Why should tonight be any different?

[Rene Vitalli] *The magnificent mile was swarming with humanity tonight. Clubs pounding bass into the atmosphere. Frat boys and college girls getting their last solid drunk on before they had to return for winter session. This particular club was called the Neon, a moniker it endeavored to live up to. Neon tracks along the floor and ceiling, bright blue pink and green. Black lights setting any hint of white or color electric. Drinks served in flashing plastic tumblers and martini glasses, this place was an epileptic's nightmare. Hip hop pounds through the speakers, the early evening crowd warming up on the dance floor. One woman set apart from the crowd. She's sitting, cold elegance and alien grace, a stunning specimen of a black woman, lingering at the bar. Black eyes cold as she watches the door as though she's expecting someone. A bartender stands in front of the mirrored booze display, grinning a playboy grin hopefully at the back of her head as he tries once again to engage her in conversation. A shake of her head.*

[Emily Littleton] This girl, who still trips over describing herself as a woman, has traveled the width of the world to be here tonight. She has sat, confined to her seat, bereft of reading materials or carry-on luggage, bored out of her magnificent mind because some (asshole) individual half a world away decided to impose his Will on everyone else, to sew a bomb into his underwear in the name of Who-Gave-A-Flying-Fuck... That world-bender had not needed Enlightenment or Awakened eyes to change everything about her twelve-time-zone journey. This girl, who was not yet fully apprised of her own potential, has traveled the width of the world to be back in the below zero windchill of a Chicagoan New Year.

She is worn (tired) and she is weary (jet lagged), but these are only base truths. They slough off of her as she moves into the club, as the neon (flicker) lights and half-dark turn her eyes colorless in their depth. Something within her (without her) beats out a steady cadence, in time with the moving bass-line, and it signs to a surety and comfort. It calls out: Home, Home, Home.

She is home, or as close to Home as she ever comes these days. Emily sidles up to the bar, lanky and lithe at nearly six feet (five-nine barefoot [wearing heels]). Her voice drips of otherness, of far away places as she asks, politely, for a Newcastle. As she tacks on the Britishism ("Cheers"), as she fails to push the accent from her words.

And of course, given time, her gaze settles on Rene. For Chicago, it seems, is populated by fascinatingly (terrifyingly) beautiful people. Why should tonight be any different? Why should tonight be any different at all?

[Rene Vitalli] *Someone approaches. Not her quarry, but then, she was unsure her quarry even was truly her quarry this evening. She had her guard down, as noticeable as any mundane woman. Just a gorgeous black woman, sitting in a bar. Drink untouched in long strong fingers. Dark eyes crawl along Emily, dissecting and bland. The accent noted, strobe lights flashing both women in stark relief against the mirror. No. Make that one woman in stark relief against the mirror. Rene absent.*

[Emily Littleton] When the bartender brings her bottle, Emily reaches out to claim it. Long fingers capture its neck, deftly bringing it closer. She raises it a little, and with lightness and warmth in her voices tosses out a Happy New Year and a tip of her head. The warmth touches her eyes, even in this darkness. Even in the alien strobe of vivid, aggressive colors, she is something... more.

To the beautiful dark woman with strong fingers and a predatory grace, Emily is bright like a candle in a darkened room. She is a reborn star that pulses with the light of creation. She is pure, untainted by a lifetime's work, by a particular flavour. She is new, or newly reborn, perhaps perpetually renewed. It is strange, for people like them, to encounter a soul untouched by its own willworkings.

Sitting above her sternum, just below the hollow in her throat, is a small ovoid of Other that sings. This is the heartbeat (Home), the resonant taste (Home) of something certain, something sure (Home).

Not the child herself, but the bauble she wears. An unseeming glimmer of silver at her throat. Something imperfect, easily overlooked. Not unlike Emily herself.

And just as quickly as Emily had beheld the beauty beside her, Rene is gone. Emily shifts a little, bringing long fingers up to touch the oval at her throat. It glimmers in the neon light. She takes a swig from her bottle.

And the beat goes on.

[Rene Vitalli] *A spider ambles its way sluggishly up the bottle Emily's holding, crawling over slender fingers with ticklish legs. Emily alone in the mirror, her own young face peering back at her between brightly colored glasses and tall bottles of liquor. The distinct presence beside her remains, however, made all the more solid as a dark hand snaps out and closes vice like around Emily's wrist. Rene's eyes glittering like obsidian, laser beam glare focussed on the tiny arachnid crawling up the Orphan's hand.*

Do. Not. Move.

*Just as much a shock as her presence, is that little girl voice. Barely above a murmur, nearly drowned in heavy bass and hip-hop. Small and polite.*

[Emily Littleton] Time is an odd, oddly maleable, changeably fickle thing on occasion. At the first tickle of tiny fingernails on her skin, Emily tenses. Yet somehow, between the moment when she senses the intrusion, and the timepoint when her deeply blue (not here [here they are only deep, only dark]) eyes sweep down to spy the nimble arachnid on her hand -- in that fleeting span of time, Rene has grabbed fast her wrist.

Emily's heartbeat lept forward, raced and thrummed in a hasty pulse beneath Rene's fingertips. The Orphan was terrified, and the fear (remembered [real]) rolled off her like a palpable cold. If it could puddle in the space between them, it would. The already pale girl blanched, nodded only once, and barely seemed to breathe.

She could not look over at Rene. She could not look away from the dark fingers clasped about her wrist. Not even to the tiny spider dancing along her long fingers.

[Rene Vitalli] *A deft flick of a finger, and a crushing thud of a tightly coiled fist, and the spider is sent sailing to the bartop only to be smashed firmly into pulp.

BAM!

It is after a moment that Rene's hand unfurls from around Em's wrist. Another spider crawls along the bar, skittering towards the women, but this one is ignored entirely as dark eyes settle with unflinching intensity on Emily's face. Expectant.*

[Emily Littleton] Emily pulls her arms away from the bar as soon as she is released (set free). So quickly so that it leaves her bottle unsteady for a moment, tipping side to side in an ever narrowing pattern, faster-and-faster tighter-and-tigheter until it settles. Her breath comes in uneven gasps for a moment. Just a moment. Until she is calmer.

"Th... Thank you," she says, managing to push the edges of far away places from her voice long enough to seem less foreign, less Other. She even manages a slight smile, and while it is a pretty thing the warmth in it does not touch her eyes. She is far away, distant, as she wraps her arms over her middle and watches the second spider skitter across the bar with repulsion.

Rene watches Emily. Emily watches the spider. Who knows what the Spider watches, and the lights flicker, the bass drums on. Slowly her heartbeat settles, but does not slow entirely. Emily is on edge, ill-at-ease. Adrenaline has replaced the weariness in her veins, and so she is alert in the too many shots of espresso, burning the candle at both ends way.

"There's another," she says, and its soft like Rene's own voice. It is not childlike, or too young. Emily's alto is resonant, but firm. Fear drags the words down into a sense of urgency, seriousness, and her eyes remain fixed on the tiny eight-legged (freak) creature.

It is, after all, easier than looking directly at Rene.

[Rene Vitalli] That's fine.

*She says, voice small, clipped, polite. Yet entirely impolite. She doesn't explain. She doesn't offer explanation. Perhaps she should. The thought however, doesn't occur to her. She's silent an uneasy length of time, the bored intensity of her gaze only building. One got the feeling that the unsettling beauty wasn't so much looking at a person, as trying to figure out where exactly to insert a blade so as to best peel off your skin and see what lay beneath. The spider crawls to Rene. Scrambles up her hand and into her sleeve, without so much as a flinch from the black woman.*

You resonate.

[Emily Littleton] And there are oh-so-many places that Rene could nudge, push, flay away with deft and nimble fingers that would leave Emily completely undone that the far more beautiful, alien woman would not know where to begin. The Orphan was not strong, either physically or metaphysically so. She was new enough to be a fragile glass-limbed thing. An unfilled vessel. She was new enough to have not yet grasped her potential, or learned the language to describe this brave new world...

Emily's head cants slightly to the right as the spider skitters into Rene's sleeve, her brow furrows, her mouth purses. These are subtle but telling things. Only then does she look away from the obscured arachnid, up into the unsettling beauty of those dark eyes.

"Come again?" she asks; the confusion is not contrived. Yet even so, the space around is resonant with the taste of Home. Quite at odds with Emily's countenance. "Resonate?"

[Rene Vitalli] *An eyebrow quirks up. The first expression from the dark woman all night.*

Your resonance. A sensation of Home. Your name is?

*Regardless of the inflection, somehow nothing seems a question with the strange beauty leaning back and appraising Emily as though the girl were a mildly interesting insect. Much like the one currently barrelling up the poor Orphan's ankle, teased out of hiding for one reason or another. Yet another spider emerges from Rene's sleeve, and is allowed to casually explore her fingertips. Rene pauses, then adds as an afterthought.*

I am Rene.

[Emily Littleton] She felt a tickle on her ankle, but Emily told herself it was only her imagination. Only the hours of mindlessly re-reading the contents of her seatback pocket, listening to the woman beside her snore, while the ocean beneath their glittering metal wings soared past precipitously.

Should she emerge from this neon haze unscathed, Emily would evidence a profound dislike of insects for weeks to come. If. There was a surreality to being here, at the edge of exhaustion and yet still wide awake, caught in the too-bright flickers and the relentless cadence.

"Emily," she offered, and all three syllables were distinctly articulated in that British-tinged (but not quite perfectly so) twist of her tongue. There was understanding now where confusion had touched her eyes. But Emily did not correct Rene on the source of the resonance. Instead she uneasily watched the arachnid traipse along the woman's fingertips.

[Rene Vitalli] Order?

*Almond eyes study Emily dispassionately, as Emily studies the spider on her fingertips. Rene altogether placid, were it not for the niggling sensation of malice that rested like a mantle about her slender frame. The strobes flash and cast everything in stop motion.*

[Emily Littleton] "Ah..." Emily's brow creased again. "As opposed to Chaos?" she queried, clearly preferring Rene's proferred choice to her own reply.

The Malice was enough to keep the Orphan on edge (at bay). It was enough to keep her heartbeat quick and her eyes bright (watchful). Emily has told that there are Others, and that the Others are not always kind.

[Rene Vitalli] No.

*It would seem thats all she has to say on the matter. A slow reptilian blink before she looks out over the crowd. There was probably a way to get conversations to continue past hello. Rene had yet to master it. Her drink is set down, as she slides off the stool with startling economy of motion. Spider set to skitter along the bar as she prowls gracefully to the door, chin held high, gaze impassive. Entirely unreflected in the mirrors of the dance floor as she glides like a shark through the crowd.*

[Emily Littleton] After Rene has left Emily's personal space, she exhaled the small volume of air that had been stuck at the bottom of her lungs--never fully exhaled in all those tiny, tight breaths she took when the other woman was near. Emily felt the skitter of something sliding down her leg and swallowed, hard, against the revulsion that slid down her spine and threatened to shake her shoulders.

She couldn't help but watch Rene as she disappeared towards the door. In the flicker-snap-flash strobe of the neon lights, the black woman receded like a series of garish still frames. Ever further, ever farther.

The Orphan found her hands shaking when she reached out to reclaim her Newcastle. She looked around carefully (twice) for lingering spiders before leaning against the bar again.

Hell of a homecoming.

[Rene Vitalli] [and out!]