The Dark Era GPSL

Fletcher had become a regular face around her bar, staying upstairs - there was conversation about him having a room if he needed space, but the idea lasted as long as it took Fletcher to get his pants off. Not that she minds. She's actually finding she looks forward to sleeping against him, wake up warm and held. The sex is a large bonus. Today, it's sleeting outside. It's cold, sharp, and nearly painful to be outside. The roads were icy. It kept most everyone home, and Cora's was too expensive a place for those that wanted rot-gut, so it's an empty, quiet day.

The girls are upstairs, the occasional peal of laughter being heard as they entertain themselves with one another. Fletcher is downstairs with her, playing poker and betting coins behind the bar, drinking juniper-heavy gin. She's in the middle of deciding if she's going to call his raise when the door opens and the bell tinkles. A new one, finally replacing the old one that did nothing better than a dull thunk.

It's Drew and someone Cora hasn't seen before. She's small, but Cora can feel some kind of energy coming off her. Like calling like, but she didn't know that.

Drew gives both Cora and Fletcher a smile, then straddles a stool across from where she and Fletcher are set up. Cora isn't overly fond of Drew, but doesn't have personal problems with him. She offers them both a greeting smile, standing up from her stool. "What can I get you?"

Drew answers for himself. "Whiskey." He turns his eyes to the girl, and gives her a questioning look.

The woman is a knife in human form, eyeing him over the pulse of a blue candle flame capped in a gloaming, perishing yellow. He feels revulsion toward her, a strange twitch of affection. She is the dark mother, the sharp arms he never had to hold him. Not that she’s ever held him. Or touched him. Or spoken to him, before now. He is just imaginative, preferring this lace, this pushed up, ghostly cleavage to be his matron over the sour-milk scent of the nuns, their scratchy wool fabric habits, who would embrace him only when he’d skin a knee.

Marceline doesn’t like Miles very much. He’s keenly aware of this. She doesn’t have to say it. It is in the cavalier way that she grimaces up at him, scowling like a watchful, capricious cat, narrowing. In the brusque manner in which she chats at him, rather than with him, being wildly articulate with all other people in the house. This is why he likes her. He must overcompensate; he must make her like him.

“Miles, is it?” she had said, knowing well his name. He remained flat. This was a show! He could act, just you watch! He is unaffected by her deadpan, imperious feline grin, just now, in this flicker. He is as stone, as she is, a marble boy in the abyssal, watery dark. Grinning back. Overhead, the pounding of a headboard, moaning.

“Indeed.” He confirmed.

“Garçon inutile,” she had said softly, as if it were a term of endearment. He knew what it meant; he played along. She continued, “At dawn, I’d like for you to tramp over to Cora’s, offer your services with her. I hear she’s in need of somebody of your impressive… talents.”

This was Marceline’s idea of a joke.

“My talents?” miles said, scintillating, knowing he had MANY talents. “Which one, specifically?”

Marceline beamed, “Why, all of them, boy! Now, wash yourself. Iron your workshirt. I’ll inform the theatre on your behalf that you’ll run a bit tardy for rehearsals this eve. Get some of your most impressive stanzas at the ready. Go.”

&&&

It was easier to be somebody else. Miles was someone he wasn’t aware of. He was a foundling, could be anybody. When he meets somebody for the first time, when he is nervous, he is someone else. Anyone, but that moonstone pale child, black-haired, abandoned.

MILES the magnificent breathes in, puffs up, tall and proud, chin UP! He brushes into the smoky, woozy bar. He raises his long arms, he bows. He is reasonably clad in a winter-white, clean workshirt, a cotton, intricately patterned cravat (that he’d ‘borrowed’ from someone who had left it behind last night on the staircase) black trousers. He has no funds for a frock coat, thus upon closer inspection, one might see a shiver in his limbs. It was frigid out.

“Direct me to the lady of the house, kindly!” he announces, akimbo.