Strange and Stranger
 banner by Camille de Varenne |
wc: 816interacting: @Santiago Peralta
  notes: xxx |
| xx | Isolation. The child’s favourite company were the flimsy papers scattered before her, and then blank space. Isolated — past tense. Technically speaking, she no longer was. Ever since their arrival at São Paulo, Brazil, she had never been physically separated from that dearest mother of hers for an extended period of time. Not after the woman forwent her alchemy laboratory work in pursuit of Herbology. She and those nasty plants were inseparable; the child barely understood her mother’s passion for those beings, if they could be called such. The wailings of the Screechsnaps that arose from the greenhouse were far from pleasant. And from one of her mother’s various passionate herbology rants, it had come to her attention that some plants were sentient — they could feel pain and pleasure, just like a human or any other creature. Though she could understand why it would appeal to some, the idea that plants were somewhat akin to humans was rather unfathomable and brought some degree of discomfort to the child’s hyper-imaginative mind. Though her mother was, in theory, always here, she was in no way always present. Either engrossed in the greenery or meandering within the rainforest with those rainforest folk. Not that it mattered to the child; her mother could go dilly-dally with her plants, for all she cared. Ebony Vetra much preferred having conversations within her mind anyway — her most treasured entertainer was herself and herself only. Her years of ostracisation back in Scotland — to the courtesy of immature neighbours — had only rendered her accustomed to being alone. And São Paulo was, comparably to Edinburgh, some sort of heaven. Back home, the only human presence to exist was unpleasant. Now, at least, no childish neighbours or hedonistic cousins would serve to mock and pester her. Full attention could be devoted to self-entertainment. That self-entertainment came in the form of brush strokes and ruminations that served as manifestations of her anarchic, chaos-filled cogitation. Such was the case now; lying before her was a parchment draped in ink, layers upon layers of jet black strokes that somehow, when viewed in full, formed a somewhat coherent image. Coherent as in remotely resembling something, though that something was not so clear. On this particular strip of parchment was a manifestation of a silhouette of some sort; not remotely any recognisable magical beast or wizard, but a blurred imprint of a figure, a soul. In a way, the smears of ink resembled a dementor; the black was so dark that it seemed to absorb any light that reached it. The piece was, however, not an attempt to recreate the soul-sucking creature. The girl in fact was unsure whether she was aware of what the creatures appeared to be like. The drawings were simply a materialisation of the child’s overactive imagination, albeit dark. Sometimes, she would attempt to recreate the shadows that presented themselves in her dreams. She was by no means an insomniac, but the consequences of a mind that continued to turn throughout the night manifested in frequenting nightmares and distorted realities that just so happen to translate perfectly into ink droplets on parchment. Her mother also attempted to entertain her. Dolls were purchased rather frequently — perhaps some of them from those rainforest folk, for all she knew. The girl had always wondered whether the woman was concerned for her. Perhaps her somewhat strange drawings were unsettling; perhaps her isolationist behaviour was worrying. Perhaps the dolls were an attempt to nudge the brunette back towards conventionalism. The woman loved her, she knew. But the girl held no regard for the dolls. Sometimes she wished that her mother — someone — would draw with her. Quill and ink to parchment, in tandem. One could only dream. Scattered across the floor of her room were inked silhouettes and vandalised dolls with charred hair. Shouts and a rapid knocking came from outside the bedroom door. Dinner, her mother had said, accompanied with something along the lines of there being a guest. Ah, brilliant. A guest — a stranger. The girl was beyond excited to spend a night sitting in silence and nodding and smiling and pretending that she wanted the stranger here. How fun. Said guest was highly likely to be one of her mother’s rainforest friends. Maybe that conservationist lady she frequently so passionately talked about, or that man who came over from time to time to offer dragon dung fertiliser. Freaky plant adults, either way; they certainly didn’t make for any conversation that interested Ebony. It was going to be a long dinner, indeed. The doorbell rang. More shouts and knocks. The child lethargically dragged herself towards the door and headed out towards the dining area, but not without first bringing along her quill and parchment. If her mother was going to force her to socially interact — with her plant friends, no less — she may as well make it as bearable as it could be. |
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Last edited by Ebony Vetra on 6 Jul 2026, 08:40, edited 1 time in total.
| iNPC: Luuk Tjin-A-Wing | sta 7 | eva 12 | str 15 | wis 9 | arc 8 | acc 15 𝐓𝐏 • 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 • 𝐨𝐛𝐧𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 • 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 • 𝐄𝐌 |
Strange and Stranger
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date: June, 2018 mentions: @Ebony Vetra |
C | C | São Paulo : location 785 : words |
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| C | Networking dinners at the hands of his mother’s endless stream of business partners, and sometimes even people generously called friends, were an inevitability all three Peralta children had grown up with. Her socialite career was not only a professional title, but also a major part of her character and way of living. When he was younger, the middle child had to put on his bravest face to suffer through nights of so-called “adult fun.” With age, as with most things, such obligations where Santiago’s attendance was mandatory had become increasingly sparse. After he came of age, travelled the world—which he still did from time to time when his schedule allowed—and moved to Brazil to study law, Santiago’s presence at them became sporadic at best. He had been living in São Paulo for almost five years now, in the final stretch of his education before being thrown into the legal world, as had been his dream. Or rather, as it had crystallised into certainty in his second year, when he realised it was a viable career option. In hindsight, he and everyone who knew him well enough to speak on the matter knew it had been the most obvious and sensible choice for him, a person who preferred to have order and control of his surroundings. That said, it wasn’t the most forgiving path in terms of leisure time. With the relocation and his hefty workload, even seeing his parents remained an occurrence too rare for his liking. He was not short on acquaintances, nor on the easier, more transient forms of companionship that city life so readily produced, though whatever attachment he maintained to his family sat deeper than he would have cared to articulate, let alone examine too closely. Aside from that, Brazil suited him. The language had been easy enough to grasp; he spoke Portuguese fluently nowadays. His landlord was a terribly grumpy man with a particular sensitivity to noise, and Santi had been on the receiving end of that complaint more times than he cared to admit. The apartment itself was spacious, well-kept and located in one of the more reputable areas of the city, just a few blocks away from the university and only a twenty minute walk away from the main bar streets. His party days were not as wild as they had been back during his freshman year, but the nightlife was still one of the best parts about the city, in his opinion. It would have been a shame to complain about one man when the same apartment had hosted a dozen others over the years, less irritable company, in hindsight. Some of them he still remembered clearly, even fondly, though he tried not to dwell. His family still visited him frequently during the summers. Whenever they did visit, or he returned home for that matter, rarely was a day spent simply wandering without purpose. Trust Inés Peralta to make arrangements without consultation; most of them were surprises to everyone involved, but after decades of experience, one eventually learns to simply go along with it. That summer was no exception. It arrived with an intensity that made even routine feel provisional. Whatever charms had been cast over the building seemed to have given up days ago; the heat pressed itself through the streets and into the city’s structures until the walls were implicated. Inside, it got to a point where being inside felt more suffocating than surrendering to the sun. For someone raised in a more temperate climate, it stopped being merely uncomfortable. At loss, there had only been one thing for him to do: complain. Predictably, when pressed with the matter, the landlord had only grunted something unintelligible in response. He hadn’t felt an improvement yet. Hence why, when the Peralta family had arrived in São Paulo and informed him about dinner with a Vetra family, Santiago had never been more relieved for an opportunity to leave the house. Although he did not know the family personally, the young man had learned to appreciate the understated enjoyment of connecting with strangers over a nice-offered dinner now in his adulthood. His attitude might have changed with age, but Santiago would never be a conversationalist in the same calibre as his mother, if it was even possible at all. At the appointed time and location, a family of four, minus the eldest sister who was otherwise engaged, stood outside the Vetra estate. Although the sun had since long reached its peak, the staggering heatwave lingered. While waiting to be invited inside, he tugged at his shirt to cool himself down, albeit the attempt was futile; the air trapped beneath the fabric was as hot as the air around him. |
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Alluring | Scream | Charm | Nonverbal | Temperamental
Strange and Stranger
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banner by Camille de Varenne |
wc: 913interacting: @Santiago Peralta
notes: xxx |
| xx | Fingers curled around handle, pushed down, arm pulled backward. Ebony watched as her mother pulled the door open, its somewhat antiquated hinges creaking from lack of care. The home was not particularly vintage nor run down, but the girl and her mother's lack of affinity for caring for the home left it in a rather strange condition. Her mother rarely cleaned the house; plant scrappings and dragonhide gloves littered the floor on the frequent. The self-proclaimed herbologist, like many other researchers, handled the research well, but not the aftermath. Dust was typically smattered across the floor, trails of soil from the soles of her mother's shoes staining the wooden floorboards. The child didn't mind; she rarely left her room, and it wasn't as though she was particularly cleanly herself. Now, she looked around to find the house somewhat tidier, the plants arranged; those that were usually aggressive were tamed, subdued, and overgrown vegetation had been trimmed. The soil had been cleaned by a lackluster scourgify, yet hints of the dirty chaos that usually overtook the estate were still present. To the perceptive eye, it was obvious that the house was a workshop of some sort, tools still cluttering desks and tabletops. A gust of hot air rushed in from the exterior, the outside world. This was the one qualm that the Scottish girl held against São Paulo; it was warm. Very warm, so warm that it was uncomfortable. Combined with the humidity of the Brazilian climate, the weather was far from pleasant. So many days, the child found herself waking in a pool of sweat; so often, the hands that were often clenched around pens grew sweaty, the grime staining her parchment and blurring the ink, turning monstrous figures into blurs of something unidentifiable, something even more hideous. The chill was one of the only things she missed about Edinburgh. Another thing about Brazil was all the dinners. The child was becoming accustomed to all of them; the formalities, the conservationist discussions — Ebony, though socially inept, was not clueless when it came to conversational norms. Be polite, her mother would say, greet them, smile. So that was what she did, time and time again. There had been so many of these little clusters of herbologists visiting that the visages became obfuscated, blurring together into a bland, faceless smudge. The adults who were about to enter were only another few faceless, identity-less individuals. The child would occasionally hope for an intriguing bunch to show up, for the conversation to veer away from herbology and towards something of greater substance. That wasn't to suggest that Herbology held no substance, but to a child who only desired, paradoxically, to dream abstractly and to be practical simultaneously, the subject of study was close enough to substanceless. The door swung open to reveal a family of three — two women and a man. A family, perhaps? How curious. Very rarely did whole families come for a visit; individual conservationists and herbologists frequented — those whom her mother had met on her strange endeavours — but a group of people was a rare occurrence. A whole group of herbologists, perhaps? A family of conservationists? It was strange, for the man did not strike as a consevationist nor a herbologist. There was some form of intensity present within his gaze. It was logically fallacious of her to think so, she knew, but many of the herbologists whom she had met — or been introduced to — had a certain look to them. A certain dreamy expression cast upon their face, like the one her mother held so often. This man didn't strike her as so, but perhaps she was being too uncharacteristically speculative. Too many assumptions. Only upon her mother's stern calls reminding her not to be rude to the guests — the strangers — did she finally open her mouth. "Hello, it is a pleasure to meet all of you," she said formally; eyes remained widened, unsmiling. But for her mother's sake — for she knew how important these visits were to her — she curled her lips upward into a slight smile, feigning politeness. That was what one had to do sometimes. To feign, to place upon oneself a mask to hide one's true intentions, one's true thoughts. After uttering the obligatory greeting, she ducked behind her mother once again. Maintaining eye contact was nervewracking at times; it was acceptable if she was in control, if she looked down upon someone, or if she was the one to initiate. Upon the instance of several adults towering over her, however, it became something akin to intimidation. Fingers grasping onto her mother's sleeve as though it was a lifeline, Ebony watched, face half shrouded in her mother's silhouette, as the woman greeted the guests with a courtesy that she did not usually display, inviting them to take a seat at the dining table that was placed somewhat ornately. Anything in the house being fancy was a rare occassion. It was always somewhat amusing watching her mother attempt to pretend she wasn't some madwoman alchemist turned herbologist. It was amusing watching her pretend to be typical. She doubted the facade of normalcy was as impenetrable as her mother believed. Regardless of how impressionable her mother was to the strangers, the child left the conversation to the adult; all she had to do was stay silent and smile, and time would surely slip away with ease. |
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| iNPC: Luuk Tjin-A-Wing | sta 7 | eva 12 | str 15 | wis 9 | arc 8 | acc 15 𝐓𝐏 • 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 • 𝐨𝐛𝐧𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 • 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 • 𝐄𝐌 |