RP for mrsharker - A re-acquaintance...
Amelia had to admit to some nerves as she stepped up to the door of the admittedly very pretty looking town house. She had met Mina Harker once before, back in the thirties, when their paths had unwittingly crossed. The other woman had been chasing some kind of being - a half-life as they called them - and Amelia had been looking for it as well,
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She huffed out her breath irritably and pulled her left glove high above the entry-site, knowing that the black fabric would swallow any lingering droplets of blood. Dealing with teenagers immediately after her treatment jangled upon her nerves, but neither Luke nor Ruby would come to her home if it were not important, especially without Rupert.
The short distance to her door was a little trying so soon following the procedure: it left her somewhat delicate and shaky on her feet for an hour or so, so hopefully whatever crisis led the children to her door would not necessitate too much running around until she had recovered a measure of her strength.
Opening the door onto the grey London morning, she braced slightly on the cane, expecting Luke or Ruby to breeze in past her and not wanting to stumble in front of them. Instead of that and the bright, brash scents of the young, she was surprised to hear a woman's voice and to catch the faint smell of an older sort of perfume against the background scent of London.
"I knew someone by that name," Mina conceded slowly, after her visitor had introduced herself, "a very long time ago." A very long time ago, indeed. Too long ago that said woman should be standing before her, sounding so very young. How curious. "'Amelia' is an old-fashioned name. Not one I hear very often anymore," she noted, almost carelessly.
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She instantly cringed at that. She always did have a horrible habit of saying quite ridiculous things when she was nervous and now, it seemed, was no exception. Hardly the best first impression to make. Well, second first impression she supposed.
"Sorry," she hurriedly continued. "That was a little crass. Needless to say you likely have some...curiosity about me and I'd be quite willing to offer a full explanation. But not on your doorstep."
She frowned a little, taking time to consider other woman's slightly shaky demeanour and the cane she appeared the be leaning heavily upon. Was she unwell?
"Although, if this isn't the best time I could absolutely come back later," she added. "This is a terrible imposition, I know."
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She took a step backwards and pulled the front door a little farther open to admit the other woman. "Come in."
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She followed Mina through into a lounge area. It was a very lovely house on the inside too, the elegance of it certainly matching its owner.
She sat on a chair when indicated to do so and silence reigned for a moment, the other woman apparently waiting for her to speak which seemed a reasonable enough request. After all, Amelia had turned up on her doorstep unannounced.
She wrung her hands in her lap, tapping her foot nervously on the floor as she tried to decide where to start.
"My story is rather a long one," she finally began with some hesitation still. It was tale she wasn't used to telling and perhaps she should have rehearsed this beforehand. Too late now though. She'd just have to blunder through it.
"You see I had some misfortune...." she continued after a moment's further thought. "That is, I mean to say I brought some misfortune on myself that had certain unfortunate consequences and..."
She stopped with a irritated sigh, getting increasingly annoyed with herself. This wasn't a confessional, for goodness sake. She didn't need to feel like she was on trial. Nor should she try to over complicate the matter. They didn't have all day.
"Stuff it," she muttered and continued on rapidly before she could stop herself. "Look, I found a mystical artefact which I then studied obsessively until it was stolen, somehow it left me unable to age or die, I was the woman you met back in the thirties and I blatantly lied to you because I didn't know who you were and I wasn't in the habit of sharing the fact that I'm apparently immortal with perfect strangers. Still not, actually. This is an exception."
She finally paused for breath, surprised at herself for such an outpouring. Well, it was graceless but at least it had got her point across.
"Sorry, by the way," she added with a slight grimace. "For lying to you, I mean."
Mina said nothing for a moment and so Amelia felt obliged to reassure her.
"I'm not mental, honest."
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"Apology accepted and appreciated," she said at length. "Furthermore, I accept that you are neither delusional nor lying."
She rather supposed that the 'why now' would be revealed in time, and would very much like to hear more about the artefact, too. There was only one thing for it: "Would you care for some tea, Miss Harrison, while we converse?"
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She indeed felt more at ease with the other woman than she did with most. Maybe that was because they were from a similar time in history. It was oddly nice to know another who'd at least been born in the same century as she had. It made her feel suddenly less out of place.
"That would be lovely, thank you. And 'Amelia' will do just fine. I don't think there's much need to hang on such formalities when I've just divulged some of my deepest secrets to you."
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She busied herself filling the kettle and bringing out her neglected tea-set: Rupert favoured coffee and large mugs of it, which meant that the delicate china saw little use anymore. A swirl of hot water to warm the pot, and the tealeaves down from the shelf.
"What is it that brings you to my door, Amelia?"
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"A hopefully not vain quest for advice," she replied in answer to the other woman's question, before realising how annoyingly cryptic that would sound. She hurried to explain further.
"I currently have in my care a man similarly afflicted to myself only he's from a far earlier time than I am. It's hard to say when exactly, he's very difficult to understand even at the best of times, but his name his Sir Eoforwine and I believe he may be several hundred years old. A good half a century if not more."
She shook her head with a deep frown of concern.
"He doesn't cope very well with his continued existence and there's increasingly little I can do for him. I thought that maybe there was something or someone you knew of. Something that could help him."
Which, she realised, for a woman of learning was pathetically vague sounding plea as well as a rather desperate one.
"I know it sounds silly," she reasoned, "and I have no idea what I'm really looking for, but when I saw another of your concert posters recently, I realised that it may be worth enquiring at least."
For her own sake, she realised, as well as his. People were not designed to live that long and she was horrified by the idea that she too could some day degenerate to his state. The one thing she prided herself on was her mind and the notion of losing it chilled her deeply.
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She returned to the kitchen and set out a plate of biscuits. There were always biscuits in her biscuit-barrel these days, Rupert and the children all having expressed dismay when she let them run out. "I'm assuming that you would have mentioned if any of that were applicable?"
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The moment she said that she hesitated though, a frown furrowing her brow. A new notion had struck her and it made her heart beat a little faster to consider it.
"At least, I think I still am," she confessed. "Even after all these years, I'm not entirely sure what the artefact did to me."
She'd never really questioned her own humanity before but perhaps she should have. Perhaps the skull hadn't just afflicted her with something but had changed her very being. Made her one of these 'supernaturals'. It was a frightening possibility and one she had no desire to dwell upon at that very moment.
She sipped at her tea to calm herself, peering over the edge of her cup at the woman opposite her.
"And you," she pressed gently. "Am I to take it that Stoker's tale wasn't entirely fiction?"
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"Pity it was not in today's more litigious society," she commented dryly. "Perhaps he would have thought twice about such blatant theft."
She smiled a little then, trying to lighten the tone. "And I trust you berated your husband thoroughly for such carelessness."
A fond remembrance suddenly struck her and her expression warmed, eyes looking down into the tea she slowly stirred.
"I once gave my fiance the first draft of an article I'd written and he left it on the underground. He said he'd never been on such a train before and he'd been distracted. I said if he didn't get it back I'd beat him to death with a pre-Incan idol."
She laughed a little, more to herself than anything. "Apparently he took that quite seriously because he returned promptly with the article the next morning."
Her warmth lasted a moment longer before it faded, the past becoming suddenly painful once more.
"Your supposed total recovery was one of the elements Stoker embellished I presume..." she guessed, changing the subject, eyes studying the other woman slightly. She couldn't claim to know her well but, from the little she'd discovered, Amelia was quite convinced that Mina wasn't one of the vicious vampires of fiction.
She'd come here for advice but now she wondered if she stayed more out of curiosity. Which was in a way rude she supposed but she couldn't help herself.
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She poured splash more tea from the pot to warm her cup, mulling over where in the Stacks precisely to begin. It would possibly depend upon the nature of the artefact. Mina looked up as she spoke again: the movement more for Amelia's benefit than her own: while Mina could not see herself, people responded more favourably when they felt they could meet her eyes -- and tucked her chin in her hand. "It would help if you could tell me a little bit more about this artefact. An Egyptian scarab, for example, could have entirely different connotations to a Celtic idol."
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"It was skull," she explained, subconsciously playing with her purse which contained the photo of it that she always carried. Not that that would be much help here. "Made of quartz crystal. My father found it in central India whilst on an expedition there, although none of my findings suggest it was indigenous to the area. You may have heard of similar artefacts - there's one in the British Museum for a start. As far as I can tell though, most are modern fakes. I've studied several dozen skulls over the years and have never found a second real one although, with others similarly afflicted to myself, I do believe there are at least three in existence. Where they are now, I don't know."
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"You said you had a chance to study it before it was stolen -- what did you get from it? If there's anything that could suggest a lead for us to work from."
The tale was growing increasingly interesting: if absolutely nothing else were in its favour, it was novel. It had been quite a while since something genuinely novel had come to Mina's attention. Inhumans were inhumans and most of them were thoroughly documented in the Stacks even if they weren't the usual suspects of type fives, vampires, ghouls or zombies.
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She knew it left the others around her unsettled and she could understand why - anything that made them seem less than human was never good. But she always had had a rather obsessive personality and it had been hard enough to tear herself away from her work when she had needed to eat, let alone now she do without.
"Most of the useful information I gathered from the skull was regards its construction," she explained almost with enthusiasm. It was nice to talk to someone fresh about it all.
"As far as I could tell, it was carved from a single block of crystal and, notably, against the natural grain. According to the jewellers I consulted that's very unusual - most artisans would never do it because the crystal is likely to shatter. There were no tool marks either and no expert could tell me how it was made. Beyond that I have no hard evidence I'm afraid, more conjecture."
She hesitated for a long moment. She knew this perhaps sounded the maddest part of all and she was a little reluctant to go on in case she was laughed at. But, she reasoned, she was having tea with a blind vampire. This woman of all people was unlikely to dismiss things simply because they appeared impossible on the surface.
"Most who have been in contact with a skull say it has hypnotic type qualities," she continued, more quietly this time. "That it encourages obsession well beyond the norm to detriment of everything else."
She thought of her fiance for a moment, of how he had finally given her an ultimatum and she hadn't even cared. She'd never spoken to him again.
"Many say they hear unintelligible voice from it. Some even report psychic phenomena, along with a great sense of ill boding."
She sighed and shook her head.
"I'm afraid I can't offer anything more scientific."
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