Finally tiring of his self-imposed isolation, Drake wandered out into the Exchange in cat form. He jumped onto the bar and sat looking out at the room. The Castellana was talking to a gypsy-looking fellow. He listened to their conversation with a detached amusement that he often felt when learning of people's foibles in animal form. The man was flirting with Catherine, in response to her revelation that she was virginal and that Elegrea was keeping her that way indefinitely, with her cooperation. He thought it was interesting, a kink that had never occurred to him before even to imagine... it brought to mind Bronwyn, the Tremere doctor with whom he'd once got drunk on absinthe. That was when things had been worst with Aucassin, a true low point. He had been very depressed, and Aucassin had sent him to Bronwyn to see if she could help him. And he'd known somehow that Bronwyn was a virgin... Aucassin must have told him; he thought he could remember the laughter in her voice as she commented on the titillating fact. A dark mood rushed in on him as he thought of how she must talk about him now to her current lovers. Forcing his mind back to Bronwyn and the absinthe, he remembered how he'd spent time learning to drink alcohol, how it felt to be drunk. He hadn't got drunk in a long time.

For some reason, the thought of intoxication brought back the desire to return to human shape. He flirted with a woman who'd come to the bar, told her his name by drawing it with his paw, though she did not tell him hers. He'd ask when he was able to speak, he thought, if he saw her again. He went back to his room, resumed his natural form and considered the pros and cons of getting himself smashed. The sun rose before he could decide, so it was decided for him, and he slept soundly.

Waking the next evening, he discovered the dark mood had settled down for a long stay. A bitter taste filled his mouth as he stood and stripped, carefully not looking at himself in the mirror as he did so because he knew from experience that seeing his reflection fed the self-hatred. He turned the water on cold and full volume, listening to it crash against the floor of the shower, then stepped in. The water felt clean and cold… cold didn't hurt the dead. Drake opened his lips and the water leached the bitterness from his mouth, and though water could not quite wash all the bitterness from his emotions, it did make a difference. He stepped out again, toweling his hair dry and putting on a clean shirt and pants. He slipped his dress shoes on his feet and went out to the Exchange main room.

Apparently Whitebird had noted him wandering in cat form, or someone had asked about it, because he brought it up in what seemed to Drake to be immediately on spotting him there. Briefly Drake had been concerned that he'd offended his host. He decided later that he thought Elegrea had just been playing a kind of cat and mouse with him, found it amusingly ironic. In any case he'd been given permission to hunt rats around the stables, in cat form, and he thought he'd also be free to wander the island that way as long as he made sure to leave the birds alone. He wondered if Elegrea was a sort of bird-humanoid... the man did have birdlike qualities, and then there was his name, "Whitebird," obviously descriptive. Or maybe he just liked birds.

Bitterness and despite stayed so close to him that night that he soon felt his newly regained social mood expire. Drake knew well that the easiest way for him to cure this feeling was a good hunt. He did not, at the present, feel confident that he knew the permissible way of doing that here on the island -- not even if a permitted way existed. They seemed to expect him to subsist on bottled vitae. He did not know if that was just others' preference, but he resolved himself to just straightforwardly ask. And not drinking from other vampires, at least not often -- that was too high a risk to take lightly.

Although, to be honest, he did not really want to give up the mood just yet... there was something to revel in, in his bitterness. He felt in a way as though he fed from it instead of blood that night. Drake made a phone call to Claire, the first since he'd arrived on the island, and told her how he felt. She understood well; she'd taken him through many of these moods. This one was only starting, so she murmured to him of torments to come, reducing him to whispered begging for them, though she did not grant her indulgence. She did command one thing that he had considered, as a palliative: that he should sleep this day outdoors. She overrode his concern for the blood spent to earth meld with an affectiontely exasperated order to just choke down a few glasses of bloodwyne. He thanked her softly for granting him that small torture, and she laughed, told him she was pleased he'd kept some of his sense of humor, and "Goodnight, Drake." "Goodnight, Mistress," he replied and hung up the phone carefully.

He read for a few hours, watching the clock. An hour before dawn, he went to the Exchange bar, schooled his expression to impassivity and forced himself to drink enough of the cold blood served there to fuel his way into the sanctuary of the soil. Then he made his way outside and found a barren patch of ground, stood atop it for a moment of quiet contemplation, and became one with it.