused about it. I assume that's her husband and yet... how odd. Shrugging, it was really none of his business at the moment, Laurent picked up the book Jezebelle had left behind and began to page idly through it.