Canon: Charm of Magpies series

[etherics]

SETTING ONE: Prose or Brackets

Ah, Victorian London. The Thames, the clock tower, the palace. The crowded dirty cobblestone streets, the ever-present pall of coal smoke belched from trains and factories and steamers, the curling fog around the lamplights in the darkness. There are handsome gardens and lush concert halls waiting for the wealthy and privileged, private rail carriages and cut crystal on white tablecloths, but for the poor and the working class there are crowded boarding houses, dark alleyways, and the echoing footsteps of someone following you in the roughest parts of town where they'll never find your body.

Perhaps this is your first time here, and you're staring about in awe or disgust. Or perhaps this is all old news to you. Perhaps you, like everyone else, are about your daily business hailing a hansom cab or perusing shops or solving mysteries. Perhaps you don't even notice the whip slender, shabbily dressed little man until you've bumped into him, or until he's come alongside you trying to pass by, or has accidentally started for your cab. In a city of first appearances he's not much to look at: sickly pale like someone recently ill, five foot, and so thin as to look almost a youth, unfashionably short cropped red hair and patches on his jacket.

The edge of a cheap cotton glove pokes awkwardly from a pocket. He's wearing the other one, cradling his left forearm close to his body to obscure the sight of it for the same reason the glove had been hastily stuffed away - both are entirely covered in blood, his left arm soaked to the elbow.

Whether it's his blood or someone else's is anyone's guess.

Perhaps this meeting is in the dead of night, when no legitimate person has any business on the streets, in which case another detail might make itself alarmingly known to you as he materializes out of the fog. The man's unnaturally dilated pupils are ringed in gold, and faintly glowing.


~


SETTING TWO: Brackets, Text, Video or Voice

[ Oh my stars and garters, it's a jamjar. Is it a space station? A magic castle? An island governed by capricious gods demanding sexual sacrifice? Whatever it is, it's bloody irritating, and justiciars aren't allowed vacations. ]

Excuse me.

[ The voice that raps out is lit with annoyance, the owner clearly clinging to a veneer of courtesy by his teeth, which are clenched tight beneath pressed lips. ]

I don't have time for this. I'm expected - and I will be missed, if I don't turn up. I won't be kept here, understand.


~


SETTING THREE: choose ur own adventure!

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[huntedby]

Vanessa is out alone; she shouldn't be, of course. There are dark things that want her--always, lurking, wanting to make her something she has no desire to be. Others are drawn to her, always, the darkness in the hearts of men that curl and reach out to her, beckoning them closer.

She should be with Sembene. She should have that protection, at least, if she has not chosen to bother Mr. Chandler or Sir Malcolm with this.

But she is not.

She is alone, and walking through the streets of Whitechapel, glove-less fingers brushing along things here and there, seeking out whatever has drawn her out. She has felt the thrall, the call of something in the Demimonde...


...so when she sees the pale young man, looking like an injured bird, she can't help but step a bit closer.

"Some predators like to appear wounded to their prey...it draws them in, so they can strike more easily."

She can see the gold, the glowing.

"Are you truly injured? Or are you meaning on drawing people in."

[etherics]

Most of East End is no place for a woman walking alone at night, much less a lady in fine clothes. Stephen had felt her before he'd seen anything, an inexplicably violent roil in the ether like a heavy shape passing through the fog, or the whirlpools and eddies left in the wake of a deep water monster. His hands ache with it. He has been told that he has this sort of effect on others when caught in the grip of fury, or in the line of duty when he'd been forced to pull in all his considerable power to strike down an enemy, but he's so rarely felt it himself. The sense of something stronger. Something old.

Profiling is not his forte. He stops short, cradling his arm and eyeing her warily, noting the fabric she's wearing and the cut of her dress. No woman of her social class would speak to a man like him under ordinary circumstances. No woman of her social class would be here in the first place, and he looks hard at her, trying to see past the woman, but his best work is done with his hands. He'd have to touch her bare skin to get anything useful.

"I might ask you the same question, my lady. Are you lost?"

[huntedby]

"If I were lost, would I be speaking to you?" She questions him back, pale eyes watching him carefully. She can feel the similar tug in the ether coming from him, curling and whispering to the creature within her. He has darkness, just as she does. And while she may dress like any woman of her station, her hands are bare--no gloves to be seen.

Which is far from conventional; but she is not one for convention.

And like many things with her, she needs to reach out and touch things, feel true contact. For better or worse.

"And I am no lady. Miss will do." She has no title; nor is she ever likely to have one.

"To answer your question, no, I am not lost. Though I suppose the answer to my question is somewhere in between the answers I suspect of you."

[etherics]

"Miss, then." He nods to her in lieu of a hat to tip, albeit warily. Were she anyone else, a civilian, this would be his cue to spin a lie about the blood, but he's not sure she would tolerate it and this night has been draining enough on its own

"It wasn't my intention to draw anyone innocent in," he says carefully, choosing his words. "But if the sight of blood or an injured man is an attractant, it would be my duty to deal with that situation."

Let her think him a plain clothes officer, or some other hunter. It's close enough to the truth.

[huntedby]

Vanessa tilts her head, taking a step in closer. She wonders, truly if he means what she thinks he might--Vampires, or some other creature of the demimonde. But to speak that plainly would be too much, right now.

So instead, she watches him, and gives a slight nod of her head. "To hunt, you wish to appear hunted, then."