I will only complicate you. Trust in me and fall as well.

[lilith-qliphah.livejournal.com]

Tuesday, September 1st
Day 93
Evening

I do not bother to draw my form back together after I leave the Grindhouse, instead I remain as desert air drifting over the carnival, simply enjoying not being contained in human form for awhile. I did not look for Zann immediately after I left but I know perhaps only a day has past between then and now and the time has come. I search the lot and she is nowhere to be found, so I widen my search to include the town and then…Oohh, there you are.

...I easily spot her, walking quickly down the road with hands stuffed in her pockets and a determined look on her face that makes me spark with excitement, hoping she’s going where I think she is. I watch as she turns down the main street showing no signs of slowing as she passes by shop after shop then after the stables turns right. Oh you sneaky brave little thing, you are going to see him without me, aren’t you.

She reaches the tower and pauses at the entrance, looking it over carefully then taking a deep breath she steps up to the door pausing again. Ooohh this is going to be such wonderful fun. Without out even a slight ripple in the air, I draw my form together behind her as she raises a small fist and knocks on the door.

“Zann, why are you knocking on a water tower?” I ask, cautiously and then gasp taking a quick step back as she jumps in surprise, spinning around to face me.

[open to Zann and Iblis]

Continued here.

Comments

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

"Why'd you help her?"

"Anushka is more like me than most humans can be," I say. "And so I wished her to be greater than the sum of her parts." I smile and turn Zann's hand over, tracing my finger down the fine lines of her palm. "This is the form I wore to kiss her, although it is not Anushka's favourite of mine." I smile. "You can call it Svetlana."

"I don't know," I say quietly, feeling the woman's fingers around mine. "Lily was saying she could maybe ask you to do something about Tez and Genny. But Lily's...Guess I'm not sure that's a good idea. Deals with the devil, hey, contracts with Hell? Why'd you come to see her, anyway?"

I smile as she pauses over Lily's name, and I think, ah, Lilith, she has caught you out. Lilith is a good enough liar in general, but she usually lies to those who want lies. That is the nature of a succubus, after all. She does not view it as an art in quite the way I do. But then, I am more perfect than she, so it is not really her fault. She was made for Man; I was made only for the Adversary.

"Who said anything about contracts?" I say, shrugging one shoulder, white fur rising up against my throat. "We can simply talk as we are now." I smile. I summon my qareen with a thought; it brings in Russian tea in a samovar made from brass. The shape suits Zann better than a tea pot, and, of course, it is more appropriate for Svetlana. All things in their place. If one wishes to lie, lie completely.

"I did not come to see Genny," I say. "Genny found me. I sensed something interesting about her. There is power in her," I say, "a power she does not really understand. Genny could be a great artist," I say. "Now she is quite good, for a human. But she has ambition." I smile serenely. "I have always enjoyed ambition. And, of course, Tezcatlipoca has an interest in her." I feel the wind move as I say his name, and I wonder if he feels it, my mouth around his name. I think that he probably does, and I smile at that little intimacy. "She is his priestess now, so you need not fear I will harm her. I have no wish to hurt an acolyte of his."

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

"Anushka is more like me than most humans can be," and even here and thinking of Anushka I frown a little, and wonder how she's like... Hell, I guess. Wonder if she hurts, and if there's that sorrow in her, and think of how she smiled through the shattered glass and kissed me. "And so I wished her to be greater than the sum of her parts. This is the form I wore to kiss her, although it is not Anushka's favourite of mine. You can call it Svetlana."

"Svetlana," I say politely, and watch her long strong fingers run over my palm, the oil stains and the little scars and the middle and ring fingers clipped just a little short and healed over smooth all this time ago. No time at all to her, I guess. Don't feel ashamed at all, just... watch her watching me, and open up my hand a little under her fingers.

"Who said anything about contracts? We can simply talk as we are now." And I open my mouth and I'm gonna say something, but I'm... I don't know. She's not a mark, she's not a townie, but she reminds me of Anushka a little, pale and rich and draped in gloss and finery. I think she knows what a talker can do, wrap a mark up fine and neat and get them all tied into themselves, patter and flash and pride and promise until no way in hell would they back off, but I can't--I don't say that. Not to her, it seems rude, a kind of bare-to-the-bones thing that I could say to family or carnie or maybe a grifter I didn't know, if we were talking, but...

Not to someone who's never had dust on her hands.

So I nod a little, and glance up as a shadow flickers away from the table, and there's a great fine shaped brass pot or tower of steam and tea on the table, taller than a kettle, and I smile and reach out towards it, run my fingers down the air a distance from the surface, feeling the heat reach out from it.

"I did not come to see Genny," she says, and I listen to her voice, lighter than Kent's and smoother, and an accent thick as snow running over her. I remember an old act, ice queen, woman frozen in a block of ice and the marks could see anything in her glazed-glass shape, anything at all, and they came to see her in the tent in the summer air hot as tea, and the cold of the block of ice rose through the air like a breath. Svetlana's not like that, I can feel the beaten shape of her humming in the air, but she's... something pale and beautiful, like the iron lattices of buildings in winter with the windows all shattered out, cold air blowing inside and out with no difference and the white ice crystals piling up in hexagon stars to soften the steel angles beneath.

"Genny found me. I sensed something interesting about her. There is power in her, a power she does not really understand. Genny could be a great artist," and I nod again. "Now she is quite good, for a human. But she has ambition. I have always enjoyed ambition." I feel my heart pinch and dip inside me, and she's beautiful, but if Genny was here right now I'd be holding her hand so hard...

She's not for enjoying. Not like tea or sugar or those fine light cookies that Edmund bakes. Smile a little, and I'm sorry Svetlana, I'd help you if I could but she's not for enjoying. Not like that. Think of Tez by the river saying I'd have given you back to her, before and the wet warm smell of mud and crushed grass, and the taste of his blood, and the memory of that throbs stronger in my mouth when she speaks again.

"And, of course, Tezcatlipoca has an interest in her. She is his priestess now, so you need not fear I will harm her. I have no wish to hurt an acolyte of his."

"Why not?" I say carefully, and then I shut my mouth again, shocked by the sound of it. But really, honestly, why not? If she hates me for being, if she likes Tez loving her because it'll end badly for them at the end... "I mean... I'm sorry, I guess, if you hate for being, and she makes things, makes things mean things to people..." Look up at her again, and wonder what Syl looked like when she was young. Hair not red like this, and never in furs, never so white.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

It is interesting, seeing how humans react to each form. This shape provokes a different response in Zann than Kent did; she looks at me as if I were a very expensive vase, perhaps, one that she is afraid to handle freely. And then I speak of Genny, and I feel the sharp spike of something like anger rise in her like the taste of iron in a wound. Such a vulnerable point in Zann, is Genny, and vice versa. It is so useful to know who men love.

"Why not?"

It is a bold question, and she looks almost surprised by saying it. But she continues, nonetheless. "I mean... I'm sorry, I guess, if you hate for being, and she makes things, makes things mean things to people..."

"That is a fair question," I say, and I pour Zann a cup of tea, fragrant and strong. "Genny gives Tez power, and I like him being powerful. I could give him power, of course, but..." I shrug. "It is better when he remembers his own strength." I smile. "Her association with him troubles you, does it not? But it keeps her safer than almost anything else." I smile. "And I do not dislike art. I am more like a poem than a man. Art is a way for man to struggle to be something more than a sack of blood and meat and bone, to see beyond his own body. It is rarely successful, of course, but sometimes..." I sip my own cup of tea. "And if I destroy something, it is better that it was first beautiful. The death of mundanity offers a smaller satisfaction."