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Aela and Elizabeth
Aela Felice struts up the walkway to the house she's been searching for. Her pace suggests she is upset or even frantic, and her arms clutch a small black bag tightly against her chest. She stands at the doorway and straightens her posture while shaking her hair away from her face before she lifts the knocker on the door. Aela lets the knocker fall just once.
Elizabeth Feildric walks up to the door, looks through the eyehole and sees someone she did not expect - but will allow in. Aela, who she recognizes only from Bryon's memories. Elizabeth opens the door for her fellow Toreador. "Please, come in. Welcome." Elizabeth smiles warmly at Aela.
Aela flashes a charming smile and nods. "Thank you. I do hope I am not interrupting anything."
"No, nothing, it is good to have a visitor." Elizabeth leads Aela to her comfortable parlor, sitting down in an armchair and motioning Aela to have a seat on the sofa. "I'm so glad you decided to return to Dallas."
Aela glances around the parlor taking in the sight before she rests herself on the sofa, using her hands to smooth her pale skirt down her knees. She slips her shawl off her shoulders and crosses her ankles. "I'm glad you don't mind my sudden apperance, both here in your home and back in town. I couldn't help but return... being away so long made me sad, if you could believe it."
Elizabeth's smile dims ever so slightly. She brushes a hand before her face and then she again looks as warm as before. "I can believe you, yes, very easily. It is lonely to be without one's own kind."
Aela lays her black bag down on the sofa next to her, keeping a hand to rest on top of it. She tilts her head while allowing her smile to vanish. "Yes, how well you do describe it. It almost seems you can see my thoughts exactly. We've not been properly introduced, and I am sorry for that. Aela Villette, and it is a pleasure to finally meet you."
Elizabeth holds a hand out to Aela, leaning forward in her seat so that Aela can reach her hand if she wishes. "Elizabeth Feildric. I know you only through my childe, Bryon." Aela takes the hand ever so carefully, giving it a faint shake and squeeze before she releases it, also leaning in her seat to accomodate. Elizabeth returns the squeeze. "He spoke so highly of you that I felt as though we had met, Aela."
Aela returns to her upright position on the sofa and views Elizabeth for a moment, studying her features and expressions. "I wish I could say the same. He would not talk a lot of you, only once if I can remember correctly. I don't fathom why. It is an honour to have met you."
Elizabeth looks down as Aela speaks of Bryon. "He is young. Perhaps in time he will come to allow me to ..." As Elizabeth 's voice trails off, she looks at the mirror across the room. It is antique and reflects only dimly. She thinks of her hopes for Bryon, and the sadness that pervades her home now, with Gregory dead, with Bryon abandoned. She remembers the feeling of loss that came over her when she discovered that Bryon was no longer staked in the inner room, not anger, but an emptiness inside that spread, and spread. She almost does not hear the next words Aela speaks.
"I don't mean to bring up anything tedious, if that be the case with Bryon. Forgive me."
"There is nothing you have done that needs forgiveness." Elizabeth puts an odd emphasis on the word "you." "Bryon is not one to ask for that boon. And, perhaps as one would expect, nor am I of him." Wishing to change the subject, Elizabeth said, "There are few of us here now... Claudius, our Primogen, and my ward, Cynthia, are the others. Is there any assistance I could provide in getting you settled in here? Perhaps introduce you to them?"
Aela smiles sincerely at Elizabeth and nods. She lays her hands down on her lap and eases back against the sofa. "I do not know if the assistance I am searching for is one you could provide. I am not saying thus to mock your hospitality, I say such because it seems impossible. You spoke on a few of us. I have been to see Claudius, but I did not know of Cynthia."
"Cynthia's sire was unable to provide for her care, so I stepped in. I was glad to be able to so serve my clan and city. And her sire was a friend. He was slain by the Anarchs." Elizabeth smooths her skirt over her knees, looking down at her hands for a moment and then back into Aela's eyes. "It was a tragedy." She thinks again of Gregory, though she is careful not to speak his name. Of all the terrible losses the Anarchs inflicted, Gregory's still hurts the most.
"I had no idea Anarchs had been in the city."
"They wrought a great deal of damage on our city. Only recently were they stopped."
Aela places a hand to her chest, trying her best to look distraught by such news. "I am at peace to know they have been stopped. However, damage turns things to change, and change can not be reversed. I've sensed such changes that bring a chill to my body."
"What chills you so, Aela?"
Aela runs a few fingers across her lips as if to cover some of her expression while she lowers her head down. "The secrets chill me, M'lady Feildric. A lot of secrets are being kept."
Elizabeth regards Aela, wondering what secrets it is that concern her, silently considering for a moment before speaking. She must tread very carefully. "Some secrets should be brought to light, others should remain in darkness forever. If those you seek are of the former, I wish you all fortune in their discovery."
Aela brings her eyes up to look at Elizabeth, her face serious. "Bryon is keeping secrets from me. I hope he hasn't with you."
"He would be far likelier to tell you, Aela. Our estrangement is near complete. What is it you suspect he is not saying?" Elizabeth looks at Aela intently.
"He is more distant from me than I think he is with you now. I cannot say exactly what I think or suspect. I only know that his actions scream worse than his words, and in thus he treated me different than I had known previous." Aela brushes a hand across her forehead slowly, looks to be rubbing a headache or tense nerve.
Elizabeth looks very concerned, and stands up from her chair. "What do his actions say to you?"
Aela notices Elizabeth stand and lowers her head. "It's time for me to leave now isn't it? I've overstepped my boundaries?"
Elizabeth sits on the sofa next to Aela, taking one of Aela's hands in hers. Aela turns to stare at Elizabeth in shock, blinking a few times to understand what is happening. Elizabeth says, "No... I am grateful to you. You have given me a needed spur to action. I had not thought... I assumed the problem was Bryon's feelings about me, not something more pervasive." She is pensive a moment, still holding Aela's hand gently. "Thank you, Aela. I am in your debt."
"I would wish you to not be greatful.... if you knew my intentions the night I ran into Bryon the first time, you'd be glad he did not take my advances. Please do not say such things." Aela closes her eyes from the tension in her head.
"Truly?" No longer able to resist, Elizabeth scans Aela's mind for signs of what she intended at that night, as she asks, "What did you intend, then?" She lets Aela's hand go, and returns her own to her lap, folding them on her knees.
Aela grits her teeth as she runs her free hand over her forehead, while thinking on what she would had done, one night of wild passion. "I intended to spend the rest of the night and morning with him... to myself... like we used to be."
Elizabeth looks at Aela quizzically. "What harm in that, then? It would have done him good."
Aela flicks her confused, almost angered gaze at Elizabeth. "How could you say such things? From what I knew with Bryon, you did not approve of his actions...in that manner."
Elizabeth looks up and to the side for a moment, then back to Aela, remembering that there was not so long ago, a time when she would have been angered to hear of Aela's wishes for Bryon. "At that time, I suppose I should not have approved. Now, though... with his withdrawal from any closeness to me, I can only hope he would find it with someone... and you are someone I could understand his harboring such feelings for. As it is, I fear for him, Aela. He grows cold, and for our kind, that is next to destruction." After a moment of thought, she adds, "Perhaps he exaggerated how displeased I might be, to keep you away from me." This Elizabeth does not believe he would have done during Aela's previous visit, but the past night or two, she thinks it likely.
Aela lowers her eyes in thought, her brow clutters together. "This is too much for me. First Bryon, and then Claudius..." Emotion overwhelming her voice, Aela rubs the back of her neck nervously, and her hand reaches for the black bag next to her. "Claudius gave me a warning, as if Bryon was some sort of...Anarch?" Aela turns her eyes to look at Elizabeth. Her face would go paler if it could. "What has Bryon done?"
Elizabeth tries to minimize Aela's fears. "He argued their part to us, perhaps, was a sympathizer. Part of his anger with me is over my siding with those who would have the anarchs executed. I can understand Claudius warning you. Not being Bryon's sire, he views it as a harsher crime than I do, Bryon's empathy with the anarchs."
Aela shakes her head, franticly running ideas through her head. "If that was the case... Then why would Claudius wish not to discuss any of it with me. Why would he keep Bryon's actions from me secret? Being a sympathizer isn't a crime."
"I cannot say, not having been present, but only speculate. Perhaps he felt that implying greater crimes than occurred would be likelier to have you heed his warning."
Aela takes a moment, thinking things through, as she picks up her bag from the sofa. "Forgive me once again, I forget myself. This is none of my business, as it were, and I should not even shred a care upon it. You're probably right about it all."
Elizabeth feels that every time Aela asks for forgiveness, it is a sign that Aela feels more and more uneasy. She worries that it also signals that Aela suspects yet another secret, in this case nothing but the truth. She wants to strongly counteract this apologetic tendency. "I find it very becoming that you care so strongly, Aela. It is how Toreador should be," she tells her.
(at this point, Jenna, who plays Aela, took over the writing)
With the minutes passing by Elizabeth and Aela continue on, the relations between them become profound. Elizabeth shifts in her seat to look directly into Aela's eyes for a brief, intense moment, then she folds her hands on her knees and looks down at them as she waits for Aela's response.
"Then I suppose one can say I'd act in accord to regulations and requirements. Being gone so long has left me lost and wandering in the dark without my sense of direction. I do care about Bryon, I suspect too much though." Aela squints her eyes as she mumbles, her head aches.
"If that is so, it is a fault we have in common." Elizabeth smiles, a rather unhappy and ironic smile, though it also seems to take a bit of pleasure in her refusal to bow to reality.
Arching an eyebrow Aela stares at Elizabeth. "I feel there is more than a fault we share. In all honesty, you now share my intimations."
Elizabeth nods her agreement, her dark hair slipping forward to shade her eyes, a beautiful wave of perfection across ivory skin. Her voice flows in a soft volume. "What can we do about these presentiments of Bryon's danger then?"
"I don't want to do anything....." Aela places her hands against the sides of her head and closes her eyes tight.
"That is where we differ."
"I feel as if I've overstepped my boundaries in all of this. Before, I didn't really seem to care. That was until I had the chance to meet you. I will not take part where I do not belong." Aela runs her fingers across her eyebrows before she re-opens her eyes.
Elizabeth speaks in a tone that seems at odds with the words she is using. Voice hoarse, words aloof and softness collides with them. "Indeed, he is not so rightfully your concern as mine. If you feel it is overstepping, no doubt you are correct, in some sense at least. I overstep as well, perhaps, in wanting to share the ... concerns..."
"I want to retreat myself from his life, and his thoughts. Even if I've returned, I'd rather not return to what he and I had in the past." Aela mutters.
"Because of your intimations of how he's changed? Or are there other reasons?" Elizabeth looks at Aela again, an attentive expression on her face.
"His changing has something to do with it, but yes... there are other reasons. Reasons I didn't see before." Aela runs a hand down her neck absently, as if she is choking back a scream, her face seems frightfully calm. "He belongs to someone who'd love him. I do not love him."
Elizabeth makes a very small nod. "I don't know that he will ever understand that I do."
Aela presses her lips together roughly before she speaks. She remembers a few moments she shared with Bryon, the vision is altered by vague deceptions. "Then he is a fool, and I don't say that to offend you in the least."
"I am not offended. You are right, and of course that is my difficulty. I do not think the form of love I offer is what he thinks he wants, and that is another difficulty, his in this case."
"Course it is said that Love is blind. Maybe he needs the blindfold taken off his wayward eyes. Or a quick kick in the pants." Aela bites back a soft chuckle with a brush of her fingers against her lips.
"I think it is beyond such measures, myself..." Elizabeth replies.
"I would pray you'd not lost faith in him yet... I feel some changes will be made, soon."
Elizabeth folds her hands and looks down at them. "It does not matter that my faith in him is lost, as my hope will never be."
"Is it transparent, this love he wants? Do you know of it?" Aela raises her eyes in curiousness.
"No. What I see... what I saw before, at the time you left, was a man who'd thought he had love and lost it, and despaired of its ever return, though he wished deeply for it. What I see now is a man who's remade himself not to want that anymore."
"He thought he had love?" Aela questions. From that sentence alone she can feel a burning in her eyes.
"I believe so. I believe he loved you." Elizabeth shrugs eloquently.
Aela frowns as the creases in her forehead fold. "His idea of love is too disturbing. Perhaps you wouldn't want it if he gave it to you."
"Tell me this disturbing idea of love." Elizabeth smiles a bit more in amusement, as if wondering how Aela would have the slightest idea what sort of love she might consider worthy.
"He was like a shadow, always there, yet always gone. When I could see him, I'd feel him but only on limited occasions, and when he felt like it. He was a stranger in his acts of love. That isn't love, that’s a use of a person for personal needs. Course at the time I did the same." So many nights they used each other for a need to feel something, and all the while Aela was blind to understand Bryon felt love.
"Love is not a personal need?" Elizabeth asks.
"He never even told me he loved me. In that way then yes.. It was personal, but only to him. He was selfish." Aela clasps her hands over her eyes to hide her wavering control of emotion.
"Yes, he has faults, many of them resembling my own. I chose him for reasons perhaps I should have thought through longer. My own sire gave many years to his cultivation of me... I am impatient. Another fault I share with my childe. I am possessive, and that is a fault I share with my sire.…" Elizabeth thinks back, remembering the past. "And that is what drove him away, I think, in the first place. His aloofness and selfishness drove you away, and so it goes."
"Elizabeth, if I may be so informal, what drove me away is deeper than that. I’m losing myself in this collide of reason. I feel it in the pit of my stomach, making me want to scream. I feel it in my head, making me die at night with headaches. I want to rid myself of this...all of this. Then I began to care about him... after he hid so much! It is sick..." Aela presses her hands tighter against her face. "I think it best if I stay away from him..."
Elizabeth tilts her head, unable to comprehend Aela's words; she scans her aura for a sign of the emotions driving this description. Her vision swims with the purple and red hues of anger and confusion. "Yes, it is sick... of course you are angered. Anger is an emotion. Better anger than not to feel. Tell me, though... why are you angry? There is something you are not saying. If what you said was all the truth, and you reciprocated what you felt was his selfish behavior, where does the anger come from?"
"That’s just it, I didn't want to feel anything! In the beginning it was us in all the glory of intense attraction. Nothing to feel, nothing to want to feel. That was the way I thought it was, but all the while he lied, and loved, and wanted more without my consent. I return and he is different, he acts as if he does not remember our fun, but instead he remembers something worse, something that makes him hide away from me. He acts like my presence will ruin him, and that makes me care! It makes me want to rush to him and hold him! It angers me. I did nothing wrong!" Aela presses the palms of her hands against her eyes while they release tension through tears. She cannot believe she says such things to Elizabeth, hand in hand with her newly expressed anger she now feels foolish.
"You feel as though he is accusing you of having done something wrong?" Elizabeth asks.
"He hates me for leaving, and holds that against me. He has been hurt and blames me, when I had the assumption all the while that "we" were just a fling in a fun attempt to be happy. If he wouldn't have been sosecretive, then I could have seen differently. I hate him."
Elizabeth looks sad for a moment. "How simple hatred can be sometimes, among emotions, and how painful."
Aela wipes her eyes frantically with the back of her hands until there is no sign of her crying. She looks towards Elizabeth in thought. "I do not accept the pain, and will not be a pawn to its greedy hands. Perhaps Bryon loves you and is keeping it from you. I didn't know he loved me when he did."
"You are wise," Elizabeth says.
Pulling her shawl around her shoulders Aela grips her handbag to her chest. She uncrosses her legs and plants them steady on the floor. "I can't agree with you. I am not wise, I am more afraid than wise."
"Fear can be a teacher. I do not listen to mine enough. Be well Aela, and be welcome whenever you wish in my home." Elizabeth stands to show Aela out, understanding Aela’s cue of preparing herself to leave.
Aela stands from her seat and follows Elizabeth towards the door. "I beg forgiveness for this unexpected meeting, but now we stand on common ground in matters that seem to mean more than I had imagined. I wish you well and I hope we may speak again, perhaps on happier topics."
"Yes, perhaps. I do hope so."
With a nod Aela opens the door to let herself out. She turns while stepping away to offer Elizabeth a simple smile and wave, and then hurriedly she walks off down the street to make it home before dawn. Elizabeth locks the door carefully behind Aela and returns to her seat, her brow furrowed in deep thoughts.