What sort of ...transaction is this? The barista had glanced up from her underground zine to peer at the confessional after all the slamming and the shouting of magic...
     Drancy stares at the twenty-pound note with a look of incredulity. "So you're going to rattle on about magic and then try to buy me off with a cab fare? I may be a loony, but I'm not a bloody loony, you know." She snorts, and then leans forward, both hands on the table top. "There's only one thing to be done."

     "And the espresso," Davydd softly reminds. I mean, if it's going to be bribery, let's not leave anything hanging. And then you lean forward, and he -- no fool, this -- leans back a little, eyebrow cocked up and mouth tugging to the side. An expression of slight, but rightful suspicion.
     You're not going to touch me again, are you?

     Her eyes narrow. "And the espresso." Fine. Bribery. Doesn't mean she's accepting it, just acknowledging it. Drancy runs both hands through her hair, causing the already tousled pageboy to spike out somewhat - a jarring note, shouldn't her hair be longer, worn back and up in an elegant, almost mist-like concoction? It's not, though, and it's still that shocking fuchsia shade.
     Pulling her hands away from her hair, Drancy speaks slowly, in a low tone, still leaning up out of her seat. "Way I see it, there's only one way to deal with things like this, and that's to push on through to the other side. Maybe I'm going mad, and maybe I'm not - you say it's magic. Right, then." Her hands shoot out, intent on grabbing your wrists, bare skin to bare skin. "Let's break on through."

     Let's not be hasty about this...
     But you know, although he's not looking forward to having his dragons crawl around his skin, his old blood surging on a circuit, turned to a livewire, he's morbidly curious. You see, he remembers the hair...
     The face...
     Swept up and back in beautiful impossibility. Impossibility like an Escher reality. No mortal woman's hair could have had such effortless architecture. He wondered then: if I tug a strand of it, would it all come falling down...
     So Davydd doesn't move his hands. Beneath the sleeves of the turtleneck, cobalt dragons are in their coils poised. At his biceps. And at his chest. And shoulders. Back. Stomach. Groin. And the spells etched into his blood in surface blue swirls begin to shimmer. And he goes golden again.

     In the back of her own mind, there's a little voice of sanity screaming, Is this really a good idea? And, of course, the answer is probably no. Her own skin seems to grow paler, cooler by contrast to the gold limning about you, drawing tight over flesh and bones, silver light to match gold. For her, at least, there is an almost sexual tension to this, even as power crisps against her nerves, leaking out of her pores in wisps and vapor trails, and it makes her hands tighten unconsciously on your wrists.
     Too familiar... almost painful. And having this much power coursing through her system, well, that is painful. Incomprehensible. Drancy hisses, but this time, at least, doesn't scream. Gritting her teeth, she manages to get out a statement, in a voice which isn't entirely her own.
     "You wanted it... for what? Full moon, half moon, crescent moon, none..." Lovely. More cryptic nonsense. The pity of it, of course, is that level of power just isn't sustainable, even as the painful aspect slacks off. She hasn't got the familiarity to harness the energy, bleed it off - and so, she passes out, thudding back into her seat with an incidentally nasty cracking sound as her head contacts the side of the confessional.

     Full moon, half moon, crescent moon, none...
     When your skin touches his, your hands grasping at his wrists, voice and words turn inward. I know you by your silver eye. I know you by your fame. I know you by your golden tongue. I call you by your name. Cantrips drip not from his lips but in your mind and on your blood. And upon the heels of that inner voice, you hear his again. His. Seeping inward. Strumming. Plucking veins like harp chords.
     Heather balm and holly thorns...
     The dragons etched into his wrists -- they are the givers of health and the bringers of battle held in immortal balance. Life and Death. The energy beneath them surges, the circuit complete and the air crackling. And as you tighten your grasp around his wrists, you feel him turn hard as stone...
     I was made of nine trees, nine powers in me combined...
     For the energy that you give, you take. For that which you give, you receive nine-fold. Of Age and Youth. Strength and Timelessness. Vitality, Virility and something that laughs. Laughter in nine voices that tickles at your soul and fades into the voices of nine separate tongues.
     A face, a beautiful face...I remember your face. The one I called Llywelyn. Her face so bright, I thought her the daughter of Llew. So the name of my family was born. And so it lives unto this day...
     Fingers, such slender fingers. "Slender and white are my fingers," he whispers, "... like the ninth wave of the sea."
     And then it's over.
     Davydd sits back in the booth, green eyes bright but face blank. The crack of your head against the confessional wakes him. And he moves. Darkness and strength. Soon crowding your side of the booth, his hands to your head. Warmth from his fingers. The healing of what would have been a bruise.

     "Unnh." She grimaces as her eyes open, lashes flickering. For a brief moment, her face is devoid of the wariness, the suspicions that youth and modern world have conspired to lay there. Of course, instead, she looks simply dazed, which isn't necessarily a look most people find terribly inspiring or sexy.
     "It doesn't hurt." Her voice is slightly accusatory, as she takes in the fact that a, she did hit her head, it's not some imagined fancy, and b, your hands are on her head without an answering painful swell of magic. Which, of course, prompts Drancy to ask another question, still in the accusative. "What happened, and what did you do, and who the fuck ARE you, and what's going on?" Well, more like four questions.

     There is a certain easiness that comes when you are unconscious and therefore quiet. That familiarity rises to the surface and now, recognizing it, it makes him smile. There's a tug to his lips, the smile more living in those forest eyes than at his mouth.
     "Alright," and Davydd draws his hand away, the hand then resting upon the table that was once between you -- and shortly shall be again, perhaps -- as he pushes himself up to a stand. "You touched me, it felt like being zapped with a cattle prod set to stun, and then you collapsed. Did you get what you wanted?"
     Full moon, half moon, crescent moon, none...
     Davydd reaches up, taking his coat off the hook. The long woolen coat settling like a cloak around him. He pauses, one arm in, and looks to you again. "I liked your hair better long. You know, it softens your features. Makes you look like a queen..." he murmurs. "Think about it."
     The style change or this entire ruddy evening?

     Drancy turns her changeable eyes onto you, glowering again. It's annoying, isn't it? Seeing that half-familiar face relegated to animalistic savagery, almost - not that it lacks its own grace, in its own way, but it's most certainly not a regal sort of look. "Oh, and I suppose I'm bloody Queen Victoria Regina, Her sodding Majesty." Clearly, someone wasn't spanked enough as a child. You've distracted her from her questions, for the moment, though, and wasn't that partly the point?
     "What do you mean, you liked my hair better long?" The half-flicker of memory doesn't help, the uncomfortable suggestion that you're talking things she really ought to know, if only she'd studied harder for the test. "...Nine. There's nine of you bloody beggars, aren't there. On you, I mean." An impatient gesture, and then, very slowly and cautiously, Drancy peers round the corner of the confessional, towards the barista, who by now probably is almost ready to call the police.
     "Um," Drancy says helpfully, pulling her head back in. "Maybe we should continue this conversation at my flat." She turns, narrowing her eyes in a gimlet-pointy stare. "And don't think for a bloody moment," she adds, "that I'm letting you just wander off without you answering my questions." So she didn't forget.
     No, she'd just as soon not call the police as she has drugs in her purse and likely still a bit in her system, but she is looking at the two of you as if she's not quite sure she's hallucinating ... or if you are. Either way, "Last call... it's five in the bloody mornin', don't you two have somewhere to be..."

     You wouldn't know the characteristic grin, that comet streak across his mouth. You wouldn't know when he's about to pop off with some comment or other. You don't know him. But if you did, you'd know it was coming. "Flirt. Pop round to your flat, it's five in the mornin'..." Holy shite, five of the ante meridies. Sandrinaar will be out of her mind. "Here... I'll make a promise to you. I'll give you my phone number. We'll... meet at my flat," well, his companion's flat, "... tomorrow evening. And you're not Queen Victoria Regina, Her sausage-eating Majesty. You don't look Hanovarian in the slightest. I was thinking more... Bloudeuwedd," how that rolls off his tongue, mostly vowels, some soft consonants. It is language meant for song. "But you know... think about it, Ll...Drancy... going long..." Again, with the hair. Davydd shrugs his woolen coat into place. He doesn't answer your question about the nine. He only smiles.

     Time and past time, indeed. Another glower, then Drancy does something you probably didn't expect, didn't think she had in her, showing that her education was definitely not what her hair colour and clothes might lead you to believe. She draws herself up haughtily, looking down the ridge of her nose at you, eyes flashing. "If this is some sort of trick, Davydd," she warns in a low, dangerous sort of voice, "I will find you. If I have to hunt through every pub, used book store and loony occultist shop in Britain. So help me, I will."
     The dangerous things about such pronouncements, magic awakened will listen, and lift its head. Silver threads filter through her vision for a moment, tugging at the dragons, knocking her out of her hauteur. "What the.. no. I'm not going to ask." Drancy waves it away, blinking until the threads dissipate, folding her hands over her stomach, which has gone tense and knotted again with that illicit pull. "What I said stands." She rises, one hand on the table. "And I'll be there with bloody bells on."

     "No trick. It's not my style, love." Love, in the colloquial meaning, of course. You're English, you know it. Hands shove into his pockets, much as they did earlier this morning, and not finding what he's looking for, namely a card and a pen, Davydd begins searching inner pockets. "You won't have to look hard, if it comes to that," a chuckle eases out onto his voice. "I'm known in all of them, sadly. Say Davydd Llewelyn and you're sure to get pointed in the right direction." And probably with only one digit.
     A black ink scrawl, his writing is very precise, a touch of uncial remaining, Time flavoring forever the era in which he learned to write. "It's the number to this," as pen and card are balanced in left hand offered to you, his right removes a small phone. "It rings here and here I answer it. Call me tomorrow, say, six-ish... I'll give you my address and we'll meet there. Easier to talk then."
     Card given to you. On the front, there is a company logo. Some engineering something or other, nice enough card, with water in a wave. An address there and a company phone -- but that'd probably be a dead end. It's probably not his, right? But on the back, his name again: Davydd L., and his phone number with the word cell under it.
     "I have no doubt but that if you should be unable to reach me that way, I will hear from you regardless. Bells optional. So, it is a ... date then?"

     Drancy's eyes lid to half-mast for a moment as she does indeed examine the card before she stows it away, out of sight. Grudgingly, she allows herself a nod. "All right. It's a ... date." She stumbles over the word just as much, suspicious of its implications, and of that uneasy remembrance which leans into flesh all too quickly. To cover it up, she slides out of the booth, one hand going to her head where she'd hit it, out of habit more than pain. "You'll be hearing from me." And she, like as not, will be having far too much to think about.

     "Good. Now... don't forget the twenty..." And the cab. Get home safe. For my part, I want to fall in bed. I just want to fall in bed...
     Davydd winks and then he's halfway to the counter, gesturing to the barista.I paid on the table, aye? And he's at the stairs. And then he's down them...

     Much to think about. Much to remember. Hand to the forehead to still some crowding thoughts, or keep them in before they leak out of eyes or out of ears. Much to tell. And then to fall in bed...
     Drancy slides out more slowly, leaving the twenty for the barista. Nothing to remember, her expression suggests to the other woman. Nothing to tell, nothing to comment on. Just another drugged-out trip. She's out of words, herself. "..." And she's heading for the tube. She'll get home safely - who on earth'd attack someone who looks like they might have a knife, if not worse, tucked into their trousers? And sleep... sleep sounds awfully good.

Posted by rowan at May 08, 2003 12:56 AM