That Old Familar Feeling {Seraphine}

[Lothaire]

Lothaire had tired of the blood donors of his beloved Midnight and decided to go out on the prowl. Ambrosia was a favorite stalking ground of his. With his long hair and which ever European accent he decided to play up, it was child's play for him to take mortal women out of the place for feeding. So there it was that he sat, listening to the booming music on the dance floor and scouring the room for tonight's dinner. As he sipped at his drink, he felt a ripple across his mind that he had not felt in some time. A feeling he had not had in over 60 years. He looked about the room anxiously, hoping to catch a glimpse of the person that he both loved and loathed....his sire.

His roaming eyes caught sight of her across the room. He had no idea whether or not she knew he was there, but he was about to make his presence known. He got up and headed toward her. Lothaire roughly shoved several of the dancing humans out of his way as he cut a straight path across the dance floor. Sure enough, standing there in all her glory. She was beautiful...but she had betrayed him. He did his best to shield himself, knowing that she would probably feel his approach no matter what. He crept up as she had her back turned and reached out a hand..and withdrew it before tapping her shoulder. Instead, he whispered her name, "Seraphine....", but at the same time, the mental shout was something she probably couldn't ignore....

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine herself didn't know fully what had brought her out this evening; perhaps she'd longed for some socialization to give her madness a break. Searching for Victor grew tiring even to her at times, although she had considered that Ambrosia might provide him a hiding place. She'd gone there in order to find out whether or not he'd sought refuge, but upon entering the building she realized that it would not have been a place that spoke to him, so to speak. She'd busied herself with some of the local scenery before an urgent desire to leave struck her.

Her ploy for the door had been interrupted, of course, by Lothaire. She could feel her flesh prickle as his presence drew near; to others, he may have very well been able to hide himself, but to Seraphine it was next to impossible, even after all this time. She was far too competent of a sire, really; she could sense her fledglings better than they could sense themselves. She whipped around, a crown of golden curls sent spiraling in confusion before settling against the mask of porcelain white and rosy cheeks she portrayed, no more a smile than a frown on rose petal lips.

"Yes, what?" she demanded, her voice scattering through the ambient sound around them, like glass breaking and falling in melodic shards. She didn't bother to press a finger to her temple to quell the mental shout he'd given her, choosing to ignore it for the time being. Seraphine did not appreciate voices being raised at her general direction, especially when they were in her head, but she let it go. Obviously, in his desperation, he could not help himself.

A smile curled against her lips at the thought, and the smirk revealed something dark; a creature of unmentionable horror beneath the pale countenance of the China doll that was Seraphine.

[Lothaire]

Lothaire cursed himself for approaching her. She had left him...left him to die or be captured or whatever may have happened to him in those last days of WWII. The entire German Army was collapsing, the camps were falling and the countryside was burning, and she had left him. To add insult to that injury, she had also cleared out a nice chunk of his money. Why did he still long to see her face? Why did he wish to hear that voice like the tumbling of glass shards? He almost shuddered as she turned and spoke to him. She was as flawless as ever...and probably twice as insane.

"What are you doing here? I haven't seen you in 60 years...and you are in New York? Why did you abandon me? You must come with me at once and see the wonderful life I have built here...in Midnight. Any manner of cruelty can be indulged..surely that idea excites you as it once did?"

The words spilled forth before he could stop them. He was supposed to be a trainer of Midnight..composed and cold. But there had always been a strange pull that Seraphine exerted over him, and once again he found himself drawn to her.

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine laughed; an older incarnation of Claudia or Nikolaos, shoulders rising with false breath as the harmonious cackling left her lips, splitting ears and hearts wide. She laughed at Lothaire; at his demands, at his urgent whispers, as though she were something to be commanded. She remained rooted to her spot, as lovely as ever, though her lips did curl back ever so slightly in a sneer when next she spoke, the smile tainted by a loathsome sort of expression beneath it.

"Midnight?" she scoffed. Her black eyes narrowed into little slits as she studied his expression; no, he truly believed that she would have wanted to see it. "Whatever for?" came the next question, fingers rising slowly to twist a curl around their extension, tugging at it mercilessly - to any other being, such a gesture would have brought pain, but to Seraphine, it was as numb as a fly walking along the back of her hand; unless she truly deigned to, she would feel neither.

She deliberately (because Seraphine did nothing by accident) ignored the rest of his questions. Seraphine did not snap to attention and blunder out answers that were demanded in succession such as Lothaire had done for anyone, ever. She was old enough by now that she would hear herself speak only what she wanted, no more and no less.

[Lothaire]

Cold, Callous and Closed off. Seraphine really was a work of art. She projected such an air of distaste and boredom with those around her. She still fascinated him. He realized that she probably could care less about him or the things he had accomplished. But still some strange insane feeling made him want to please and impress her. Perhaps it was the parent/child aspect of their relationship.  Lothaire knew that she was probably not all there, especially if she had not managed to run across Victor. That obsession had haunted her and by extension him for most of the time they spent together. She was probably still running around looking for him and that is what had drawn her to New York.

"So, if Midnight doesn't intrigue you...then what does these days? Still searching for Victor?"

Lothaire had a bit of a sneer on his face as he spoke her husbands name. The attention she had shown to Victor had caused jealousy to her fledgling, and in their last years, her obsession with finding them had grown irritating. As much as she drew him to her, it was not in his nature to just bow down...and he would defy his maker if he wished.

[Sylvia Talbot]

"Of course," she replied smoothly, his efforts to ruffle her feathers causing no visual or aural disruption as far as anyone could tell. In fact, she appeared quite deserted of feeling at all, though generally the idea of her estranged husband would inspire vengeance and fire in her temper, she was far too focused on not reacting to Lothaire's badgering at the moment to give any other sort of reaction at all. She came off as a black hole on the radar of thought.

"Nothing intrigues me, these days; oh, but when did it ever?" she asked, the irony of the rhetoric unsettling as she laughed at her own private joke. "I grew tired of the mindless torture, you should know that," she chastised, turning her back on him to pluck her drink from the counter of the bar by which she stood. It was blood, warmed to 98 degrees and poured into a wine balloon, the stem of which was gripped firmly betwixt her digits. She swirled it around and took a slow sniff of it, and then thoughtfully sipped it, swishing it around in her mouth before allowing the liquid to run down her throat.

She didn't prefer her blood bottled and sold to her from a bartender, but when in Rome...

"I see you're not dead yet," she said, the intent of her thought hard to discern by her tone of voice. She made it sound more like an innocent sort of observation, which was amicable enough. At the very least, she wasn't trying to antagonize him yet. Yet.

[Lothaire]

Yes, He did know that she had grown bored with mindless torture. She had left when Lothaire had been at the peak of his game, inventing new cruelties and tortures daily. But she had just vanished. Really, it did seem like there was nothing behind her eyes. Her utter lack of reaction to him, his words, to anything really, seemed to say that the lights might still be on, but nobody's been home for quite some time. Even the mention of her precious Victor failed to elicit even a look of anger as it once would have. The fact that she still seemed to be physically functioning was amazing, considering it seemed her mind had packed up and left.

"Yes, I am very much alive, better off now than I have been in quite some time. It is surprising to see that you are still alive. I would have thought your foolish little game of selecting victims based on name would have caught the attention of the hunters by now. But you always did have a knack for avoiding them"

Lothaire had given up almost entirely on civility. This creature before him may outwardly look like Seraphine, but inwardly was far colder and vacant than he remembered. If he could not capture her interest, perhaps evoking her rage would be amusing. She wasn't much older than him, and he really didn't think she would bring death to her own fledgling....her only fledgling as far as Lothaire knew.

[Sylvia Talbot]

The game of angering her, he would find, would be one he might tire of easily; even the most tenacious had found it hard to draw a reaction out of her. She idly glanced at her nails, seeming not to hear his comments at all, instead focusing her black eyes on the glassy shine that they brought. So perfect. She didn't smile, though in her mind she did, at how lovely they were. As a human, she'd experienced chips and breaks, but as an immortal... they were like diamond.

She glanced up, brows raised - obviously, he'd said something she'd missed. She'd only barely heard him at all. "What?" she asked vacantly, before focusing, replaying the blur of words in her mind. "Ah, that," she remarked. She fluttered her fingers as though it was a matter that she was unentirely concerned with, and then she did smile.

"If it had, I hadn't noticed. I don't think picking off one pathetic little human at a time bothers anyone much, anyways," she commended idly, as though humans were just trash to be thrown away. Really, they were. "It's nice to hear you're doing so... well," she added, though she didn't seem to mean it. It'd been such an afterthought that it was easy to assume it was almost an automatic sort of reply, like a thank-you note that didn't even bother to have a personal signature on it. It was generic, generated and impersonal.

[Lothaire]

Frustration was rapidly building in Lothaire's mind. Sera seemed to be completely shut off,and devoid of any sort of feeling. Back when they had been companions, she had been able to switch that mind set on and off at will it seemed, but now, she acted as if she was just an empty shell. That perception strangely saddened Lothaire. He had adored his sire in their early days. But know she just seemed empty. More empty than ever before.

"Thank you...I am well, but Sera...you seem too cold, to closed off. What has happened to you? Why is it that you have lost that spark of life that attracted me to you in the first place? I have contact...I have connections...if finding Victor is what it would take...I might be able to make that happen.."

Lothaire just wanted to crack through her icy shell in anyway possible. This was NOT the woman that had turned him. This was NOT the woman that had taught him all the subtle joys of sadism. Something had cracked beneath Seraphine's beautiful exterior, and even though Lothaire knew he could probably never fix the rift between them, he hated to see her so distant and closed off.

[Sylvia Talbot]

She pressed her fingers to her temples, quite literally snapping at him as he spoke - no, more like implored to her. It was irritating. "Stop," she snarled. "It's unbecoming to display so many emotions." After a moment to let the sting of her words settle, she tossed her head back and laughed a little, shaking thick blonde curls loose. "Oh, Lothaire, really. Perhaps that little place you dwell in has made much amusement for you, but all this wandering has gotten me quite bored."

She shrugged a little. "So I'm not as emphatic as I was, what, a hundred some-odd years ago?" She exhaled, a sort of "Pft" noise, befitting of her mortal age, not her immortal one. "So what? I hunt, I feed, I occasionally torture, and I explore. I'm not really keen on doing the same old thing over and over and over for eternity - besides finding my husband, of course," she snapped.

When she did find him, oh when she did... She couldn't decide if she would torture him or hug him. She'd just have to wait and see, wait and see.