Israel Alderdice (izzy_alderdice) wrote in v_nocturne_rpg, @ 2009-08-13 19:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | irina kirmasov, izzy alderdice |
When Shall We Two Meet Again?
It was...nice. He would have liked to believe he was in heaven, to fall down on his knees every day and give thanks to whatever miserable entity had been assigned to guard over his fate, but for whatever reason, he hadn't done that since the first day. No, now he was simply enjoying himself, an strange concept but he didn't question it.
But it was like heaven in here, wasn't it? All shiny lights and gilt decorations and pretty smells. On the days when it rained, it had the quality of making it seem like it was a perfectly bright and sunny summer day inside. It gave everything and everyone a soft glow that surprisingly did not remind him of a brothel. It had a way of making people attractive, if only for however long they were in the shop. And some women spent hours in there, or in the cafe. Izzy half-suspected they were Berdette's friends, but if not she seemed very good at pretending to care about them. Izzy, for his part, was attempting to learn their names, since at least once they'd called him away from his work just to giggle and natter and confuse him entirely.
This hardly bothered him, however. Nothing here bothered him, especially not the work itself. Okay, so some of his nights weren't terribly pleasant, but by all rights this was the easiest job he'd ever had. It wasn't that he was necessarily an expert on birds (quite the opposite), but that these birds acted like nothing he'd ever come across. Nothing living, at least. They were entirely complacent and very quiet, content to go along with whatever he wanted to do with them. They weren't sick, however, insofar as Izzy knew. Their eyes were bright and their feathers were as shiny as they were riotously colored and they looked for all the world entertained, though not by anything he could see. It was a bit strange, but he wasn't going to question it.
At the present moment, he had a handkerchief on his shoulder. On top of the handkerchief sat a bird, off in its own world for now. The old bird-keeper had left his notes, and that was the only way Izzy knew that this was what was apparently called an Eastern Rosella. Otherwise it was the parakeet with bright red head and light blue-green tailfeathers, which could have been used to described about half the birds in the shop. Its Latin name was Platycercus eximius, which was unique in that Izzy could pronounce it. No one had asked him this, but he figured that if someone did, he should at least sound educated about it.
He stood on a small stepladder, putting the cage back into its rightful place. Thankfully, this was the last one of the morning.
It was four days until Irina felt well enough to leave the house on her own. Berdette had been correct, the aftermath of the possession was like being laid low with a fever, and she spent most of the time in bed with cold compresses pressed to her forehead and the backs of her hands. She despised being bedridden, even for a short time, and it was as if she'd never been outside before when she departed her residence earlier in the day. Even the shops were an improvement over the confines of her room.
The bell attached to the door of The Aviary jingled as the Russian stepped inside, and the scent of the place had her nose twitching almost immediately. Her eye was caught by the birdcages, and as she moved further into the shop she noticed how preternaturally quiet the occupants of the cages were. Her mother had kept birds as a past-time, but none of them had been so well-behaved.
There was a young man on a ladder, his back to her as he tucked one of the feathered creatures back onto the shelf. Addressing his back, she said, "You must have a way to hypnotize them. I have never seen birds who do not squawk at every little thing."
"There you are, dear," Izzy whispered, letting the bird walk down his arm, eventually settling on its perch and ruffling its wings a little but otherwise perfectly serene. He closed the cage door and latched it before he heard someone speaking with a very familiar accent. It seemed that he couldn't place it though, at least while and a few seconds after the woman stopped talking.
Turning around, he stepped down the ladder and stepped down it. "I don't know about that, ma'am," he said, "But it does seem that way, doesn't it? Me, I've never seen any this tame." Personally, he'd wondered if someone was slipping drugs into their food, but now that the woman...she did look quite familiar, and somehow he felt that, if she recognized him, he'd be in some kind of trouble for some reason he couldn't discern. "Especially these, they're all imported, like this one," he motioned to the rosella, "He's shipped in all the way from Tasmania." He gave an easy smile, much easier than he might have been able to not three weeks ago. "I suspect it's because Mrs. Daugney trains them herself."
All of a sudden, it clicked. How could he forget? It had been quite strange experience, to be sure, though not as surreal as it was just out of the ordinary. "Oh!" He tried not to grin sycophantically as he bowed his head a little. "Good morning to you," oh Jesus what was her name it began with a 'K' or an 'R' or something but for the life of him he couldn't remember it, "Milady." That sounded bloody formal, but it was what he could do.
He was familiar now that she was looking at something other than his shoulderblades, and Irina inclined her head as she replied, "And a good day to you, Mr....?" Damn and blast, what was his name? Perhaps the simulated illness had addled her mind? It had been something disagreeable, she remembered that much, which made it even more odd that she couldn't recall it. She could usually remember what she didn't care for.
"Berdette Daugney?" she asked, momentarily brushing aside her forgetfulness. "I had not realized the lady dealt with animals. Is she the proprietress here?"
"Just Izzy," he said, though he doubted this would matter to her. Thankfully, she couldn't remember his name, either, though he got the feeling she'd expect him to remember hers, which he was coming to the realization that he didn't in the slightest. Of course, if she didn't know his name, she likely didn't know what he'd told her, the details of which couldn't remember right now, just that he'd been a servant in some non-existent household.
Nodding, he replied, "Yes. She's quite good with them," or making potions for them or hypnotizing them, "And yes, she is." The official story was that her husband was off at some tea plantation in America or Ceylon or something and this shop was just for her amusement, but from his after-hours work with her, Izzy suspected the truth was much more horrible than this.
"Yes. Yes, of course."
Small feet paced off the distance from the door as Irina drifted further into the shop, still looking at the birdcages. Strange, very strange that they were so docile. She wondered fleetingly about magic, if the Englishwoman was a practitioner of that as well as someone interested in the connection between the earthly plane and the spirit world. Certainly anything was possible.
"You are employed here?" she asked unnecessarily. He must have given up the servant's job, then. "Is Mrs. Daugney here at the moment?"
He followed the noblewoman, not really sure if he should or not. He didn't really have anything better to do, if one wanted to be frank. "Yes," he replied quickly, folding up the handkerchief and putting it in his pocket. He had a tendency to forget to do that and only realize it when the shopgirl pointed it out. This place had a way of making you forget what you were about, perhaps you wanted to buy some of our fine perfume?
"No, she's away for the day," he replied. Honestly, had he been asked where she was, he'd have likely not been able to say, but he was relatively certain it was some high-class excursion. "Would you like me to fetch Miss Lacelles, Milady?" he asked before quickly adding, "She could help you with any purchases," he smiled self-deprecatingly, "I don't know much about perfume, I'm afraid. I only take care of the birds."
The Russian gave the boy a raised-eyebrow look as if to say 'Oh, really?', then shook her head. "I had hoped to discuss a private matter with her, but I suppose it can wait. Doubtless she is very busy if her husband is away again."
She idled by the glassed-in counter, studying the bottles encased within. Clearly Berdette was a woman of many interests, although Irina knew of no other women who engaged in trade. Perhaps the Englishwoman was of a more modern mindset? "Are the birds for sale?" she inquired, turning back towards Izzy. "My mother was never without a feathered companion when I was growing up. She would be flabbergasted to find such well-mannered creatures here."
Right on cue, he began to notice whispering from a few of them women who hung around the shop. He wasn't sure why they were here today, since he'd always assumed them to be friends of Berdette's, but he wasn't really one to question it. However, they weren't giggling or clearly making jokes about her. Indeed, they seemed almost worried or scared. But it really wasn't his place to question it.
He laughed a little. "Then perhaps you should bring her here. They'd make for an interesting study," he paused, and his tone seemed a little less confident as he continued, "But they're not, I'm afraid. I could bring one out so you could see it up close, if you'd like. They're quite good with people, as you can imagine."
"Mmm." The sound was distracted, and Irina regarded the other women in the shop with something like suspicion. If they had heard in some way of her experience at the seance, doubtless they were murmuring to each other about her. If there was one thing she had learned during a childhood spent on the edges of the royal court, it was that gossip was pervasive in the upper classes. But never mind; unless they had ever had a spirit take hold of them, they knew very little about the subject and even less about her. She would simply have to be a lady and ignore them.
"Yes, I believe I would like to see one for myself." Normally she'd never have spent any time at all talking to a mere shop clerk, but the boy was obviously trying to be helpful. He had been oddly skittish the first time they met, as she recalled. Clearly he had recovered his wits by now, however. "The one you just put back, if you do not mind."
"Not at all," replied Izzy. She wasn't just snubbing him this time, like he'd expected she would have after their first meeting, or indeed, because she was some kind of aristocrat and they weren't exactly known for their kindness to anyone who wasn't at or above their level. Perhaps she was nicer than her initial demeanor made her out to be, he thought as he went back to the rosella's cage. He then realized he probably was being a little bit romantic and looking at it too hard.
The bird was as agreeable as it had been, climbing onto his fingers and looking at him appraisingly for a moment before going back to whatever was going on in some far-off place in its head. He stepped back over to Irina. "There you are," he said.
Irina studied the bird up close, her demeanor that of someone who found the animal beautiful to look at but not, perhaps, an ideal companion. For all their sweating and snorting, she cared much more for horses. One finger reached out and touched the top of the rosella's head, smoothing the feathers back gently. The creature didn't even twitch. The Russian extended her hand in Izzy's direction, indicating that he could return the bird to its cage.
"Izzy is not a name," she pronounced, looking up at him with an undefinable expression. The gaggle of whispering hens had drifted further into the shop. "It is a noise one makes when they sneeze. Are you pretending to be someone you are not that you should go by such a name? What else are you called, sir?"
So he was, it seemed. He wondered if he should try to teach the birds to do tricks, or maybe just sing on command. They seemed to have no problem with just sitting there and looking like decorations, and that must have been difficult enough. He nodded when the noblewoman told him to put the bird back, and promptly returned it to its cage, where it stepped onto its perch. It looked up, suddenly, and he looked up as well, wondering what it could have seen, but there was nothing there, just the ceiling. Not even cobwebs, he noticed.
As he was coming down the stepladder again, her next statement took him by surprise, and he couldn't help himself from just standing there, about halfway down, looking a little dumbfounded. He stepped back towards her and replied, with a little more confusion in his voice than he'd expected, "It isn't? - I'm sorry - er - Well, my proper name's Israel," though no one he knew called him by it, "Israel Alderdice." There was really no need to keep his real family name a secret from anyone now.
"Ish-rhay-ell."
Irina made a noise that might have been a sound of approval, then removed a pen and a sheet of paper from her reticule. "You will give this to your employer," she instructed, moving towards one of the counters to use it as a desk while she wrote. "I must discuss something important with Mrs. Daugney and I should like her to contact me. I suppose you can be trusted to deliver a note?"
She folded the paper into a manageable square, then handed it to the young clerk. "Hopefully she will return soon, and I hope she is well today."
Personally, Izzy wasn't fond of his full first name (in fact it sounded especially unattractive when pronounced like that), but if she wanted to call him that, who was he to tell her not to? But he said nothing to this effect, in fact, he smiled politely when she gave him the note and replied, "I will, Milady," before taking the folded up paper and putting it in the pocket of his jacket. Part of him wanted to know what was so important, but another, arguably more sensible part of him, couldn't be bothered to care. He probably wasn't supposed to, which was all the more reason why he should, and this made it slightly maddening that he didn't.
"A good day to you, Mr. Alderdice," the foreign half of the pair said, one knee bending in a slight curtsy. The peculiarity of Berdette having her own business aside, the Englishwoman seemed to have done a good job in her hiring practices. A trustworthy clerk was like a trustworthy servant, someone to keep close. Irina gave the birdcages one last look, and the bell dinged to signal her exit from The Aviary while she pondered what magic might have taken hold of the creatures within their confines.