abraxaslogs | [ open ] i just want a good night

[ If she weren't trying to escape the direct sunlight, Julie also most likely would not be awake. The truth is, she has little in the way of obligations — she can (and usually does) sleep late into the morning. She prefers afternoon and evening meetings anyway. But it's better to haul herself out of bed early than it is to try and hoist off croissants when people are awake and milling around at night, so she does it anyway.

Without thinking, Julie returns his nod, but then her brow knits deeply. Isn't he — wouldn't — uhhh... hm, is her thought process, and she looks up to the brightening sky before back at him, then the sky again. She's still frowning thoughtfully as she slips through the crowd smoothly to wind up within speaking range of Alucard. ]

I thought you're a vampire. Won't the sun turn you to a little burnt up pork rind? [ For what it's worth, she does sound genuinely concerned. ] It's gonna be full-on risen in a few minutes for the fryin'.

[ She has another sudden thought as she keeps walking. ] Oh shit, I should probably ask you. Duh. Do you use just like, regular floss on your fangs? 'Cause I tried but I keep gettin' scratches on my hands.

[ When she extends her fingers in front of herself, there are indeed multiple little red lines on the backs of her hands. ]

I'm only half. [Alucard does appreciate the concern, and he smiles softly both in response to that and to be reassuring.] Dhampir, if you want the specific term. It lets me walk around in the sun among other advantages.

[The question about fangs though? That gets a gentle raise of Alucard's eyebrows, mostly because it is so very, very specific. A little too specific, because when Julie is within range for him to see those scratches, it becomes a little too apparent why the question is so niche.

There is absolutely no casual way for him to look at someone's mouth to see if there are, indeed, fangs. So he doesn't try to hide it. This is just going to be what it is. His morning may as well start weird. Weird is better than stress.]

I've not done that much. Or at all. It isn't precisely the rage during the 1400s. I...are the fangs a result of recent adventures?

Oh, good. [ Her brow relaxes visibly at his reassurance. He's half vampire, cool. It makes as much sense as anything else she's dealt with over the past five years or so; her inclination is to not question the crazy stuff anymore. It's just easier this way. ] In my world, there weren't any real vampires. Just legends and stories. Mostly the vampires in 'em can't be born that way, they have to be turned by another vampire. But then I guess we didn't have vampires to tell us how wrong all our bullshit was.

[ Alucard will never know that she is now directly associating him with Renesmee to remember "born half vampire".

No, there is no casual way, and Julie helpfully opens her mouth as if at the dentist. She does, in fact, now have a set of fangs; hers are set wider apart than might be expected, and they have a visible curve backward into needle-sharp points. Snake fangs. A droplet of glittering yellow venom has begun forming at the tip of one of them. Literally glittering — Julie's blood is full of glitter (another unrequested genetic modification), and apparently so is her venom.

Shutting her mouth again, she nods, running her tongue along her teeth under her closed lips. ] Mm-hm. I had 'em in — in that thing. But I didn't remember first gettin' 'em there, just after I stopped doin' mortal stuff. Then once I was back here for a day or two, my gums started to hurt and soon I had 'em again.

[ She speaks of everything except the fangs themselves in a halted, tight voice. It's torture being reminded of yet another life snatched away from her by forces greater than herself. Third time has to be the fucking charm, right? ]

And the croissants. Fangs and croissants. That's a good name for a goth bakery.

Oh, the turning part is completely real. [He may not be a full vampire but he knows the basics! And that his blood does not have that ability, at least not in Abraxas itself.] It may very well be that there are undead in your world. They've just kept to themselves.

[If he must be associated with Renesmee, then fuck it. He's adding to at least some vague concern about the reality of vampires in worlds other than this one. It seems a fair enough exchange.

There is the comfort in the casual just becoming the equally agreed upon weird-to-see-in-the-middle-of-the-street. Alucard absolutely leans in to get a better look at the fangs, noting the differences. His are smaller. Retractable. Set further in the front of his mouth, and they don't have the same curve. That'd be enough to explain the problems, but okay. Venom. And glitter. That's very different. At least the source makes sense.

Alucard offers his left hand in solidarity. What should be normal flesh on his ring finger instead is the bone beneath, made of stained glass. The ombre reflects a rising sun, although the particulars are obscured by an elaborate, full length finger ring that Hilda made to help obscure some of the bone. It is less terrifying for others to look at when they thing the whole thing is an elaborate piece of jewelry and not outside bones.]

I completely understand. This isn't quite what I had, but is rhymes, so to speak. [Back to fangs.] Perhaps an apparatus that you can use in your hand and carries the floss further back for you would be more appropriate? It would save your hands, at any rate.

[Plus give Viktor something to do.]

That's what I smell. [At least one explanation is a good one here.] How many do you have on you at the moment?

[ Her snort is grim. ] Nah, we definitely didn't. They woulda had a... food supply issue to deal with if they didn't come creepin' out. Assumin' they were even still alive, I guess. Ish. Alive-ish.

[ Julie is unsure of whether vampires might be susceptible to Captain Trips. Fucking everything else living seemed to be. Except her. Her and the other immune. Either way, if Trips didn't kill the hidden undead, then it certainly would have starved them out into the small population centers that still existed, Boulder and Vegas. They wouldn't have had a choice.

She looks at his finger with interest, considering. It's not exactly surprising to hear others got permanent markings as well, mostly because this seemingly happens to them at random anyway, but also because she couldn't fathom being the only one. Lying catatonic on the floor for several weeks meant she had no confirmation until now, but she had assumed it once the fangs broke through her gums. She'd spit the two teeth they replaced out onto the bathroom tile during one of her infrequent, dreamlike shuffles to the restroom and back. ]

Yeah, I thought about those floss picks — you don't know, um — we had somethin' like that back home. These little plastic things that had a little bit of floss on the end, they were good if you like, went out to eat or if you couldn't use regular floss. But they're real wasteful. Plus like, a reusable one seems gross as hell. [ She is boring even herself. But then she clearly is struck by another thought, and her eyes widen slightly. ] But I wonder if Viktor can figure out a waterpik. Like a little power washer for your teeth.

[ She is aware that probably very little she just said makes any sense to anyone from the 1400s; no further explanation follows. Instead, she peers down at bag she's carrying in one hand. It's a regular-looking purse, silken and beaded. Opening it up, she puts her hand into it.

And then her entire arm, right up to the elbow. The bag's been enchanted to contain far, far more than it seems — the tin box she pulls from inside is at least a dozen times the size of the purse itself. A second, unseen box audibly rattles around in the bag. ]

Uh, this is about three dozen? 40? Somethin' like that. Then there's another dozen for the henna lady on the beach. And the box for the shelter was just as many as I could cram in there, maybe sixty or seventy. [ She pauses for just a second, then thrusts the tin in her hands at him. ] Here, you can have these. I was gonna trek out to your place with some the other day, but I didn't get around to it.

Understood.

[Alucard's not gotten much of a sense of Julie's immediate circumstances. Really all he's seen is the kitchen of the future in her Horizon, and that is what he is most concerned with and impressed by. Give a dhampir a gadget, and....he's going to just keep fucking around with it.

He withdraws his finger from inspection once it seems as if Julie is done looking over it. The strangest part is that the flesh still feels as if it is there. Nothing's off. It is simply a new and strange modification, and for all the world, it could be worse. It could be those strange shifting voids that ghosted over his body, showing off the skeleton and just being deeply unsettling. A single outside bone is acceptable.

Julie is 200% in clocking that Alucard has zero clue what she's on about, but one thing is certain:] It would be a smaller project for him. Something to mess around with when he needs a break from other, larger ones which I suspect will be plaguing him soon.

[Viktor's tendency towards pacifism is about to become a problem. This much Alucard is certain of, and it is going to be heartbreaking in new and awful ways.

Thank God for baked goods.]

Wait. How large is the kitchen you're working in to make these in the first place? [The very recent memory of Jaskier making too many ravioli to cope with the return from the Singularity looms in his head. Every flat surface in the office was covered in shaped pasta.] The bag explains some of it but I don't imagine they're going to cool easily in there.

[Never mind thank yous with the tin though. Alucard opens it up, curious and--

--a soft whistle responds. They're decorated. They're filled. There's fruit. And there's no way the dough itself isn't from scratch.]

These are impressive. When did you start making them?

[ The truth is that Julie rarely speaks about her home world, especially face-to-face. Most people can't really wrap their heads around the sheer magnitude of the devastation, and certainly not the true trauma she has experienced. And people who can't understand wind up just pitying her; Julie hates being pitied. Nadine is a bit more cavalier in discussing it, but she also tends to minimize and gloss over the details, the scale.

But it does occasionally lend itself to interesting thought experiments. How would vampires handle it if over ninety-nine percent of living mammals were wiped out by a plague? Luckily, they only had the one demon (or monster or trickster god or whatever Flagg was) to deal with, and he only ate people as a punishment. Not as nourishment. ]

What do you mean? [ She looks mildly apprehensive; while she knows Viktor's primary goals aren't really about recreating small appliances, she doesn't know much of what they are about. ] 'Cause of the war? I never got the feelin' he's willin' to get real into a war.

[ Julie's tiny attention span for things that aren't about herself kicks in, and she tilts her head, almost curious. ] Um, just my kitchen? At home. I don't have the square footage or nothin', it's just a kitchen. These are from yesterday, so they cooled on the counter. Most of 'em. Some on the table.

[ She clasps her hands together in front of herself, purse dangling from one wrist. ] A few weeks ago. I never made croissants before, but now I know how to make 'em by heart. I guess I should've, after eight hundred years of practice, right? Anyway, I don't know why, but that recipe came back with me too. Just have to keep the right cycle goin', the order of the dough in and outta the icebox.

Edited 2024-07-11 23:05 (UTC)

I meant it from the defensive and safety of everyone trying to get through it perspective. It's a wild guess, admittedly. [Truth be told, Alucard doesn't know what Viktor will do. He's worried for any number of reasons, but he likewise suspects that right now not even Viktor is certain of what he will be doing in the very near future.

It is probably better to abandon the topic all together. Things between himself and Viktor are still awkward after the 800 years that never happened, and truth be told, Alucard is starting to wonder if they will ever return to what things were. He is not proud of himself for feeling that way either.

At least there's baked goods to focus on. Thank god for little things.] Maybe you should build a small stack of racks that you can pull in and out like drawers. It could save you from having to use the table. Or let you make more.

[Both seem likely options, and Alucard would not make a bet on which one Julie would end up running with. He has to smile slightly at the origin of it though.] Well, at least something good came out of that...I still don't know what to call it, really. [Nightmare doesn't seem right. He had too good of a time overall to truly deem it bad.]

I have a meeting in Libertas, so these will be devoured. Possibly fought over, if there are serious opinions about flavor preferences.

It's a decent guess. I can't imagine it'll be long before Reiner starts to press gang us. [ The Summoned are not guests. They are not friends. The Summoned are tools to the Abraxans, and Julie is sure that those with skills valuable in a war will not be given a choice once the Cities' leadership wants them. ] Might as well get ready for it.

[ The idea of racks does get a thoughtful hum. She'll have to figure out a furniture reconfiguration for the kitchen, but that's not something she minds. Mostly, she needs to determine how long this process of dumping all of her unaddressed emotions and trauma into pastry. No sense in building shelves she'll only use once or twice before she tires of it.

Julie disagrees that anything positive came from the experience, since she can live without croissants, but she only smiles and tilts her head. ] If y'all need any more, you know where to find me.

[Alucard's face sours as Julie lays out a very likely series of events. The only saving grace is that Alucard looking annoyed looks like an angry bat having just tried a lemon, so his face is at least entertaining.

He's better in a fight than most. It simply isn't as well known here, and Alucard intends to keep it that way.] I reserve the right to bite people if anyone makes an attempt. Or swarm them as bats.

[Swarming someone as bats is funny when he does it to Jaskier and useful when being a distraction, but it can in fact be terrifying if Alucard puts effort into it.]

I'll stop by every so often, if only to help with your overflow. [The dhampir doesn't know Julie well, but he understands turning to art in recovering from bullshit.] And I'd be willing to learn technique, if you're inclined.

[That's walking in on precious time, but it feels right to ask. Help was how he got the graveyard project more involved. How Alucard and Jaskier started to become the duo they are now.]

[ Despite her generally awful and exhausted mood, Julie can't help but bite back a snicker at Alucard's expression. Her mouth twists a bit anyway; she's not entirely sure biting or bats will deter anyone acting on orders from Portam Hall. ]

Sure. I can't promise to be the best teacher or anythin', but I'll try. [ She is actually a terrible teacher and her method depends on having a fully functional phantom hand, as well as heavily on using magic to control temperatures, but she can still do her best to impart some kind of wisdom.

Taking a step back, Julie gives a smile and gestures vaguely toward the portal. ] I gotta run, but I'll see you around.

[Alucard can go with the snicker. That was the intended effect.]

I'm not terrible at going by observation. [But that's for later.

Alucard accepts the farewell for what it is, reminded of his own appointments.]

Thank you again for the pastry.

[ open ] i just want a good night

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