The decorations are still up, and in a large open room somewhere in the Mansion, Jaenelle's set up a party. It's a curious melding of Christmas (or what she knows of it) and Winsol, with a tree in one corner, presents stacked underneath. The music playing, however, is pure Blood, food is laid out, and the cup is somewhere for all involved to share ( Read more... )

She feels the cold certainty of the blade across her throat, the pressure making her breathing constrict. Her eyes close, and she prays to the gods that this is as painless as possible, and that the grief her parents suffer is not too much. The blade presses harder, and she gasps a little before it is drawn across her neck, and then...nothing. This ( Read more... )

He comes in the lushness of midsummer, his music beating in both slave and lord like a second pulse. Miracles follow him on this day; there is a spring running sweet with wine below the twisted apple tree, and another spring issuing forth milk beside it, and beside that a spring of clean, sweet water. The taps in the Mansion all run red with wine ( Read more... )

Karla is sitting in her tree again. This Glacian witch, her hair spiky as the now melted ice, is grinning ear to ear in the oak by the lake that's come to be her favorite. It's spring finally, and so she's outside, grinning at the world and already dressed in a short sleeved blouse despite the fact that it's not really all that warm. She couldn't ( Read more... )

Walking up the dirt path in the direction of the Mansion is a decidedly disheveled teenage boy, scruffy black hair falling in a pale face, gray eyes downcast. Wearing a leather jacket and basically unrelieved black, there's absolutely nothing to indicate that he's been dead for a couple days. Except that he looks exhausted and like he's been chewed ( Read more... )

Through some quirk of the mansion, Valen’s determined efforts led him to find a way back to where he came from. Now he’s back, and some things about him are...different. Several months have passed there for one thing, and at the mansion this is obviously not the case. He hasn’t noticed that yet, though, and the people he knows here are not ( Read more... )

*A young woman enters the Mansion looking, as most new arrivals do, rather confused. She's pretty, though her clothing does nothing to highlight that fact, her brown hair tucked out of sight, her dress, though as extravagant in style as that of any other aristocratic woman of 1780's France, not cut in a way that accentuates or even really reveals ( Read more... )

*And quite suddenly, HÄNSCHEN is in the main room -- in the process of pulling back from someone, his eyes closed ( Read more... )

Here's a Pansy, aloof as usual as she sits in a chair by the window, long legs crossed. As she presses down her black skirt, a sudden thought strikes her and she looks up.

"Today is my birthday."

A fleeting smile crosses her face for a moment before she fixes it into a frown. Like anyone cared.

There is a tiny new girl in the mansion, looking quite delicate in her plain black dress, hair tied loosely. She furrows her brow as she silently takes in her odd, new surroundings, placing a hand on her jutted-out hip. She was just about to head off to potions class when, well... this happened. She is not daunted by the suspicious magic (worse ( Read more... )