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< I Want To Be Yours | Logs | Masked Star Truths >

Autumn The Hall of Endless Masquerades!

Autumn It is always ready for a party, and to come in one needs a mask and an invite - or something that passes for an invite! Within, many styles of masks frame the walls like paintings, as well as clothes for royal balls of countries long gone and countries still to be adorning manniquins, where armor would be in most palaces.

Autumn There are pantings, however, all protected by glass, between mirrors and showing great plays, great performances, and great lovers! Some tasteful, some lascivious, but a nature always sublime, everywhere, mirrors as part of the walls, for the guests to see their own masks, and little brooks and fountains running within the manse, all of champagne!

Serpent helps himself to a drink as he's waiting for Autumn.

Autumn comes out behind Serpent, clad in green with sixteen silver scarves wrapped about himself, a mask of a scorpion, its tail slithering like a little hair-curl between his eyes! "Boo!"

Serpent stumbles a bit and artfully splashes Autumn with the remainder of his champagne.

Serpent "Wha-hi! Oo, sorry."

Serpent looks around and finds something to blot the drink with. He tosses it back to the ground when he notices it is underwear.

Serpent "Eee."

Autumn "... bwah. And it took me so long to get all the scarves ready! Mean bug! Mean bug!"

Autumn blinks, wondering wether or not to ask how did he get his underwear out so fast... but why?

Autumn Some things, he reasons, must remain great mysteries!

Serpent "You should really ask your staff to put away the laundry, Autumn."

Autumn "Oh, it's not..." He picks it from the ground, inspecting what... "Oh, Venus. Hey, my staff can't be around aaaallll the time!" He shrugs! "They are busy enough attending to all masks!"

Serpent rolls his eyes and discreetly kicks another garment into the champagne stream. "Right then. What's up?"

Autumn "Timing! I was here, the underwear was here, and you were here! All at once, and then... chamapgne! Don't you see?" He lectures, "It's all about timing. It's all a dance, and you need some timing!"

Autumn jumps over the side of the stream-tip-toeing the marble edge of the cannal

Serpent bites his knuckles, then shakes his head and drinks some more champagne - from upstream of course.

Autumn watches his underwear go dooowwwwnnn the stream, and looked around if there was any more clothes of that tryst about...

Autumn "Say, Serpent, do you like dancing?" He ponders, tapping the scorpion-tail-curl

Serpent "Are there gonna be any girls there?"

Autumn "Maybe! Will you kill any of them?"

Serpent "Um." Serpent plays with his hair. "Not probably?"

Serpent "I mean, I'm not an atrocious dancer or anything."

Autumn "I wouldn't think so, you were kind of graceful! But you weren't you... or were you?"

Serpent "What? Oh."

Serpent kicks dirt. "The girl thing."

Autumn "The girl thing! ... you're not proud of not being you sometimes? It's fun. It's your mask."

Serpent "I'm, um... still figuring it out."

Autumn "Figuring out what you like better? Figuring out the mask itself? Figuring out which is the mask?" He lets go of the scorpion-mask, picking a female drama-mask, with a helpless expression! "Will girls help? Or it's just about dancing with lithe, sweet, soft bodies? That's good too!"

Serpent Grasped by an impulse, Serpent touches his gem. Green silk flies. "You be what you like. Let's dance."

Autumn sommersalts back, kicking up some champagne to touch Serpent's face suggestively, falling on a great gate locked by a huge chain... which he removes, kicking the gates open behind him, swirling the golden chain as a staff on his hands as he dances within a large open hall... "That's the spirit. Come on!"

Serpent slides into the hall on silent feet. "Music?"

Autumn taps the ground, making his own music with his feet, in such a cadence that a painting on the wall, calls out a maiden-harpist of marble from her sanctum, to play them a ballad of chaos and confusion! "Or would you prefer something more... serene? Somber? Pouty? You Endings and your Poetry!"

Serpent "Do you know the Ballad of the Five-Year Winter?"

Autumn "I don't, but if you can hum or sing it to my poor, disfranchised lute goddess of this-was-once-Sperimim, I'm sure she can play it!" He nods, clacking his feet as he moves in arcs arond Serpent!

Cobra`Maiden whispers something in the goddess's ear and picks up a tiny hand-harp. "I think you'll know this dance." She and the statue play a slow tune of restless longing, and Cobra Maiden mimes the story of the setting sun who would not rise again.

Autumn "That is so sad..." Autumn lifts his maidenmask to wipe a tear from his eye. "I didn't think a destroyer of words like you would know such beautiful poetry, after all..."

Cobra`Maiden acts out the death of the winterplaguebeast, slowly crumpling on the floor, and the sun's triumphant rising.

Cobra`Maiden "It is something we learned from your people."

Autumn The statue continues to play now, fully understand the piece with the Cobra Maiden's fall! She understands the poetry, the sacrifice, the sorrow and the cold, the circumstances that create the melody and from whence it came... and the rest comes to her, making her tense... and play! And Autumn watches the Cobra, curious... "How to be sad? How to be moving?"

Cobra`Maiden touches her pendant again and brushes messy brown hair back behind his ears. "That was fun."

venus{A} walks into the room, having followed the sound of the music, just in time to see a strange woman turn into Serpent. She blinks, and edges backwards.

Cobra`Maiden "Oh, hello...Autumn's lady friend."

Cobra`Maiden slips the hand harp into his pocket.

Autumn "Venus! Our guest in our incredibly awesome and twice-blocked investigation! Come on, Vee, he won't hurt y... well, he might, but come on, come on, he seems fine! Meet Serpent!"

Autumn "... again!"

venus{A} hesitates, but then enters, walking over to Autumn. She gives Serpent a nervous smile. "Hi." Since last time they met, she has acquired a gorgeous ruby and gold choker with a large blue sapphire in the middle. The sapphire has Old Realm text hidden inside it.

Autumn Which reads, 'Property of Smiling Autumn, Chosen of Venus. Touch, and Bring Cerulean Ire Upon Yourself!'

Cobra`Maiden politely shakes hands and offers the woman a chair.

venus{A} shakes Serpent's hand slightly warily, and then sits in the indicated chair. "I'm sorry to interrupt.. I heard music."

Autumn "It's fine! Serpent wanted to dance with a girl, anyway, and I don't qualify, I think" He picks the waist of his pants, pushes foward, looks down... "Yeah, I don't!"

venus{A} giggles. "I could have told you that"

Cobra`Maiden nibbles on something food-looking. "Do you dance?"

venus{A} nods, and smiles demurely. "Yes, I've been told I'm quite good at it."

Autumn{v} "Serpent is too. He just lacks timing. But alas, he dances as well as I do, almost! It's almost insulting for me poor child of Venus to admit, but saturn has her steps. Step Step Step." He steps!

venus{A} rises, curtsies to Serpent, and offers her hand.

Cobra`Maiden takes the hand. "A tango?"

Autumn{v} snaps his fingers, and blue light washes out from him... they feel the music, then. It goes through their bodies like it never did before. They feel their feet moving as Venus decreed. They are the music!

venus{A} resists the strange feeling at first, but then embraces it. Moving easily in the steps of the tango more exquisitely than ever before, she laughs.

Cobra`Maiden tosses V and catches her.

venus{A} gasps, and then grins as she is caught. "Good timing."

Autumn{v} "I just said his timing isn't all that, damnit!" He lectures, playing with the golden chain. "But he does dance so well. Did you know you can tell much about someone from how they dance?"

venus{A} "Well, it was good that time." she returns impishly. "Like what?"

Autumn{v} "What do you think, hmmm?" He grins. "What do you think I can tell about you, Serpent?"

Cobra`Maiden looks at Autumn. "Um. Serpent makes pants happy?"

venus{A} looks over at her partner, thoughtful but confused. She smirks at his reply, and checks out his pants.

venus{A} "They do look happy..."

Autumn{v} "Venus has that effect alright..." he chuckles. "But not that! A desire to stay, a desire to go! A desire to be, a desire to not be! A desire to understand and not! Lots and lots." He nods sagely! "But I really misunderstood you, before."

venus{A} "So...he's...confused?"

Autumn{v} "... and so are you!"

venus{A} "Well, yes." she admits.

Autumn{v} autumn goes behind Venus, the scarf around her waist, whispering, moving with their dance, flawlessly... "To stay or to go? Why to stay? Who are you being? Who you wish to be? Where to go? Even if you know the answers, it is hard to accept..."

venus{A} shakes her head, a little, marveling at how the beads click in time to their steps. "I used to know all the answers. Now I only know why I'm staying."

Autumn{v} steals her from Serpent, dancing a few ways away, lowering her off her feet, holding her back, noses touching, almost laying her down... and back to her feet again in their dance! "Isn't confusion exciting?"

venus{A} grins and wraps her arms around Autumn as she comes back upright, laughing. "More than I expected, yes. I never know what to expect anymore."

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