[accidentally intentional video]

[bloodwaif]

[After several false starts and out-of-focus to focus blurring, the journal's camera focuses on the body of a small, dead bird, and the bare white hand that is gently stroking it.]

He has no more flute now, to sing his fire. Soon all will be fire, or so he sang to me.



Player Name: Sazzles
Are you new?: noooo
Character Name: Drusilla
Character Fandom: BTVS

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[greenjacketed]

[ what even...? that bird is an ex-bird. surely. ]

Are you orright, miss?

[hismasterpiece]

It's strange to speak with you without smelling all that life in you. [This time the video is on her face. She peers into the journal.]

So much life in you.

[greenjacketed]

[ everything about this woman looked...delicate. it sets the major on edge -- not in a wholly welcome way. ]

Pardon me, miss? [ smelling? ] A-at least some of us've got life. Can't say the same for that bird of yours. My...err, sympathies.

[hismasterpiece]

But he is still more beautiful, and his heart no longer throbbing yellow. What do they call you, soldier boy?

[greenjacketed]

[ as stiff as stiff can be: ] Major Richard Sharpe, m'lady.

[ she talks like someone important -- twisting, indecipherable sentences. nothing plain. it only makes him warier. ]

[bloodwaif]

Milady! Aren't I the quality, then! [She gives a curtsy, and the journal bobs with her.] I do love a major, but the minors capture my heart, they do.

[She begins humming in thin tones what might loosely sound like Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D minor. Sort of. An Indie version of it, at any rate.]

[greenjacketed]

[ maybe she's new; maybe she bumped her head; maybe she's from one of those odd-talking worlds. ]

And you, miss? I'm supposing you've got a name. Everyone's got a name. Even if it isn't his own.

[bloodwaif]

Lady Nightingale. It flutters, that name. I like it ever so much.

[quicktoanger]

Well. A few phrases came to mind when I saw that.

The first was 'What in the hell.' The second, 'ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag.'

I went with the third.

"Having some trouble, ma'am?"

And who says I can't be tactful?

[bloodwaif]

The waters are troubled, the waters are troubled. You cannot keep Hell in a bag, my good hat.

[quicktoanger]

On the one hand, I really wanted to just dismiss that as more loony rambling. On the other hand, I couldn't stop thinking of the Third-Eye victim at the station, so many years ago.

See you, Wizard.

... Also, I'm not gonna lie, this lady's entire demeanor was giving me a first-class creepy vibe. So, I figured I'd defuse the tension a bit

"I kept a fallen angel in my basement for a while. Does that count?"

Note to self. Banter about hell is rarely witty.

[bloodwaif]

Did you bury him under bricks? Bricks and stone and mortar? Or was it a spell?

[She sounds genuinely curious about this, actually. It's not an easy feat to restrain a fallen angel.]

[quicktoanger]

I suppose all angels, and by extension all fallen angels, were male, by the lore, but Lasciel had been decidedly feminine, insofar as gender had applied to her at all.

Then again, women have always been better at manipulating me, and she knew it. Perhaps her decidedly feminine aspect was just another of her calculated attempts to ensnare me.

Or maybe she was just lonely. Hell, it's hard enough being stuck in a coin for millenia when the rest of your kind doesn't prefer to keep you locked up.

"Little of both, actually. Spell kept her trapped in a coin, mortar to bury the coin, and then a magic circle around the coin to prevent it from exercising or being exercised on by magic."

Not that it would have worked, as she so insistently reminded me. Once I had willingly used her gift, nothing could keep me from utilizing our connection except my own free will, and she was doing her best to overcome that last obstacle when I'd finally ridden myself of her influence.

[iratus]

It seems I haven't been talking to the right birds.

[bloodwaif]

Or perhaps it is the talking. You should be singing to them, by every right.

[She closes her eyes for a moment, and the video wobbles.]

Like me! We're alike, you and me! Alike, but differently so!

[iratus]

[Oh. The human is out of her mind. So she's no good to her own kind either.]

To a point. But not as much as you'd care to think.

[hismasterpiece]

We both thirst for hidden rivers. Alike. Alike.

[iratus]

Do we? And what hidden rivers would those be?