Sephora Forrest
Vampire
Dhampir
Enjoys a bite to eat from time to time...
Posts: 145
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Post by Sephora Forrest on May 18, 2009 14:38:55 GMT 1
Silas Rosier. Hmm, well at least she knew his name. He led the way into the kitchen, and managed to convince a disgruntled looking cook that they were allowed to be in there. Sephora inwardly smiled at this; he was as good at lying as she was. Still; that charm he had used may have stacked the odds a little. Hanging around him might actually end up being entertaining all the same. Wizards and witches were a curious bunch; and it was so easy to forget that they weren’t your everyday, run of the mill humans.
“There we go,” said Silas in a pleased voice, and Sephora had to admit she was impressed. Maybe wands weren’t so useless after all. She browsed around, looking at the various dishes. Much to her distaste; many were accompanied by various green vegetables and salads. Yuck. Finally, she managed to find a stake that was almost rare enough for her taste. She simply slipped the salad and chips that accompanied it on to another plate and turned back to Silas, who was also looking at the plates containing food.
“Ok, I found what I was looking for,” she informed him while he selected a plate of his own. Ok then; they were both stealing. Meh. Sephora walked back out to the bar and sat down at her previous chair and promptly tucked into the bloody steak; even now extraordinarily surprised at exactly how hungry she was. She could have eaten several cows right about now; no joke. Resisting the urge to rip and tear at the meat with her bare hands and teeth, she cut herself a bite sized piece and forced herself to chew it slowly and swallow before cutting herself another. “So you know the guy who owns this place then?” Sephora said; stating rather than questioning, “You get along well?”
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Post by Silas Rosier on May 19, 2009 6:12:11 GMT 1
Eventually Silas settled with a veal schnitzel that was still moderately warm. He held his hand experimentally over the meal without touching to it to check the temperature, then noticed that Sephora had already picked hers. “Lovely.” He collected set of knives and forks from a washer and gave the chef a sardonic little three finger salute with a flick of the wrist on the way out.
Silas dumped a knife and fork on Sephora’s side of the bar as he walked past, catching one of the other patrons frowning at him out of the corner of his eye as he did so. It was probably better not to think of the implications of a middle-aged strip club owner having dinner in a pub with someone barely old enough to be out of school. Somehow, Silas doubted that very many people would approve of the arrangement. Fuck ‘em, Seph didn’t seem too bothered by it, and Silas wasn’t about to start caring about what other people thought any more. He might have, some time ago, but too much had happened since then.
“Er, known each other about seven months now, I think? Can’t say I’ve been counting,” Silas replied as he sat down to get started on the meal, sticking with an indirect answer. The unbridled truth would hardly have the same sort of ring to it, but, then, Seph seemed to have no problem with him stealing food and casting spells on bystanders. Might as well test her limits. “We get along fine,” he added, “Aside from fact he hates me, I like aggravating him, he shot me, and now I’m encouraging customers to steal his food,” he confessed with an unusal indifference. Oh yeah, and he'd kidnapped the man's girlfriend, but he was trying to keep that peice of information on the down-low.
Cue subject change. “Can’t say I’ve seen you around here before. Are you a student up at the school?” he asked with another sidewards glance, picking up the glass of alcohol again for another drink before he even put a fork into the meat.
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Sephora Forrest
Vampire
Dhampir
Enjoys a bite to eat from time to time...
Posts: 145
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Post by Sephora Forrest on May 19, 2009 13:15:48 GMT 1
That sounded like a pleasant relationship, thought Sephora mildly. Pulling a shot gun on someone was a little extreme... She wondered what Silas had done to cause the owner to do such a thing... All’s fair in love and war. Silas really was turning out to be quite an amusing person; his view on the world seemed to be very similar to that of a vampire’s. Not caring what others thought of you and being your own man, so to speak.
“Uh…” said Sephora rather uncertainly, suddenly a loss for words. What was she supposed to say that couldn’t get her into hot water here? “No, I’m not a student from the school up there. Is the owner of this place really lax enough to sell students alcohol? No, like I said, I’ve been around the block or two. Haven’t been in these parts long; actually this is the first time I’ve been here.” She then chewed a large mouthful of her steak thoughtfully, and asked, “Well, you obviously live around here… Do you work at one of the establishments around here or something? Because otherwise I couldn’t see any reason to hang around in an out of the way town like this; unless of course you have family nearby.”
Sephora was actually rather curious as to what Silas did for a living, since whatever it was clearly got him a fair wage. Maybe he just stole most of his things so he had plenty of left over income. But she doubted it. He was too well groomed, and this really didn’t seem the kind of town to have any really high paying jobs in it. He was dressed like some of the businessmen in the big cities that she often visited; and he seemed rather out of place in a dingy and very much countryside village such as this.
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Post by Silas Rosier on May 22, 2009 6:46:26 GMT 1
“Is the owner of this place really lax enough to sell students alcohol?”
The corners of Silas’s mouth twitched upwards in amusement. Yes, and fuck them too, but that was another matter entirely. “Yeah, he is, actually.” As far as the lax alcohol serving standards went, Silas couldn’t contest the strategy. It certainly made sure that the place stayed more populated than The Three Broomsticks come weekends.
The glass was already almost empty compared to the untouched veal, and Silas absently swilled the dregs around. Not only was the headache fading, but he was feeling more awake, which meant the booze was doing its job. He began eyeing up the display bottles again already. He needed more, if only because from experience his appetite didn’t tend to return until at least the second or third glass, thus why he hadn’t made a move for the food yet.
Ah, wait, there it was. The job question. Time to be as vague as possible until she gave him no choice but to spell it out for her. “I’m in entertainment,” Silas answered. “Came here originally because of the cheap real estate and never really left. It’s harder to move when you’re already settled.” He downed the last mouthful of the cocktail and continued. “Life’s easier at your age.”
...Erk. Better put a nix on those sort of statements before the back in my day’s started spilling out.
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Sephora Forrest
Vampire
Dhampir
Enjoys a bite to eat from time to time...
Posts: 145
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Post by Sephora Forrest on May 22, 2009 8:05:56 GMT 1
Sephora actually laughed at this. “How young do you think I am?” she demanded still chortling slightly, and whether she was laughing at the good feeling of not having an empty stomach or at Silas’ interesting comment, “Actually, how old are you?” Surely he was not over 30, surely… but then again, if she was anything to go by; looks could certainly be deceiving. It wasn’t her fault that she looked so… youthful…
When the laughter had died away from her voice, she ran Silas’ words through her head again. Sephora narrowed her eyes slightly. “What kind of entertainment?” she asked suspiciously, since there was something very fishy about the vagueness of his reply. It was very hard to lie to her and get away with it; Sephora could practically smell a bluff from a mile away since she used so many of them herself. Sephora raised a slanted eyebrow as he eyed off the other bottles of alcohol behind the counted; anything but making eye contact with her. Sephora lent over towards him, resting an arm on the bench top. “What kind of entertainment?” she repeated slowly, “Where do you work?”
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Post by Silas Rosier on May 22, 2009 10:20:53 GMT 1
Age guessing games, eh? Sephora’s first question was obviously meant to be rhetorical, but Silas decided to take the bait anyway. Better get his own age out of the way first. “I’ve been making 30 look good for 5 years,” Silas grinned none too self-consciously, then angled himself around on the stool in order to survey her properly, leaning on the bar with one elbow. To be honest, she didn’t look that old, but the laughter, which was almost mocking, suggested otherwise. “As for you, I’ll play it safe here and say between 17 and 25, but my last point still stands,” he guessed resolutely.
The laughter stopped. The eyes narrowed. Wrong guess? No. Ergh, just more job questions. Heh, snap, he had almost gotten off easy. “Dancing,” Silas replied evasively. Evidently Sephora wasn’t satisfied, because in the next moment she was leaning towards him with a suspicious look in her eye, repeating the question and inquiring after his workplace directly.
Goddamnit. Persistent little bitch. Hey, she’d asked, and if she didn’t like the answer then that was her business. “Exotic,” Silas specified finally. “I own the Scores chain and run the Hogsmeade branch where it all began. As I said, cheap real estate; good for setting businesses up on a budget,” he shrugged. “I hoped to move to the London branch but no one here can replace me and they’ve already got a competent owner. I earn a fair amount, but not enough that I could live off forever if I decided to quit, and I won’t find anything else that pays this well, so I’m effectively stuck. That’s the long answer to your other question: I’m not here by choice. You, at your age, could still quit whatever you’re doing, move, and get just as good a deal somewhere else.” Thus why she didn’t get to complain about her age. Never mind, she hadn’t come in for a lecture. “What do you do anyway?”
That was, assuming she'd even want to socialise for much longer. Admitting you worked in the sex industry had about the same effect on most people as declaring you had Swine Flu.
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Sephora Forrest
Vampire
Dhampir
Enjoys a bite to eat from time to time...
Posts: 145
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Post by Sephora Forrest on May 22, 2009 12:34:35 GMT 1
35 eh? Well, Sephora never would have guessed. But what did he mean by making 30 look good for five years? Still suspicious, she wondered impulsively if he was actually a vampire. Just as quickly she dismissed the thought, even though she had never met anyone like herself in her life. Still, he underestimated her minimum age; but really, Sephora thought depressingly, her chest was probably that of a young teen.
Hmm, he really was evasive about his job. To be perfectly honest, she didn’t care what he did for a living, she was just curios as to why he had not told her immediately. If he had; she would not have been nearly so insistent. And then Sephora got it. He owned a strip club. The expected disgust did not come; Sephora had a feeling it was her stomach that was controlling her mind again. But actually; she knew the women who worked at strip clubs chose to do it, and if they wanted to spend their lives degrading themselves then that was their problem. Not that Sephora approved of the practice; she especially hated the men who attended. Surprisingly however, she did not have any resentment towards Silas. Sure, it was a horrible job, but it was money and she respected the fact that many people had to make their living in the only ways that they could. She didn’t need to though, so money had never really been a problem. She had a fake bank account which she had transferred her parent’s inheritance into when she was 18, and that got her by.
Uh oh. What did she do? Well wasn’t that irony. Silas had been unwilling to tell her his occupation, and now how was she going to explain that she had no job. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him her actual age yet either. “Um, well… You see… About that…” began Sephora, speechless and tongue tied for the first time since primary school. “I’ve just been, you know, traveling, for a bit… So I don’t really have a job at the moment…” Sephora knew that it was rather suspicious for someone her age not to have hopes and dreams; well someone her age that was not living in the gutter.
She always kept herself well groomed and tended to spend a lot of her money on clothes. She looked directly up to Silas’s face to see his reaction. He had nice brown eyes that she decided that she liked; since Sephora had always wanted brown eyes as a small child that did not terrify the other children. Still, small, innocent child was so not the looked she had been going for. This was the problem with older; well figuratively, people. Everyone would always look at her as very young. She wished that the vampire thing could have waited it’s time, but apparently whatever toxin it was that changed human into monsters had other ideas.
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Post by Silas Rosier on May 23, 2009 7:58:18 GMT 1
Well, Silas for one didn’t find the fact that she was unemployed particularly unusual. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for school-leavers to take a gap year and go travelling around, revelling in their newfound (and short-lived) freedom. School-leaver, yeah, she seemed around the right age. But then again, she’d hinted plenty earlier that it might not be the case.
“No worries, you got plenty of time to find something,” Silas replied. “There anything stopping you?” he asked experimentally, trying to fish for informational tid-bits. Hang on, wasn’t Ed still looking for Waitresses? Silas firmly decided not to mention it. She could do better than the Hogs Head and he wasn’t about to give Ed a hand with his employment problems.
Silas was about to pick up the glass again when he realised it was empty. Oh, right, just drank it. Yeah, that wouldn’t do it all. While she answered the question he got up and walked around the bar, keeping his head inclined in her direction as a reassurance he was still listening. Whiskey. Scotch. Scotch. Where did that absinthe go? Bingo. Oh, hang on, there was that Sangre Vino. He glanced at Sephora’s half empty glass of wine then picked up the black bottle. “Top up?”
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Sephora Forrest
Vampire
Dhampir
Enjoys a bite to eat from time to time...
Posts: 145
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Post by Sephora Forrest on May 24, 2009 7:19:20 GMT 1
“Well, I don’t tend to like to stay in the one place long…” replied Sephora cautiously, not adding that staying in one place too long with the bodies piling up was risky. That and she simply couldn’t bear to sit behind a desk all day sorting papers. Silas went behind the counter again to fill up his empty glass. Sephora figured that he didn’t know the abstract meaning of the wine’s name. Lucky for her, but then again, would a wizard in a sleepy school town know about vampires all the same?
“Yes thanks,” replied Sephora as Silas asked if she wanted some more, and handed over her glass. Now that she had finished her steak, she was rather parched. She would actually quite like some Sangre without the Vino right about now, but she would take what she could get. “Do you ever think that your life is a little… immoral or something along those lines?” asked Sephora curiously as Silas returned her glass. She actually used to think the same about her own life, and sometimes still did. She didn’t get initially disgusted by his reputation, since all he did was employ desperate women for a living; she went around killing men. She wondered idly which would get a harsher punishment should the matter be taken to court. Hell, if she was found out, she was going to be killed on the spot; no court case. That probably made him the lesser of two evils. But everyone did what they had to just to survive. If that did mean drinking people’s blood or even killing them, then so be it.
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Post by Silas Rosier on May 24, 2009 11:24:11 GMT 1
Woo, the morality question. There we go. It was something he’d had to address numerous times before and he’d been waiting for it ever since the truth of his job had been brought up. It didn’t particularly bother him. Instead he smiled, as though amused by a private joke, and then leaned forwards to look at her directly, resting his weight on his arms.
“You’re basing that on the false premise that morality is absolute,” he said simply, the left half of his mouth still lifted in a crooked smile. “It's not. Not in the slightest.”
“What is Right? What is Wrong? Both concepts have been proven valueless according to history. I mean, if something is truly Right, then wouldn’t it always have been considered Right, and will always be Right? But yet, some of the things now considered ‘morally reprehensible’ have a long history. Hang on, let me give you a few examples.
“Slavery. I assume you’d agree with me if I said slavery is Wrong. In fact, try finding anyone in this bar, or even in the Western World, that still supports it. Ironically it still persists in some parts of Africa, but has otherwise been eradicated. Why? “Not because it’s Wrong. If it’s so Wrong, why did it continue for almost all of muggle history? The Romans, the Egyptians and the Greeks all used slaves to build their civilizations, to quarry the stone for the magnificent buildings that survive to this day. Slaves were spoils of war, and conquered people were sold to offset the costs of conquest. Whether to row the galleys, or to serve in the homes of the conqueror, slaves were an essential part of the economies of almost every muggle culture in the world, up to a couple of hundred years ago.
“And what happened a couple of hundred years ago? The Industrial Revolution. Why invest in owning a human that needs food and lodging, can be unpredictable in behaviour and output, and requires rest, when a machine can get the job done, and machines don't die. In all respects, machines are superior to slaves. Watt did more to end slavery than any moral epiphany. But for thousands of years, slavery was Right. Wizards never had slaves only because we never needed them.
“How about Public Executions? Another thing we consider Wrong, and even proponents of capital punishment agree that public executions as a form of entertainment are, at the least, distasteful. But again we see something NOW considered Wrong that has thousands of years of history of being Right.
“Right and Wrong, morality and immorality, are illusions, Sephora, apt to change at the whims of whatever society considers to be convenient. It’s something you're taught from birth by interacting with others and becomes second nature. That explains how people can condone slavery, or still have no laws against gender or sexuality based hate crimes, but only later see those things as reprehensible.
“Most people try to relate to as many other humans as they can by adapting to their social norms. What their group thinks of as Wrong is Wrong. What they think of as Right is Right. The human population at large thinks that killing is Wrong. Any normal person in society would agree that it’s Wrong. But pick those people up, and place them in the military, where killing is suddenly Right. What happens?
“Or, say, someone in normal society who knows killing is Wrong, saw Volde-” he cut himself off and cleared his throat. “Say they saw You-Know-Who drowning in a river. How many of them, who know killing is Wrong, would throw him a life saver?
“Do you see what I’m getting at?”
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