Cold Heart, Lonely Heart (Caeli and Rydia)
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		<h2 id="linktree">Play-By-Post: Bondage, D/s, S&amp;M =&gt; Bondage: Human Solos =&gt; Topic started by: Rydia on 22-01-2008, 16:39:16</h2>
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				Title: <strong>Cold Heart, Lonely Heart (Caeli and Rydia)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Rydia</strong> on <strong>22-01-2008, 16:39:16</strong>
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				It had been a long time since whiskey had done anything more than make her mouth tingle with a vague antiseptic feeling, but on that night the urge to drink had been stronger than any thirst she had ever known, save one, and since she couldn't get drunk anyway, she had worked her way through most of a bottle of Teacher's in her lonely corner table before ten o'clock.<br><br>Perhaps the memory of strong drink in the back rooms of speakeasies and the giddy, wonderful drunkenness and crashing despair was triggered by the near constant smell and taste of the alcohol, because Erica Virtue could swore that she felt the tiniest bit inebriated as she stared into the bottom of the glass.&nbsp; Or perhaps it was just a mad, doomed effort to feel anything but the grief-driven boredom that she was able to delude herself into believing that she was drunk on cheap whiskey, rather than admit that she was alone.&nbsp; So utterly alone.<br><br>Death was not a stranger to Erica.&nbsp; She'd seen more than her share of it over the years.&nbsp; She'd cased more than her share of it, never lightly, but never hesitantly, either.&nbsp; And yet it was a different sort of animal entirely when it came in the guise of a feature of everyday life and death, when a heart was ill-used by passing years and could no longer support its labor in a living chest.&nbsp; Her niece Diane, a kind soul, loving mother, only child of her late brother, had passed as all humans must, and her grieving had responded in the ways families do.&nbsp; They drew together, cried and wept and fumed, attended the wake and the burial, the reception in Emma's house, and notified everyone they could think of.<br><br>Including Erica.&nbsp; At the viewing, where she had come, numb and confused by the thought of the little girl in the white confirmation dress grown and married and mothered and now dead, she had realized, looking over the faces of the people that had gathered to talk in those tasteful rooms in hushed tones, that she did not know any of them.&nbsp; They were strangers to her, though she had been family to many of them.&nbsp; More than one person had asked her, in tactful ways, who the hell she was and who in the family she was attached to, or how she had known Diane.&nbsp; And Erica had no answer, none she could give, and had not stayed past the twenty-third Psalm.<br><br>She had fled to the nearest bar she could find.&nbsp; How could she have simply forgotten the human life of John's only daughter?&nbsp; How could four, five decades have slipped past, and she had never noticed.&nbsp; There must have been a wedding, must have been announcements at the birth of the three fair-haired children she'd seen in black suits and dresses.&nbsp; And yet it hadn't affected her, hadn't touched her, hadn't registered itself on her conscious.<br><br>They had never told her immortality would be like this.<br><br>A tall woman even in this day and age, she had been a giantess, an amazon, when she came into her full height.&nbsp; A fine, patrician face the color of the marble statues of Venus she most resembled, her hair framed her features, the color of blood on snow, stark crimson.&nbsp; She still wore the black skirt and blouse, the veil dumped unceremoniously on the red and white checkered tablecloth, and anyone could tell by the teary eyes the color of ambered honey that she was grieving, and yet her allure was so powerful that not even her visible grief could keep them away that had a mind to come to her for death and oblivion.<br><br>The man wore an expensive suit and polished shoes, a striped blue tie and a bulbous drinker's nose.&nbsp; He sat down, crushing her hat and veil, and said something to her that she did not hear.&nbsp; Erica looked him in the eye, feeling her teeth scraping the inside of her lip, and almost took him there across the table.&nbsp; Only a will tough as old tree roots restrained her, and she pushed herself back from the table with a clatter of the chair.&nbsp; She brushed off his hand which flew to her arm to keep her from going, and fled the bar, spilling blindly into the snow-covered streets without jacket or gloves, the sobs in her chest spilling forth in soundless, high calls of grief.<br><br>Erica slumped against the wall of a building, near the lip of an alley, her arms wrapped around her own torso, watching the snow fall, cold, dead, still in the night.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Cold Heart, Lonely Heart (Caeli and Rydia)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caeli</strong> on <strong>30-01-2008, 17:41:51</strong>
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				The bed was a flurry of sheets and pillows as a young woman yanked the top sheet over her scantily-clad body, and a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman did the same with a pillow over his lower anatomy. The curtains had been left open, so the moonlight gave a pale silver glow to the bed's currently rumpled state; it was just bright enough that Jessalyn could see the disgruntled expression over her would-be lover's face. She hadn't meant to let things get this far - at first it was only kissing, and she'd been inexperienced enough that her gown was unlaced and open before she realized that she'd been undressed. And when she had tried to protest, Randall had made her feel so <em>good</em>...<br><br>"You're really an icy bitch like they say you are, Jess," he snarled now, as he hastily pulled on his trousers and dress shirt. He carefully straightened out the sleeves to his suit and put it back on, tousling his hair easily with the air of someone all too experienced at the art of re-dressing himself after a quick tumble. Jessalyn's cheeks flamed, but he didn't notice; he continued his ramble about how she was frigid and cold and all manner of other insulting names before he finally let himself out of her room. The young woman he left behind stared after him, resigned, but no longer desperate to please like she would have been six months ago.<br><br>Having been trapped into a loveless marriage three years ago, Jessalyn Rawlings had become fearful of nights when her rich and drunken husband decided to pay her a visit, those times when he decided not to go to a whorehouse to satisfy himself. He had been harsh and demanding, and when the innocent, inexperienced girl he had married didn't know how to comply with his orders, he would hit her. Oh, never hard enough to do serious damage - but it had kept her somewhat meek and docile when he had been around the house. She had been too proud - and too frightened - to seek another lover, for she never wished to imagine just what her husband would do if he found out. And Jess was too much a lady to bring shame on her family, gods bless them.<br><br>It had been with no little relief when Jess received news of her husband's death. At twenty-one, she had become a rich widow, one who was no longer tied to the drunken whims of a temperamental husband. Without the constraints he had placed on her, Jess had become quite the social butterfly, attending social events by day and evening, one who attracted men of all types because of her fortune and her availability. Unfortunately, as now, Jess couldn't bear to take a man to her bed, no matter how close to the actual task they were; fear would inevitably strike her numb, and she would adamantly refuse to go further.<br><br><em>A pity, really,</em> Jessalyn sighed as she pulled her blue-green gown from her bedroom floor. It was a simple task to dress herself, tightening the ribbons that stretched across the elegant line of her back. Soon, she was looking presentable enough, with the dark waves of her hair pulled back with a single ribbon, and most of the jewelry that marked her wealth safely hidden away in her jewelry box. With a dark cloak pulled over her dress and beautiful, luscious hair, she would attract no unwanted attention on her way to Alasdair's bar. Surely, her childhood friend would have a little time to listen to her woes, and perhaps give her a drink or two before letting her sleep off the alcohol in one of his spare rooms.<br><br>Without any thought to the late hour of the night, Jessalyn slipped out of her home and began making her way to <em>Alasdair's</em>. Hopefully, he wouldn't be too busy tonight... Jessalyn wanted to pour out all her woes about men and their single-minded assumptions and desires to <em>somebody</em>. The petite, lithe figure floated through the darkened streets, seemingly insignificant amidst the steady fall of snow, if slightly out of place in the neighborhood.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Cold Heart, Lonely Heart (Caeli and Rydia)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Rydia</strong> on <strong>09-02-2008, 03:52:11</strong>
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				So deep had the night grown, how blinding the flitting, dancing flecks of snow, that a person could have passed within two feet of Erica, and if they had not been looking directly at her, they would failed to see her.&nbsp; Even had they been looking it was an uncertain proposition, for the woman was still in her pool of shadows, and in the dark it was motion the human eye latched onto, never light, never shadow, but movement.&nbsp; And she was not moving, wasn't she?&nbsp; Hadn't she been the same for so many years now, unchanging and still as the world turned around her?&nbsp; In normal times, she would never be so maudlin, and perhaps it was the tiniest effect of the liquor more than her own grief, but for whatever reason, the grief cut at her like a knife, twisting an acid path into her heart.<br><br>Finally she stood, and when she did a blanket of snow broke into a thousand soft pieces and landed with a light, cold crunch on the sidewalk around her feet.&nbsp; Her skin was icy, and as white as the snow that had covered it, but she did not feel the cold, did not notice it any more than she noticed the gasps of surprise when she emerged from the alley as if she had appeared out of thin air.&nbsp; The tears that she'd ceased shedding had frozen onto her cheeks, trailing icicles that hung from her jaw.&nbsp; A woman asked her in a quavering voice if she was alright, and she turned away from the voice, holding a hand up between them as if to ward her off.&nbsp; Why couldn't they just leave her alone, why did everyone feel they had license to intrude on her private grief, why couldn't she find a place where she didn't hurt?<br><br>She wanted to drink again, but it wasn't whiskey that was calling her.&nbsp; It was the other thing, and while she might fight against it other times, her emotional reserves were depleted.&nbsp; It was all she could do to direct the hunger, never mind trying to deny it.&nbsp; The bar, back into the bar.&nbsp; There would be someone there, someone that could give her enough warmth to go on for another night.&nbsp; What was it called again?&nbsp; Alasdair's.&nbsp; <em>Funny name</em>, she thought as she made her way back towards the doorway, moving sinuously through the snow, a shark in motion sniffing out for that one drop of blood in the water.&nbsp; There was a small, petite figure in a cloak moving towards the door as she was, and Erica set her sights on the girl.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Cold Heart, Lonely Heart (Caeli and Rydia)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caeli</strong> on <strong>15-02-2008, 13:37:18</strong>
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				The bundled-up Jessalyn squeaked in alarm when she slipped in the snow and nearly toppled over in a heap. For every minute that she was out in the snow and windy chill of the winter, she cursed her damnable pride and her sad circumstances without a man at her arm. It simply wasn't fair; it was all too easy for her to get males interested in her, and yet every time she approached that critical moment, she could not fail to remember the abominable nights when her husband had come to her bed, with she an unwilling partner.<br><br>Luckily, before the petite bundle that was the fair Jessalyn froze over or toppled into the drifts of snow lining the narrow lanes of the town's streets, she found the place she was looking for - Alasdair's. However, it was here that the young woman reached a troublesome problem.<br><br>Normally, Jessalyn could simply lift up the knocker on Alasdair's door and knock it against the door until she got his attention, or shout into an open window to get him to open the heavy door. Most days, if it was not open, custom was busy enough that someone would eventually come along and open the door for her. Tonight, however, not only was the wind howling around in the night air, but the snow had frozen the metal knocker to the metal latches on the door; despite her stubborn yanks with her thick gloves, Jess couldn't separate the slab of metal from its resting place.<br><br>"Could my day get any worse?!" She wailed, impulsively hitting the door with a weakly fisted hand. The impact made her wince and rub her gloved fingers, but neither her indignant shout nor her sadly-inspired attack had any effect on her current predicament. She didn't notice the tall woman who was approaching from behind, so thick was the snow falling from the sky. And despite her attitude, Jessalyn knew she had to get inside soon, else she would become a part of the frozen white landscape around her.
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