pris crashes the party of the snake ][ a log

[Guest]

For the past few years, Arman had called an underground cathedral home. It was the closest thing to a home he had, as it was the only building he ever lived in - such as he could be said to live in any place - outside of the Abyss. Now, he had something more conventional to call home. Built between what had become the rich side of town and the "upper end" of the red light district, his home was a sprawling Mediterranean styled villa atop a gently sloping hill. A limestone and wrought iron fence enclosed the yard, taking up most of the block, and a cobblestone drive led to the house itself atop the hill. The white mansion was lit by torches every few feet around the house, and by large lanterns hanging from and above the balconies. Several horses were stabled off to the west side of the manor, not a few cars parked in the circle drive at the front lawn, and many cars beside lined the walk back down along the streets. In the back of the house, near the pool and under a corner of a north balcony, Arman lounged in an easy, yet perfectly postured, repose on a white chaise lounge. He wore white himself, a linen suit and matching leather loafers, with a light blue silk shirt, a slightly darker blue silk cravat, silver cufflinks, and a silver clasp holding his hair back in a neat ponytail. Even his shades, which he wore even that evening, Victorian styled, were tinted a dark blue. Over three-hundred people were in attendance for the evening's function, and though Arman was the host, no one stood by him. He lorded over the party, cool and aloof, though it was clear that everyone after some fashioned managed to move around him, as though the party was a kind of orbit with the host at its center. They were each invited specifically, and were grateful to be invited. If only they had reason to contemplate the possibilities behind the reasons for being invited. Some might have shuddered, but all of them would have come, unquestionably. Arman stifled a yawn, watching a group of couples by the northwest end of the pool, and sipped at a glass of madiera.

dommy was away for one more night, and her most precious donnie duck was working the late shift at the clinic. pris had tried staying in donnie's apartment working on the painting in his absence, but she was having trouble focusing. there was something about how she was painting that just wasn't enough for her - even painting with a brush in each hand. the brush in each hand method was something she started doing after her last visit with benjamin at his cave, though that connection wasn't something she thought much about. she thought she was just using two brushes because she was painting an entire wall. since her right hand could paint, why would she think her left couldn't paint just as well? so when it did paint well it was just what pris expected. but still - painting wasn't enough for her tonight. so she left donnie's apartment and went next door to her own, to go root in her closet for traveling clothes. what she costumed herself in was certainly singular. it was a dress she made only a few short weeks ago after pris has 'blossomed' into a woman - it looked very much like a dress the queen of hearts would wear...if she was wearing a sleek gown that fit her body shape. the sleeves were meant to slide off the shoulder, and they plus the dip of the neck made a very sophisticated 'v' in black silk shining fabric. each of her blossoms were hugged in a bodice that featured red hearts, and underneath the white began, with a large read hearts and a few black spaces clubs and so on decorating the dress down the front and back to her knee. then the dress belled out at the knee, a mixture of black and red layered skirts which swooshed when she walked. it was a very elegant dress shape for a sixteen-year-old girl. her shoes were heeled black boots that looked victorian with a slender heel and had a red toe and white laces. her bare arms had so many bracelets, all red black and white. she was wearing a sleek cheery apple wig that was cut in a 1920s bob, and her make-up was black and white besides her red lips. she had a costume jewelry very ornate necklace of red stones that sat on her chest like a web. she was all dressed up and ready to go, and pris had started her usual routine of taking busses. she had ended up here. all these people milling about this big place in their fancy clothes, why wouldn't she belong? even though there were stares she entered...somehow...and there she was wandering around the grounds her green eyes darting here there and everywhere as she just marveled at all the hustle and bustle that was going on. a hang clung to the strap of her oversized black pleather shoulder bag which she always had with her...as if she was suspicious that one of these fancy dressed people was going to take it. of all things, she didn't talk to anyone. she ended up approaching a particularly interesting looking tree. he'd see her lips moving from where he was. clearly she was talking to it. the tree

Whether the tree was interesting to anyone besides Pris remained to be seen, but as for the girl herself, she was certainly seen. Yes, she was seen, and stared at, by many of the guests (and ignored without a thought by many), but she caught the interest of one particular someone. Arman. He stayed where he was, resting on the chaise lounge, never even lifting his head. She was already in his line of sight. "I believe you are the only guest who is properly dressed this evening. You have my compliments." He paused just long enough to offer a polite smile. "Pardon me if I have interrupted you in any way." His voice was cool, smooth and polished, perfectly articulated. With the hiss that snaked about his every syllable, his voice was perfect given where he was - between the vices and virtues of Rhy'Din, if the city had any virtues to it at all.

pris didn't turn towards the person who was speaking to her. her eyes were still on the tree, head tilted back so that her erratic gaze could change points of focus within the tree canopy every few seconds. her right hand was rubbing the trees bark, her palm pressed flat to the bark so she could feel the tickles the tree gave her in the best way. "i made this dress. i made because when a girl blossoms she's supposed to look like it. most people here probably didn't make their things. not everyone knows how. a lot of people don't want to know how. did you make your things, snake?" she heard the hiss. that's why she had called him snake. did she expect to see a snake on the ground dressed up for a party when she turned around? it was hard to tell with pris. but she finally did turn, and looked right in the direction the voice had come from. he'd notice right away that she never looked into his eyes, and that often her constantly shifting gaze was looking at the space around him and not right at him. "oh," she said after a moment of taking the picture of him in. "your scales are missing."

A measuring eyebrow lifted in interest, and the ghost of an amused smirk touched his lips. "No one here made their things, except the two of us. Of that, I can assure you." The smirk smoothly became a smile, and with a simple gesture invited her to sit on a nearby settee. "Am I," he asked, letting her question linger, and instead looking quite seriously at his left hand, turning it over this way and that. "So I am." Arman reclined back into the chaise lounge, and faced up just past the edge of the balcony into the sky. "And I did make my things. Do you like them?" She might notice that while the other guests moved in and out amongst one another, none came within many feet of the area in which they sat. Only when he beckoned with a subtle flick of his wrist and fingers did a waiter approach with a tray of drinks. On the tray were glasses of wine, champagne, and water. The waiter stood by Pris silently; if she made no move to take a drink, he would leave.

"where are they?" pris pressed. his scales. a person could ask her fifty questions and pris would ignore them all if her mind was fixating on something, and that's what happened right now. because his voice was still hissing, but no scales were scaling. "do i have to scratch your surface to see them, are you hiding them so that no one stares? i don't know if it's working. i think they can hear you, snake. no one is coming close." that was the benefit of having an unconventional brain that make unconventional connections, coupled with her incredible artist's eye for detail. and pris' powers of observation stronger than they used to be, much more focused and acute than every before. she could take so much visual information in with only a second's glance to see it. now pris had realized when she was standing in front of a certain cave that things were different, but she didn't know how. how was this - her almost photographic absorption of visual details. he might notice something else, too. she was mimicking his voice. and she was doing it rather well, almost too well considering she was just a mortal girl of no mystical decent. but she was able to replicate his hiss as much as it could possibly be replicated without being exactly like him. only after she talked of him being a snake did she answer his question. "you look like a canvas." that white suit. "are you waiting for someone to paint on you?" asked as she picked up a glass filled with red. she did so without even turning to look at the waiter - she could see him standing next to her out of her eye corners. why did she pick the glass with the red in it? because it matched her dress. palette was important.

Very little escaped Arman's notice and attention; his own voice was certainly for the time least among those things. He parted his lips to speak, the hiss in his voice soon to dominate the angelic melody of his baritone, but he did not speak. He pressed his lips back together into a straight line. For what might have been a full minute he only looked at her. When that time was past, he reached up and took off his shades. Solid black listless abysmal eyes held her fast within their piercing, measuring, calculating stare. "To paint on me... " He let the echo linger, falling softly, yet so clearly, from his lips. "You may scratch beneath the surface, if you wish, but I have no scales. I am a snake, but no snake, Blossom." The smile that followed was flawless, beautiful, and somehow wrong for the recherche bronze face with two black holes for eyes.

the whole minute he was silent she was silent. and relatively still, for pris. there was always movement in her eyes, unless the person she was with happened to be one of the few that she felt safe enough to stare at. and those people were precious few and certainly not this snake. but the silence didn't bother her. he did many things during the silence that were just as good as speaking. like removing his sunglasses and pursing his lips. she noticed all of that even if she didn't say anything about it directly. "oh. you're an oxymoron." it was said with full teenage understanding. benjamin had just mentioned oxymorons the other day. how she would be okay but not okay. how people could be living but dead. it was something easily understood by her because of what she was about to tell this Snake. "they used to call m that at my old school. oxymoron. blossom is better. but i'm still an oxymoron." she was poof's oxymoron though. which was a very specific kind of oxymoron, she felt. more specific than how they called her oxymoron at school. her eyes rested on his eyebrows for a moment as she said plainly, " so are you? waiting to be painted."

"I am a canvas; a painted painter. Would you paint me?" He smiled, and it was a dangerous smile. "Perhaps you have painted me already, are painting me now." Suddenly his face fell flat, and Arman smoothly shifted back into an easy repose, his head back on the pillow behind him. He put his shades back on as he reclined his head, and gave a brief hum. "You're a rose if you're a blossom, Blossom. Beautiful, soft petals, and dangerous, sharp thorns. An oxymoron, surely, if ever there was one. Unless you're a venus flytrap?" He paused, smiling, then shook his head. "No, you are a rose." Another pause, and he turned his head to face her. "But you aren't, are you? You're a Blossom. A blossom still some time in blooming, I think. And at my party. I want you at the next one." There was no hesitation, and there was nothing short of the smooth kind of command that came not only from long custom, but something inherent to his being, to his nature. "You are a guest at this house, even should neither of us be here. I ask now only your name, and I will give you mine."

[Guest]

"i can paint your portrait. i can paint anything's portrait. but you might not like what i paint. i paint what i see and it's not what anyone else sees. i haven't painted you yet. for that i need my sketchbook and it's in my bag." so 'paint' was a relative term. she used oil pastels unless she was really painting, and then she made her own paint the old fashioned way with pigments and egg whites and things. he would notice she made a bitter lemon face, and she made it right when he asked for her name. pris was picky about giving out her name, and often when she was asked to give it she avoided it somehow. "pris." she said that in a tone and with a look about her that was slightly indignant, like only a teenage girl could manage. "so give your name back." because if she gave hers, he better believe she was going to get his in return just like he said she would! pris had a habit of letting lots of sentences go by unanswered sometimes, especially if her mind was on other things. that's what happened with his talk of her being a flower besides this single comment. "i'm not a flower i'm sky. i'm up so high that no one's stupid dirty fingers or their dirty anything else can touch me. i'm above it. that's what poof says and that's how he painted me."

He was very interested - that much was not hidden in the least, nor did he mean it to be. "You paint what you see. I would very much like you to paint me, if you would. That is yours to decide, of course." Not quite rhetorical, he was not giving her permission, but stating what they both knew: that it was up to her. "I give you my name, and you have me give it back to myself. Very well," he said wryly, with truly the devil's own grin. "I am Arman. And that's what thorns are for, keeping people away. But they are picked; aren't they? And then they prick. And you are a Blossom, if I am a Snake." Arman rolled over then, his body turning to face her as he shifted onto his side. "Can you fly, to be so high? I can."

arman. she would remember the name, but most likely she would keep calling him snake. it was just pris' habit - like it was more honest to call people by what they were rather than how they happened to be named. names were given before people became who they really were, after all. "well you are a snake. i heard your hiss. i know it." she hissed the 'i know it' in a mimic of his hiss just to prove that she did know. just as before the imitation of it was uncanny. "i can be. in my own way. i am right now. but people don't see it because they can only see with the fronts of their eyes. do you want me to paint you now?" if he did she didn't mind. it would give her something to do with her hands, and give her eyes something to do besides darting around here there and everywhere just for the sake of seeing what kind of hustle bustled around them.

"If only you knew, Blossom. Still, you do know. Oh, how clearly I believe you can see me, if you but looked the right way. A kaleidoscope is hardly a microscope, is it; and just as useless if you need a telescope." Once more that same eyebrow lifted into a cool arch above his shades. "You might like a telescope, I daresay. Do you have one?" Even as he asked the question, he dismissed it with a deft wave of his hand. "You say you are a snake. Can you truly see me; I wonder. I know snakes, Blossom. And I know artists. I paint, too," he told her with a smile. "Please, do paint me. I would very much like to see what you see, and not simply what is there before you to be seen."

[. . .to be continued! . . .]