A Meeting of Minds [Hal]

[Lucia]

"I don't know," Lucia said, speaking to the open air. "I could just kill her and not worry about her anymore," her fingers picked at halberd's blade, teasing the edge, "but I don't think those are the right reasons." Not that Lucia needed much in the way of reason, but she supposed that random deaths--or trances, in this case--would be frowned upon in court if she followed the voice's advice and started slaughtering everyone around her.

She wanted to do it, but Lucia had always loved the feel of blood sliding between her fingers, the sounds of bones cracking, and, oh, the screams. Her eyelids slowly closed as she imagined it, the longing thick in her throat. The voice whispered to kill before she is killed, to maim and rend and burn. Unease still rested low on her belly, fluttering at inopportune times--when was the last time Lucia had been afraid? Just the sensation made her twitch angrily.

"Why should I even listen to you?" she asked, haughtily, tossing her head. "Go away." The voice, always the lightest whisper on the breeze, murmured.

Lucia gripped her halberd and stamped her foot. "I said go away!"

[Kin/diablo]

It was easier to forget about the strange lack of sun when he was in the Unseelie caverns. It almost didn't matter that Hal kept finding himself walking the same routes; he hadn't seen that bitch of a sidhe since the festival—good riddance—and while he remained wary of other fae, there wasn't really any way to avoid running into strangers now and again. Dull, foolish animals, he thought sometimes, but he duly made conversation with a pleasant smile and bright eyes.

Though how exactly Hal found himself standing at the entrance of a cavern with a tiny sidhe shouting at him, he would never quite remember.

"I," he said, and paused when he noticed how her eyes looked right past him. He resisted the urge to look behind him -- there was no one there, he knew there was no one there -- and instead stood there silently for a moment. If she was seeing something that wasn't there, could she see something that was?

Finally, Hal rubbed his chin ruefully. "I think it has gone," he said. "Unless you mean me." He eyed her halberd and added, "I'll go if you like."

[Lucia]

The voice laughed at her and Lucia turned around, her halberd coming up like a whip. She barely registered the nimbus as she glared off to the side, a white-knuckled grip on her weapon. There was a stillness in her now, so different from her usual joyful movement, and she held herself sharply, like at any second she would go on an attack. A breath, two, and her gaze swung to the newcomer, red eyes narrowed. How long had he been standing there..?

And, like a balloon abruptly losing its air, she went from stillness to fluidity, like she had liquid for bones the way she stood. She leaned against her halberd and rubbed her cheek against the smooth staff as her eye lids fluttered, half-mast. "You're not invisible," she sang out and gave him a stunning smile, perhaps made the more so by her sincerity. "So it is not you. You do not see it, but nobody sees it." She gave a little ripple of her shoulder, a vague shrug. "Only I."

She pulled herself away from her weapon to prowl nearer to this nimbus who loomed over her (though, admittedly, most beings did). Lucia reached out and patted his arm. "If it had been you," she said cheerfully, "I would have gutted you where you stand."

The impulse was still there, but she would have loathed to let the voice have its way, no matter if it would have been fun for her. So the nimbus was safe for now. Lucia was happy the voice wasn't here, and so she smiled and held her head high, expectation in her eyes. "And you are?"

[Kin/diablo]

"Oh," Hal said, because what else could you say when someone told you that you weren't invisible? (Good to know. Or perhaps, If I were, then I'd have some real fun.) It was at once unnerving and exhilarating, the way that she was convinced something was there. Maybe something was. Staring down at the small sidhe, he thought better of patting her in return—on her head—and managed to say instead: "What a gorgeous weapon you have."

He was also somewhat charmed by her earnestness, but that wasn't something he tended to put much thought into, even at the best of times.

"Okay," Hal added amiably, as if it were every day that people talked about gutting him. "I'm Holden—" slip of the tongue, "—but Hal will do." He tipped his face down even more so that he could look her in the eyes. "However, I try not to lose any blood to strangers. What might your name be? And what does it do," he continued, "the thing that nobody sees?"

[Lucia]

Lucia leaned forward, gazing at him like she could read the depths of his person through his eyes, before she smiled and, cat quick, leaned back again. She visibly preened as he complemented her halberd--she had put a lot of work into it, and it was an exquisite piece. It was only right that he noticed, but, still, Lucia couldn't help but look at him more kindly, and she shifted her halberd forward so that it was a hairsbreadth away from his nose. Better to admire it from up close.

"Holden." She grasped hold of his name and kept it close. She liked the cadence of it tripping up and down her tongue and so dismissed his "but Hal will do" with an absentminded shake of her head. The informality of his introduction made her pause, but seeing as it was only a nimbus--well, perhaps they just did not know better.

"Do you then not mind losing blood for not-strangers?" Eagerness filled her eyes and she laughed. "How strange!"

She spun away then, letting her dress swish around her, laughter like the tinkling of bells. "I am Princess Lucia," she said, skirting formalities with a mischievous grin. Lucia gave a conspiratorial look over Hal's shoulder, as if searching for the invisible voice. It was muted now, nothing more than the softest of murmurs. "It tells me things. It wants me to run you through, take hold of your heart, and hold it in my hands." A touch of longing. "To carve from your ribs and play with your blood."

Lucia went quiet, eyes hazy, before she shook her head. "But no," she said imperiously, "I do not do such things because others tell me to."