Unknown IC Date 2017/05/16 New Albion Outskirts, The Streets, Doris, Raziel, Victoria

May 16, 2018
Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
The next evening, around dusk... Doris has opted for a severely tailored deep navy blue suit of the pencil skirt and blazer variety. She is waiting outside The Blue Devil, faking Venture like a pro. Her arms are folded and she is clearly trying not to pace.

Raziel05/16/2018
Raziel walks along, clutched in his hands are the wrinkled magazine pages with "the suits"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
There is the faintest of subtle softening around the edges of Doris' expression as she watches the taller Kindred amble closer. "Raziel. Good evening."

Raziel05/16/2018
Raziel is more put off by the softenning then he was the salt "umm... yes... so... uhhh.. lead on!"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Would you prefer to walk? We could take a car." She shrugs subtly. Her hands fold behind her back.

Raziel05/16/2018
"Youre show"
"I... I can pay by the way"

Victoria Marsden05/16/2018
Victoria walks up to the pair. "My apologies for my late arrival. My reasearches were engrossing."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"She will wait for us. We are her only appointment. If you would like to see the city between my bar and Gordon Tower, we can walk and it will inconvenience nobody." The slightest of smiles. "You can, and I would be wounded that you reject my largess." She turns to greet Victoria. "Miss Marsden. We were just discussing how we wished to progress."

Victoria Marsden05/16/2018
"I am free for most of the evening. I will need to move a few things from one area to another for processing shortly before dawn, but timing is, of course, everything. How far away is our destination?"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Just in Gordon Tower." Doris indicates the shiniest of the skyscrapers looming nearby.

Victoria Marsden05/16/2018
"Then we walk, no? It is a lovely night for it."

Raziel05/16/2018
"I really haven't seen much of this town to be honest"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Doctor Pendleton tends to keep his charges close. Let us be off, then." Doris offers her arm to Victoria, as Victoria is the senior Kindred in the group and thus the Great Chain of Being dictates the Keeper escort her fellow elder.(edited)

Raziel05/16/2018
Raziel follows along, once again... uncertain of the "protacal"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Walk beside us, Raziel." Gently. Whatever had been bothering her the night before seems to have abated.

Victoria Marsden05/16/2018
Victoria takes the Keeper's arm and walks beside her, quiet.

Raziel05/16/2018
Raziel also follows along. With frequent glances at the two. It is obvious he is not sure how to read this situation

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
The city they walk through shifts subtly, then more dramatically from arts and entertainment district to corporate heart. There are security cameras subtly present at street corners, plenty of light, and elegantly landscaped median strips down the middle of the streets. Police cars glide by as part of the orderly evening traffic. Occasionally, Doris points out interesting boutiques or art installations or architectural masterpieces. Close to Gordon Tower, most of the buildings have a neo-Art Deco feel, somehow effortlessly fusing old and futuristic without making either look foolish.

Victoria Marsden05/16/2018
"Hmmm." A delicate frown wrinkles her nose. "This is almost too well-ordered. It is lovely, to be certain, but..."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"This is what happens when you build a metropolis whole cloth instead of letting it grow organically."

Victoria Marsden05/16/2018
Victoria nods. "Exactly. I find it slightly unsettling. Raziel? I would enjoy your thoughts."

Raziel05/16/2018
"I am not sure if you would beleive me if I told you..."
"This idea of city planning, really is new right? Like, Uruk started with this farmer setting his hut next to that farmer. By about 6,000 BC it was such a confusing mess. I think I was a farmer then. I used to bring my wheat into into town once a year. It was only a few Kilometer but it seemed like the greatest journey Gilgamesh ever took on. So yeah, this idea of planned streets is only a few hundred years old, and it is still disconcerting. It seems less human."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Humans like to organize things. The whole expanse of history tells us that. Themselves into groups, groups into communities..." Doris waves her free hand vaguely about, indicating the whole of the cityscape in front and around them. "This is just another expression of that desire to be orderly. Who knows where it comes from or what iteration it shall take next?"

Raziel05/16/2018
"I honestly think it is man's desire to be God like. They see the cells of a plant, or the amazing way the sun rises and falls and want to try and create something similar. We didn't have freewill at the beginning, we just did. Man's..." he looks at the two walking with him "people's ability to have free will was always amazing to us. I half wonder if his reason for our fall was to give us free will, wisdom, the apple. He was bored with automatons and needed us to have this spark. I will ask him the next time I see him"
"uuhhhh her"
"them"
"it"
"you know what I mean"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Grace has no meaning if there is no capacity to be undeserving of it." Out of the philosophical word salad, Doris comes up with a concise summary. Of sorts.

Raziel05/16/2018
"He always wished his toys were real"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Of all the gods of human history, the Christian one makes the least sense on paper. Granted, the paper we accept as canonical was devised by committee and under duress, but..." A shrug. "The apocrypha do not make Christianity less strange."

Raziel05/16/2018
"Wanna know the truth... the Christian... Islam... Jud.... whatever idea is the closest to what He is like. Still not quite right, but close. The other religions are not far off. And that fact that you people kill each other over the smallest differences... just... it is sad"(edited)
"I think if you would just accept that Buddha, and Islam and Wicca and... the Mormons, and... Ragnarok and... everything else have truth to them, and stop killing eachother the world would be a better place" Raziel shakes his head for a moment

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"And yet...there is still grace."

Raziel05/16/2018
"I think I have said to much... Technically talking about this stuff was what got me punished in the first place"
"us"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Grace redeems us all if we allow it." She sighs softly. "The desire to be right does more harm than good, though. You have the right of it there."

Raziel05/16/2018
"Sure there is always grace, and God's plan. But if his plan was for me to be trapped on earth so we, as his toys could have free will... well fuck him... but... I wan... God damn it! I am still talking! How about your local sports team?"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"I would rather discuss theology, if it is all the same to you." She clicks down the well-maintained sidewalk for a moment in silence, keeping pace with Victoria. "Is it not Buddhist philosophy that one is incarnate until one manages to learn some lesson or other?"(edited)

Raziel05/16/2018
“I was there, we were there before the first pindot of light. Infinity and then time, and I was here. The punishment came and I lived out my lives. None of me was aware of the divine spark. Life after life. I remember now, millennia but it is hard to remember breakfast last week. Flashes come, I was a carpenter in Italy. I was a beggar in Constantinople. Everyone with a past life thinks the are Cleopatra.... I was a whore on the river Thames. Frozen alone and dead, no books are written of me. Jim was a Soldier and the trenches were not traumatic enough... it was my Embrace that was. Made me remember. Later my death that made me remember more. I am Jim for ever now... until I atone for talking to much”

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"Is it that you speak too freely or that you speak too much? There is a difference."

Raziel05/16/2018
“We did, we took mercy. He punished us”
There is an emphasis placed on the word “We”

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/16/2018
"But look at this wondrous cage." Doris frees her arm from Victoria's light grasp so that she can spread them both wide, encompassing more than simply the city. She turns to face Raziel. "I could dwell here on this planet until the sun dies and in its death throes swallows it and still never learn all there is to know. We are all wonderfully made, even with our faults."
She hums the chorus of some song, whispered to her in the spur of the moment. It is undoubtedly unfamiliar to everyone in immediate earshot.

May 17, 2018
Raziel05/17/2018
“Yeah I guess... still a cage”

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"Only until we figure out how to effectively travel between the stars." Doris says this with the sort of firm conviction that suggests it is only a matter of time. "Then we will be able to go where we please and fully appreciate creation. Until then we must be good stewards of this planet."

Raziel05/17/2018
Raziel shakes his head, "Yeah, I guess.. then the cage will be larger. Look, can we change the subject?" Raziel moves to rub a spot between his shoulder blades.
He looks off into the distant horizon with a sadness on his face, that was definitely not there before.(edited)

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"I..." The change in expression, so different from the uplifting thrill stirring her own lost soul, catches Doris off-guard. "I'm sorry. I don't get to discuss theology often." Informality adds sincerity to the apology.
"I suppose I am as much my mother's daughter as my father's."

Raziel05/17/2018
"Lets sit down and talk in depth, just... you reminded me of some things I wish I still had."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"I'm sorry. Stll." She holds out her hand. "Forgive me?"

Raziel05/17/2018
He smiles with a bit of a mischievous grin "Forgiveness IS divine."(edited)

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"And to fall short of the glory of God is human." A hint of litany in her reply.

Raziel05/17/2018
"As long as you forgive me for being a melancholy twit"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"Always. My forgiveness is more liberally dispensed than my wrath." Her hand remains outstretched, conciliatory.(edited)

Raziel05/17/2018
He takes her hand and smiles, "Forgiven. You need to understand, I can't die. It makes you prioritize things... differently than when I thought I was mortal. So, it is not on you, there is no way you can dance across the no-man's land minefield that is my mind. I don't expect that of anyone."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"I am not certain discovering one has failed to stay dead is comforting in any context. And endless time does change priorities."

Victoria Marsden05/17/2018
Victoria smiles. "It does indeed. Plans can take decades, centuries to mature and if we are fortunate, that is nothing to us. A goal to be achieved. And the longer one is alive, the shorter the perception of time passing. Yet memory is the most affected. As we move further from our past, events, even important ones, become mere flashes. A song, a scent on the breeze, a single thought or lesson learned. Faces and circumstances fade." She turns her gaze to the Malkavian. "And certain itches fade with time as well." She looks up. "We live by necessity in the present."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"It is the only moment that truly exists."

Raziel05/17/2018
Raziel mutters something quietly under his breath, but keeps walking. (if you have auspex or something lemme know)

Raziel05/17/2018
Raziel stays quiet for a long while. Walking in silence as the shops pass by. He finally breaks the silence, "What is your present then Victoria, Doris? Why wake up each evening?"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
Doris replies with a vague handwave. Apparently all of the everything is why. "My list is not complete."

Victoria Marsden05/17/2018
(I have Auspex. PM me.)
"Raziel, I am drawn to all that I do not know. Once, a very, very long time ago, it was possible for one man - for it was usually men - to know practically all there was in the Western world to know. Languages, religion, the limited knowledge of science and mathematics that existed. Trades. A stretch, perhaps, but not impossible and some Kindred with our notably long lives took on that task. Now? There is so very, very much more. I will never be done, and I will never lose my thirst for life, if I devote myself to learning all that I can, even in a select number of fields."
As Victoria's voice fades, you get the impression that something was left unsaid.

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"...the chance to make up for lost educational opportunities is a close second." Doris eyes Victoria briefly, but does not ask questions she does not need the answers to. Plausible deniability is useful.

Raziel05/17/2018
"Well the Lord God is ineffable, if your list is to know everything before you die, you will never find death." Raziel shrugs.

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"My list is less noble." Doris shrugs. "I just want to discharge my duty to New Albion and go home."(edited)

Raziel05/17/2018
Raziel laughs, "Hey, my goal is to go home too!"

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"I wish to return to the Queen of the West in all her beauty, with the beautiful river making a necklace of reflected light around her throat..." The amount of homesickness in Doris' voice is palpable.

Victoria Marsden05/17/2018
"...and there, our homes, radiant in the light of day. Does no one miss a place at night?"

Raziel05/17/2018
"I remember sitting on a hill overlooking Florence, Firenze... the light nestled in between the hills like gems. Firenze is so much more beautiful at night then in the light of day."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"The view of the city from the Florence side of the river is best at night."

Victoria Marsden05/17/2018
Victoria nods approvingly. "There is a feel, a scent, to a night breeze in my old home that cannot be found in the light of day. There are places I have visited in my unlife that my heart recalls fondly. It is wise not to dwell on what we have outgrown."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
"Attachment paves the road to suffering...ah, here we are."

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
The automated glass doors slide open and...

Doris Ashview (ST Euryale)05/17/2018
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