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Snippet #1538167

located in The Masquerade Ball, a part of Misguided Ghosts: A Promise, one of the many universes on RPG.

The Masquerade Ball

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Character Portrait: Jetta Miracle Constantine
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The room was a mess of sensation already, a shadowplay of desperate hands reaching blindly in the dark, points of light flitting about erratically without noticing that there were others doing the same, and every contact, however deliberate, was to his eyes a complete accident, a random collision dictated only by the wildest probabilities and the intervention of human wills that could not be numerically expressed but still possessed the characteristic effervescence of that which came to life as an amalgamation of one-in-a-millions and would wink out in much the same way, having left a shadow of a mark on something, somewhere, as its only memento. Just like something random, but with deliberateness. Atoms connecting and disconnecting in the void, an old Greek man drawing a triangle in the sand at his feet, insisting that nothing was taught or learned, only remembered.

Some were so vibrantly alive that it almost hurt to look at them, some seemed to linger on the edge of a crevasse, wavering between one side and another without ever thinking to build a bridge between them. At least one was half-dead and didn't know it. Ian knew it, though, in the strange scant-explicable way that he knew so many things, though the specifics were lost on him in the whirl of resplendence and the thrumming of music in his bones. Why was never the right question where he was concerned, only how.

Presently, he was approached by a woman. To say "a woman in a red dress" was to do an awful disservice to the sorts of things that Ian was both trained to instantaneously notice and also instinctively reached for. Dark hair, eyes, artificially marred grace, the scent of something illegal. But then there was also the illusory bass throbbing beneath his feet, something that did not exist in the present reality, but somehow got associated with her all the same. There was a fence, chain-linked and rusting but standing all the same, and henna and picket signs and other things he knew by name but not experience.

For all this, the greeting that passed into the space between them was starkly ordinary, which dispelled the unreality and subsumed the current moment in its place once more. There were people whose heads were always in the clouds; Ian's was always somewhere else entirely, at least until he remembered himself and angled his thoughts back to the immediate. There was a moment, perhaps too long, in which he pondered her question with all solemnity, not because he did not know the answer, but because articulating it in a way that would make any sense to someone else was not an instantaneous process for him.

His head tilted noticeably to one side, and he looked for a moment at nothing but the deafened maestros, but then he blinked and his gaze cleared, coming back to rest on the woman's face. "It is felt, not heard. The instruments are hollow; sound waves produce vibration... after long enough, this can replace the sound. Beethoven was deaf." He recalled the distinct impression of elongated digits pressed firmly, precisely over strings upon the neck of a cello, all reddish wood and emptiness that simply begged to be filled with those selfsame transcendent reverberations.

The corner of Ian's mouth twitched into something resembling a smile. "But surely you would know that?" A pause; his question had not been meant of condescension, merely a ready association with something he knew-but-did-not-know. "I apologize. Sometimes, I am told, I say things I should not." Chances were, she'd simply been trying for small-talk, and he'd completely ruined it. This was a rather common occurrence. Straightening from where he was leaned against the wall, he brought himself to his full 6'7" and then bowed slightly, as he'd been taught in childhood. "Ian Schaffer, fraulein. Er- miss, that is. A pleasure."




Mischa was watching the near-empty dance floor, thinking that it really was a shame it was going unused, for the music was simply excellent. She was not the sort of woman that necessarily would have wanted to wait around to be asked, but given that her equivalent would be a bit difficult to communicate, she was often forced to anyway. She thought about casting an unmistakably come-hither glance at someone, but then that might give off the wrong impression, mightn't it?

As it turned out, her silent battle was abruptly put to an end with the appearance of a man wearing nothing less than a checkered blazer. Normally, she would have thought such a thing amusing in the very least, but there was no mistake- this was the sort of person who had enough presence to get away with it. Clearly, he was also of the belief that he could get away with sweeping her across the dance floor as he liked, but this did not affront Mischa. Rather, it amused her, and reminded her of something her uncle had always been fond of saying: A man 'leads' the dance, but he does not control it. In the end, that falls to the purview of a woman. After all, it is she who draws the eye and she who weaves the most intricate steps.

The present musical selection was a rather charming waltz, and she frankly though that if her music was always this good, she might be in trouble, for she may be disinclined to stop. As it was, she allowed the charming stranger, all small courtesies and prominent smiles, to whisk her about, but never once did she lose control of her pacing, and each foot fell exactly where it was supposed to, the very picture of composed grace and airiness, as a waltz was meant to convey.

There was little her feet could not express, but her face took care of the rest; her expression equal parts wry amusement at his forwardness, genuine happiness at the result, and the subtlest of challenges: just how well do you dance? This was more than an idle entertainment for Mischa, after all, it was her very profession. Though she did not expect the same of anyone here, it was still a little contention that she could not resist, and it drew her back into the place she was so fond of, the one she could only reach when wheeling across a ballroom floor like this. A small, inscrutable smile, a glint to the honey color of her eyes behind the mask, and just a tiny bit of threat in her motion.