Logs:Mothers

Mothers
Dramatis Personae Anahita, Lucien	2023-05-14 "I have forgotten how to drink alone."
Location <NYC> La Lyre d'Or - Le Bonne Entente - Astoria - Queens
Occupying part of what had been the old cathedral's crypt, this bar and lounge is sumptuous in black and gold, a perfect complement to the club next door. The walls are decorated with a wide variety of beautifully crafted musical instruments from around the world, and rumor has it they are all as functional as the gleaming black grand piano to one side of the stage. The bar itself is a long curve of polished black marble veined with gold, softly lit from below, and the stools surpassingly comfortable. In addition to the round tables arrayed around the stage in the center of the space, there are cozy upholstered booths a half-level up and pairs of armchairs tucked into intimate nooks here and there. On most nights there is live music here in a wide range of genres and styles, and for more crowded shows of a certain caliber, the tables can be cleared away for more space. It's growing late; the lounge has not yet emptied, but it's slowing to a trickle. The singer onstage is slowing, too, low and sultry wind-down songs that are not *yet* titled Finish Up Your Drinks And Go Home Please but have a certain *vibe* to them that suggests they might soon enough be heading in that direction. One of the corner booths has been occupied for some time now. One of its occupants, a sharp blade of a woman with deep umber skin and hair cropped to a short cap of tight curls, is just taking her leave in a rustle of tangerine silk and a faint lingering trace of orris perfume. The other remains. In the booth, Lucien is less brightly colored than his recent companion, though not much less elegant in a charcoal three-piece suit with blue pinstripes in a sleek modern cut that minimizes his impressive musculature, a single buttonhole on each cuff also picked out in blue, a blue and black floral brocade tie, a very pale gray dress shirt cinched with simple yet strikingly iridescent labradorite cufflinks, and black monk shoes with a subtle embossed floral scrollwork. He has most of an old fashioned still in front of him that *he*, at least, seems in no rush to finish. His eyes have drifted back toward the stage, his finger tracing slowly around the rim as the quiet music washes over him. At one end of the bar, a small knot of L'Entente employees has dwindled down to just Anahita, who chats companionably with the bartender while he mixes her another sidecar. Her hair is down this evening and she's wearing an actual dress, if a somewhat casual one by the venue's standards: a flowing pale blue affair with an empire waist and off-the-shoulder sleeves, a sheer green shayla draped loosely about her neck, and slouchy-soft brown ankle boots. Though she didn't look to have been paying much attention to her surroundings while carousing with her colleagues, she makes her way unerringly to Lucien's booth after taking her amiable leave of the bar workers. "May I join you?" Lucien's ice-blue eyes do not shift away from the stage. His finger stills a long moment; circles back counterclockwise, now, slower than before. It's another beat before his head inclines, before he picks his glass up with a quiet rattle of ice for a small sip. "Apologies," he murmurs, still at least nominally regarding the stage. "I'm quite sure that ought to have been a simple question." He shifts in his seat, only now looking at Anahita, his glass tipping out toward the comfortable bench opposite. "There is space left at my table and I shall not be getting up until my glass is empty." Anahita waits through his consideration, not evidently much troubled by his delay, though she does rest one hand on the edge of the table to subtly support her weight. When he does reply she just inclines her head, a small bow of thanks, before easing herself down onto the padded bench. Her eyes also drift to the singer, and for a moment she does not speak or give any indication whether she intends to. "I think," she says at last, "I have forgotten how to drink alone. I do not miss that skill, at least." One of Lucien's brows quirks. He rolls his wrist, watching the ice shift within the glass. Watching the whiskey shift around the ice. "*That* skill, I have well practiced. I cannot say I fully endorse it. I am glad that lately, you have better options." He flicks a brief glance to the bar, then slowly returns to watching the stage. "I do hope your coworkers make pleasant enough drinking companions." His eyes are lowering now, to his glass, studying the light as it cuts through the drink. It doesn't seem to give him whatever answer he is looking for. "Have you come here just to drink, then?" "The ones I drink with are pleasant enough." There's a twitch of something in Anahita's expression that might have been an overture towards a smile, in someone else. "The housekeepers like me, I think." Her brows furrow slightly. "Though it might just be pity. They keep trying to set me up on dates" She take a slow sip of her drink. "I came to catch up on weekend gossip." "I gather you do not want the dates, then?" Lucien has not taken a drink, yet. He still rolls it slowly, still watches the tumbling ice within the glass. Half-watches Anahita through it. "Oh, goodness, we are getting into some dangerous territory there, no? I sign all your paychecks, it would be untoward to catch you up on the gossip about anyone who works here. And the guests --" His mouth twitches, *just* slightly. "They provide no end of fertile ground but tend not to look fondly on us *reaping* from it for our amusements." The smile melts back away as he lowers his glass. "And outside these walls --" His other hand turns upward in a small shrug. "Unless you are quite keenly interested in the current love triangle happening among our chorus or Jackson Holland's remarkable ability to send a bald man graying, I have very little of that to share." "I do not want the dates, but they are having fun and may yet find me one I do want, some day." Anahita does not sound particularly hopeful of this or disappointed in her lack of hope. "I wasn't looking for amusement, exactly, but I've already caught up on the gossip." She smooths down the silken tassels of her scarf in steady, rhythmic order down the row. "I'm here at your table because I enjoy your company, but..." She lifts her eyebrows slightly at Lucien. "I am curious about Jackson Holland's little-known secondary mutation, now." "Mmm." There is a light touch of surprise in this *mmm*, and, if only marginally, Lucien relaxes back into his seat. "I suspect when his current jailers signed up to imprison him they well predicted the political chaos they were signing up for. I do not think they had the slightest inkling what *personal* chaos he would bring, as well. I admit," and here he does take a drink, his small curl of smile half-hidden behind the rim of his glass, "I find it difficult to dredge up much sympathies for their predicament." The smile has vanished by the time his hand lowers. "His, on the other hand --" "I do not know him as well as I wish, but it does not surprise me at all he is making trouble for his jailers." Anahita twirls one of the tassels with her index finger, round and round and round. "We had such stories about him, in the labs. All true, of course. Prometheus couldn't subdue him, and I can't imagine the UN will, either. Even so, I'm glad he has friends like you, especially now." She's studying him sidelong. "Do you have children?" "You will have to add his mystical blade to the tales. Recently bestowed upon him by a Wizard, or so I am told." Lucien draws a finger around the rim of his glass. Slowly, for one circle and then another, and then another; longer by far than it would probably take *most* people to come up with an answer to this question. "Is today meaningful to you?" comes, at last, in lieu of an answer. Anahita does smile now, faint and wistful. "He's not usually the one with a sword, in those tales. But somebody needs to have one, ideally wreathed in flame, and he is to our people a shiny beacon already. It is apt." She goes still at the question, just for an instant, and when the stillness leaves her it is only to return to tassel-twirling. Her silence is not so very long, but certainly long enough most would be uncertain whether she even registered the question, or if so intends to answer, it until she does. "I think it's more meaningful to me by what's absent. I never celebrated it much, before my mothers were taken from me, or I from my son. But I do know something of Jackson's pain." "Taking it up in memory and taking it up as a beacon are not in contradiction, I think. He could wreath it." There is a soft fondness in Lucien's soft voice. His eyes are downturned, his finger still circling the glass, and then he, too, is quiet. Perhaps, at another table, the silence would be awkward. Perhaps, in another context, the silence would be awkward. It's long enough that perhaps most would be uncertain whether he even registered her answer at all, but he holds it carefully, sets it down carefully as well. "For that, then, I thank you. For trusting me with your company." His finger presses down, stops, turns again the other direction. "To my knowledge, I have never been a mother. My brother is missing. With Jackson's youngest, presumably." Anahita's eyes drift back to the stage, but the set of her determinedly upright posture is still very much present at the table, attuned to the music that fills the quiet between them. When she looks back at him she actually looks at his face, a muted sort of surprise passing swiftly across her own. "I don't trust easily, but when I do I am rarely mistaken. You would not have been careless with my company, having accepted it, even if I were only here to drink." Her eyes drop to his glass, the graceful motions of his hand upon it. "Soon may the gods return him to you." She raises her glass and, ever so slightly, her brows. "I have more faith now they will, with help such as yours." "My company is more complicated than last I saw you. You work for me, now. I like to think it is a weight I would not misuse. It is a weight, all the same, that I must remember." Lucien's finger trails down the side of the glass, traces abstract pattern in the condensation there. "Would that I had your faith. The answers to the difficulties of others seem to come so clearly to me but --" His head shakes, just small. "We are hardly the only people aiding them, at least. Perhaps I have not gotten to faith, quite yet. But some hope." His thumb brushes at the water gathered on the glass before he raises his glass, and his eyes, to Anahita, and drains the rest of his drink.