Divided and Bound

[Alice Hart]

Alice walks the once familiar streets. Growing in prominence upon her memory once more. A carved cane held in hand, more of a showpiece then any necessary thing. By feel it echos her desk, from long ago. Perhaps Lyssa had it made, perhaps her ghoul had stolen a desk leg when she had stolen Alice away.

Unlike the last time she had made this walk, for this purpose, it wasn't Zephyrus' gentle breath tugging at her pale locks, but Notus' chilling bluster, scything dying leaves off tall trees, scattering them admung the trash fallen to the ground, lining the streets where His Breath cannot press them passed the lip of the sidewalk.

Were her eyes not ash and long wiped from her cheeks she might delight in watching the struggle as she waits. But as she does not, she adjusts her amethyst sunglasses upon her too-perfect-nose, and leans gently against the lamppost, deathly pale, and a too-too still, she's a beacon under the slice of yellow lamplight, ghostly against the black of the night.

Waiting for Family to find her.



Patience unlimited sink

[Patience]

The Lord is on the mount as a dark and thickening cloud, a mass of thunder. He speaks with ‘A Voice.’ He forbids and then invites in order to punish those who would accept the latter offer. The Lord is a name speaking itself. A draught of vinegar.

  Resist Scourging, 2 Suxx

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2019-10-18 05:51:53		Patience rolls 6 to Comp+Res (10 Again)		4, 7, 8, 7, 10, 5, 3		2 successes

Patience resists the call of her Blood. Resists the desire—the need—to mark her flesh as the Lord once did. For tonight at least. Indeed, she presses that same Blood into service, healing wounds from a previous and portentous evening.

For tonight is also portentous. Tonight she meets Alice. Tonight she will see the Necropolis.

She dresses simply, as is her custom: Black t-shirt. Black jeans. Her black coat, heavy and long. No weapons hidden underneath. Not tonight. Black combat boots.

It’s those boots, crunching the leaves as she approaches, that announce her arrival. Patience takes the Doll in under the streetlight. Too perfect. An otherworldly vision. And wonders again at the wisdom of the Lord.

She stops just outside the circle of light: ”Blessed Evening Cousin. Thank you for meeting me.”

[Alice Hart]

The Wraith swims in the sea, arching and winding around her bones. She can feel it's fangs against her marrow, hissing and demanding. Alice breathes in the night air, scenting the otherness of her Cousin, hearing the uneven gait, and wonders how others perceive the Bishop.

"Blessed evening Cousin, than you, for reaching out." she returns, smiling wide and sharp and utterly fake. Shifting her weight, she presses away from the lamp, "Might I lead you towards our...home?" she asks, a polite, soft, note. Hollow and flat. She wasn't Priscus, or Senechal. She wasn't anything to anyone anymore. An unease might have settled under her breast, fluttering tightly against the winding wraith, if Patience was Savage or Succubi. Shadow or Lord, but no. Patience was Nosferatu, unease, and other, disquiet and fetid, fated, nauseousness, sinks and sings. Family, with the Blind Doll waiting to lead them both home.

[Patience]

Home...

It is fitting, at this moment, that the wound in her side should finally and completely stitch itself closed.

She falls in at Alice's side, matching her stride. Near at hand should the sightless Haunt require assistance. Though Patience already knows she won't.

It also allows the Bishop a chance to examine her cousin up close in the ambient glow of streetlight. She is silent for a few moments, unabashedly staring at the Doll as they make their way.

The sounds of her movement are indeed...off. Minor micro-stutters in her step, a subtly alarming lack of rhythm or maybe a constant change precluding rhythm. Now and again a joint cracks or creaks sharply.

Then: "Are you happy to be home?" Sacramento. "And to be going home?" The Necropolis.

Blunt. But not threatening. Directness inviting honesty; directness of Family.

[Alice Hart]

The pair fall into a rhythm, or a facsimile of one, steps are taken, with precision and care, needed for Alice to tranverce, while her ear tells a tale of that unnerving uneven gait from her cousin, Alice wondered if she had a limp, some injury not healed by the Embrace, a deformity that drew her Sire to her, or, if it was all the effect of the Blood.

Still, it takes a moment for her to not need to force down a twitched reaction from the stuttering sound of them, a moment more to hear the creaking and cracking and decide that while, unwanted for her ears, a white noise upon what now was her sight, it was welcoming.

"Home is one thing, yes. It is good to be awake." comes her hollow voice, "A curiosity burns, I have missed a year or thereabouts. Many things are changed," a shigh, a remnant of humanity, a sign and blessing.

"When I first came home," adding the same pressure upon the word. "I found nothing. I had left our Place, to the hands of Family. I do not know what came of them, but they are not here, and all that was left was nothing but neglect." She begins her story, leading them down narrow streets, farther and farther away from the worn, but up kept houses. Towards a decapitated slice of neglect. A neighborhood like any other, save that no one would ever remember that this place was forgotten. Tall houses, rotten through, leans to far in one direction. Alice continues along the street of forgotten houses until she stops before one that, Patiences might not have given a second look

Up the rotting steps she climbs, gently pressing the door, paint peeling and wood splintering from the hinge.

Inside, might have once been clean. Might have once been taken care of, might have once looked something close to livable, with a Victorian flair, but all of that has been worn down by time. "This is the Aboveground haven, or, it once was. I've rewoven the Shadows around this place, they are not as strong as they had been, but I will work on it." She moves through the space, spotting in front of the place where Gilroy first placed dead animals as a grotesque warning before they had their Power, and where after that crumbled she continued the...tradition. "Here's a key." holding aloft a shining slice of silver, waiting for her Cousin to take it. "It goes to this door." Alice points out, hidden by clever architecture.

The door is thick, heavy and metal. There is a padlock. Alice pulls out her own key, and opens the lock. "This is the entrance to the Necropolis. We have a second exit, through the sewers, that is for Family only." taking a moment to press that into the Lance's skull. "Once, we had nothing. Then something, then nothing. I grew it back once, and I aim to do it again." carries her voice as she descends the metal grated stairs. Her voice carries, "I wished to make it more presentable before presenting it to the other Haunts in the city, sadly I couldn't do more. THe Catacombs are still caved in, the Annals, the Temple and the Garbage Pit are inaccessible, Sepulchres have been buried, and I remember no map to where they had been.

"The Caldarium I have managed to recover, mostly, new water, and new stone. Cleaned, and with places for candles. Lit, of course." A warning to her Cousin, though not many kindred would receive it. A test within tests.

"Welcome, Cousin, to what was once, the Deep Kingdom." She says, voice a mockery of sorrow.

[Patience]

"Things change, but We stay the same. Praise be." There is comfort in that, somewhere under the continual horror of their existence. A toxic stability, but stability nonetheless.

Patience wonders at that sigh. Taking it for the sign that it is, trying to puzzle it out. Can it really be a habit from the Doll's breathing days? Or is it affected? And if so, to what end?

The Bishop does not know what became of the Haunts that Alice had known. But she is sure of one thing: "We understand decay. It is our lot. We can build glories among the ruins. Have Faith." It's always been the way of their Family to thrive in the midst of neglect.

The sudden emergence of the building out of some psychic obscurity stops Patience for a moment. As if it's just come into focus, thrusting itself forth from a dilapidated background.

She follows Alice up the steps and into the haven, listening to her cousin's words all the while. She plucks the key from her cousin's fingers gently with a quiet "Thank you." It is a token to her. A special object. She folds her fingers about it and holds it tightly in her palm, against the scar there.

The door swings open. A breath of stale air. Patience forces herself to inhale, to take in the scent. In its own way, it is sweet.

She follows Alice down and further down. Her Blood sings. The Nosferatu have always found a home beneath the earth. This descent is truly a homecoming and Patience can feel it in her veins.

"Cousin, We will grow it again," she vows. Serious, steadfast. "Together."

And then they've entered the Caldarium. The flames, despite Alice's warning, stop Patience for a beat. The Thing Inside recoils, but the Bishop wills herself forward with a silent prayer. "Beautiful..." she whispers the word, eyes roving over the space. Immediately under its spell.

"You mentioned a temple?" Patience asks. The unspoken part of the question: Whose Temple?

[Alice Hart]

Call and response, Alice echoes the sentiment, though of course, they're praising different things.

"My faith doesn't waver, I know we will rebuild. This is not the first time I found squalor instead of a kingdom. Ruins instead of the warrens. We were nothing when I first came, but within that year. That very first year, we had a Regency and a Kingdom Deep. In the year next, all was but ash at my feet. Such is the cycle, the way of all things." solemn in tone, mockery ripping the edges.

To her Cousin's thanks, she ducks her head, jerking her stings. She knows how she felt when she was gifted the same from the Worm's fingers. She wonders wherever he is, if Gilroy can still remember her smile.

"Together. Yes. In the Below. We are one. Nosferatu, no matter anything else. we are Family." fervent for all the hollow, empty notes. A pause in the chorus of her voice, "Yes, it is. I saw it once, almost to perfection, but I did not see it when it was complete. Bishop Gilroy led the charge, made the plans....and tasked me to keep the fires burning, Naming me Keeper of this place. I will keep the candles lit, as I did before. The waters will stay clean, and pure. Let other baths in other Necropolises be places of blood and puss and revolution."

Alice falls to silance as she moves, strings pulled towards a bench. She sits, setting her carved cane against her leg.

"We hosted Court, once, a formal Court the other Clans were in awe of what we had made, and I will make it so again."

A smile, wide, sharp. "Yours. If you can find it." she adjusts the lay of her skirt, the fall of her hair. "Gilroy sanctified it, prayed nightly. I left it to him when he left, for his return. I would not intrude. It wasn't my place. It still isn't. My worship is not for under the earth, not unless called."

[Patience]

Patience could care less about her cousin's worship or where it happens. And she tries not to think about it.

It's hard. Her Faith is everything. But this is about Family and it's about this place. A place of power.

So she tries.

"I will find the Bishop's temple. And I will restore it," she says. Thrilled at this development.

Patience paces the room, taking its measure. Looks a long time at the clear pools.

Kneels, runs her finger through the water.

"Tell me about this place, Cousin. Tell me about our Family. Before. Tell me about yourself."

Patience is hungry for knowledge. And Alice holds a whole history of this city in her head.

[Alice Hart]

"Yes." is what Alice says, Patience will find Gilroy's temple, or she will not. Either way, Alice knows there will be a Sanctified haven beneath the earth once more. "It will be a good night, when you do." the universe righting itself, cycles and circles.

Hearing clothing move, steps taken and joints creak. She hears the water, and for a moment wished she took her shoes off to dangle her toes into the bath.

"The whole of it?" She asks, knowing that hunger, that all consuming need to learn. She had tried to ask Garrick and Gilroy, but they hadn't known much, and she was to fearful of Asa to ask after anything else, then by the time she had started to temper that fear she hadn't cared to ask. She and Robert were making their own history. "I came to Sacramento in 2016, I have not everything, but I have nearly the whole of that time." she hopes. Casting her mind back. Had things been lost? Had torpor robbed her of memories, she cannot remember she had forgotten?

"When I arrived there was only Kenneth Gilroy, the Bishop, and Priscus, and Garrick....Marlon..?" She remembered his name, but she hardly used it. It felt awkward on her tongue. "I spoke to both of them, regarding my Acknowledgement, one was Priscus, and the other was to. Expect....one missed a Formal Court, so, their own Acknowledgement was revoked. I was trying to gain my entry as the finalization of the Priscuship was transferred between them, and a re-Acknowledgement was given.

"Gilroy was a good Priscus. It is his plans that I followed for the Caldarium. A good Bishop....he held Mass, more then once. Which, I think is something worth noting. Others came and tried, but failed to gain an audience. I think everyone attended, Gilroy's though. I know he got converts. I was a disappointment. But he did not stay long enough to see me called Acolyte.....though he did return for a moment, I was Senechal then. I Acknowledge him, and told him that with his leaving, it seemed the swarm followed. We lost the Regency. I lost my eyes....." Choosing to speak of the Worm first. Knowing, that the Bishop would be someone Patience would want to know of. Covenant and Clan. Though, broad strokes, Alice wondering after time, if Patience wanted to hear the whole of it....and Alice feared she didn't quite remember it.

[Patience]

They are Blood. Family. But that doesn't erase all differences. That does not heal the fracture between their Faiths.

And so Patience stares at her sightless cousin, considering her words about the Temple. She has lifted her hand from the water and it drips from her fingers back into the pool.

Finally she stands, her back releasing a series of loud cracks. "I do not understand your openness to my Faith," she says. Blunt as always. Still, it's better than What do you care, Heretic?

"Why do you welcome a place to worship the Lord here?" Could it simply be nostalgia? Patience can't tell.

She approaches her cousin again. Drawing very close to her, listening to her tale. Her foul gaze locked on Alice's unseeing eyes.

This Gilroy sounds like a real believer. It makes Patience glad. As always, their Blood produced the most devout. Perhaps she will find some evidence of him in the temple, when she uncovers it.

"How did you lose your eyes, cousin?" Direct, though softly spoken.