07-01-2018, 02:57 PM
Following the dwindling trail of nightlife eventually led Talos to Rick's Cafe Americain.
Talos did her level best not to immediately fangirl all over Humphrey Bogart.
Only it wasn't Bogart. It was Rick Blaine. Grim, heartsore, expatriate of silver-screen fame, out of black and white and here in the color and flesh, coolly reiterating his neutral stance to Stormtroopers instead of Nazis.
Talos considered revisiting the idea that she was dreaming, but in the end, decided that wouldn't be productive.
The restaurant had a higher class of patrons than the street, which required a new identity for Talos to remain at a happy medium of unremarkable. Talos switched out her street persona for a more bourgeois identity--an Egyptian face wearing an embroidered dress she'd seen on someone leaving the cafe.
She sat at a corner table, listening to the conversation around her, trying not to stare at Rick Blaine and nobly resisting the urge to become Ingrid Bergman or sing As Time Goes By. That would attract attention and, on reflection, be cruel.
She did indulge herself enough to sidle over to request Jingle Jangle Jingle from the piano player.
----
Eventually, Talos found herself in conversation with a tiny cat-person named Shema. Shema was an employee, not a customer of the establishment, but was off duty tonight and was drawn to talk to someone so interested in listening by the compelling motivation of loneliness.
Apparently she had been made by someone. (Talos was not fully mentally engaging with the concept that Primes could "make" fully grown and functioning people because she didn't want to have another freak out.) But that someone had left, or been attacked, or just lost interest, she didn't know, and now Shema was alone and trying to get by.
She was lonely because there was no one else like her. Cat-women in the Omniverse tended to look and act in a particular way, and Shema didn't fit that mold. She was hoping to eventually meet someone else from her world, but that hope was growing fainter as years passed.
Shema had been around for some time. She had stories about when the Endless Dunes was all savanna--grassy fields spotted with trees, roamed by big cousins (lions) and graceful prey (gazelles).
She had more recent stories about the Empire strip-mining the land into a desert waste, leaving it a void of aching need where sun-crazed bandits fought over scraps.
She cried occasionally as she spoke. She said she was very grateful to Rick, who kept her employed and safe. And sometimes Sam would play songs from her world, and she would dance. This was a good place, she said. She warned Talos against going further into the desert.
----
As late night edged into early morning Talos felt the distant tug of exhaustion that preceded the rising sun. There were some constants that came with being a vampire.
Shema had fallen asleep talking. Talos slipped a handful of Omnilium into the pouch at her waist. It seemed the thing to do. She couldn't help in any more significant way.
Talos stepped back into the streets with a couple of hour until dawn, male again to avoid being bothered. He needed to find somewhere to sleep.
Fortunately, Carrefore was rife with narrow streets. He found the longest, darkest, filthiest blind alley he could.
Walking into it, he was immediately mugged.
Talos let the scimitar wielding vandal stab him, pantomimed dying dramatically, and waited for the thief to finished rifling through his pockets and flee. Then Talos got up, dusted himself off, and tutted over the hole in his suit. Oh well. It's not like anyone would see it.
Talos walked to the end of the alley. Normally he'd look for a basement or something, but this was easier and he had an idea. He examined the brickwork of the wall that made the alley blind.
Then, using his magic anything-stuff, he made another wall, extending the building by a little, and sealing it with a ceiling to block the sun from above. A narrow room that looked like the outside of the building. He made it with a door so he could enter the room, but he wasn't a very good architect so he had to remake that part a few times before the hinges worked and were hidden. In the end, the "door" was a block of the wall that could be pushed out and pulled back in. A loose puzzle-piece of masonry.
He sealed himself in Cask of Amontillado style and lay down on the floor. It was uncomfortable, but he slept like a dead man, so it would not bother him for long. The last thing he wondered about before drifting into daytime slumber was how someone could possibly bring themself to create a "Secondary", and then leave them.
Talos did her level best not to immediately fangirl all over Humphrey Bogart.
Only it wasn't Bogart. It was Rick Blaine. Grim, heartsore, expatriate of silver-screen fame, out of black and white and here in the color and flesh, coolly reiterating his neutral stance to Stormtroopers instead of Nazis.
Talos considered revisiting the idea that she was dreaming, but in the end, decided that wouldn't be productive.
The restaurant had a higher class of patrons than the street, which required a new identity for Talos to remain at a happy medium of unremarkable. Talos switched out her street persona for a more bourgeois identity--an Egyptian face wearing an embroidered dress she'd seen on someone leaving the cafe.
She sat at a corner table, listening to the conversation around her, trying not to stare at Rick Blaine and nobly resisting the urge to become Ingrid Bergman or sing As Time Goes By. That would attract attention and, on reflection, be cruel.
She did indulge herself enough to sidle over to request Jingle Jangle Jingle from the piano player.
----
Eventually, Talos found herself in conversation with a tiny cat-person named Shema. Shema was an employee, not a customer of the establishment, but was off duty tonight and was drawn to talk to someone so interested in listening by the compelling motivation of loneliness.
Apparently she had been made by someone. (Talos was not fully mentally engaging with the concept that Primes could "make" fully grown and functioning people because she didn't want to have another freak out.) But that someone had left, or been attacked, or just lost interest, she didn't know, and now Shema was alone and trying to get by.
She was lonely because there was no one else like her. Cat-women in the Omniverse tended to look and act in a particular way, and Shema didn't fit that mold. She was hoping to eventually meet someone else from her world, but that hope was growing fainter as years passed.
Shema had been around for some time. She had stories about when the Endless Dunes was all savanna--grassy fields spotted with trees, roamed by big cousins (lions) and graceful prey (gazelles).
She had more recent stories about the Empire strip-mining the land into a desert waste, leaving it a void of aching need where sun-crazed bandits fought over scraps.
She cried occasionally as she spoke. She said she was very grateful to Rick, who kept her employed and safe. And sometimes Sam would play songs from her world, and she would dance. This was a good place, she said. She warned Talos against going further into the desert.
----
As late night edged into early morning Talos felt the distant tug of exhaustion that preceded the rising sun. There were some constants that came with being a vampire.
Shema had fallen asleep talking. Talos slipped a handful of Omnilium into the pouch at her waist. It seemed the thing to do. She couldn't help in any more significant way.
Talos stepped back into the streets with a couple of hour until dawn, male again to avoid being bothered. He needed to find somewhere to sleep.
Fortunately, Carrefore was rife with narrow streets. He found the longest, darkest, filthiest blind alley he could.
Walking into it, he was immediately mugged.
Talos let the scimitar wielding vandal stab him, pantomimed dying dramatically, and waited for the thief to finished rifling through his pockets and flee. Then Talos got up, dusted himself off, and tutted over the hole in his suit. Oh well. It's not like anyone would see it.
Talos walked to the end of the alley. Normally he'd look for a basement or something, but this was easier and he had an idea. He examined the brickwork of the wall that made the alley blind.
Then, using his magic anything-stuff, he made another wall, extending the building by a little, and sealing it with a ceiling to block the sun from above. A narrow room that looked like the outside of the building. He made it with a door so he could enter the room, but he wasn't a very good architect so he had to remake that part a few times before the hinges worked and were hidden. In the end, the "door" was a block of the wall that could be pushed out and pulled back in. A loose puzzle-piece of masonry.
He sealed himself in Cask of Amontillado style and lay down on the floor. It was uncomfortable, but he slept like a dead man, so it would not bother him for long. The last thing he wondered about before drifting into daytime slumber was how someone could possibly bring themself to create a "Secondary", and then leave them.
"To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to let it go,
To let it go." – Mary Oliver
To love what is mortal;
To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to let it go,
To let it go." – Mary Oliver