General off-comm musebox for fabula(e)_victoriana

[someonetowatchoveryou]

September's comings and goings are almost predictable. He spends most of the day and evening out of the House, exploring the town, Observing significant events, sitting quietly in cafes and people-watching, or (recently) wandering and lost in thought.

Of a night, he can be found in one of the studies, reading and sipping wine and looking far too relaxed. If he doesn't fall asleep there, he sleeps in his small but cozy bedroom, buried under blankets on an insanely comfortable bed.

He never appears to object to company, no matter what he's doing.

Comments

[la_maupin]

On this particular evening, Julie has come back from her usual visit to the local taverns a bit earlier than usual. Spying September as she passes the study, she pauses, remembering that she's seen him around the city, now and them. A bit tipsy, she leans against the doorway, studying him with curious, bright blue eyes.

"What is it that you are reading, Monsieur?" she asks.

When he turns, he shall find a woman wearing a gentleman's clothing, her auburn hair caught up in a braid that's starting to come undone. A top hat hangs in her hand, her overcoat draped over an arm.

[someonetowatchoveryou]

He's not exactly at the top of his game right now, either, as is evidenced by the ever-so-slight unsteadiness to his slow movements. He blinks at her for a beat, head tilting, then looks down at the book in his hands.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," he answers. "Do you know it?"

His voice is soft and inflectionless without being monotone. More... serene, really.

[la_maupin]

"Ah, Monsieur Shakespeare!"

Tossing hat and coat aside, she steps over the threshold.

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite, or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite call'd Robin Goodfellow!"

She plops herself down next to him, swaying a little. Though her balance is imperfect and her speech is slurred, she remembers the lines with a born operatic diva's memory: right down to the inflection. She fixes bright blue eyes on him and speaks them as if addressing him.

"Are not you he that frights the maidens of the villagery; skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, and bootless make the breathless housewife churn; and sometime make the drink to bear no barm; mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, you do their work, and they shall have good luck: are not you he?"

[someonetowatchoveryou]

His head tilts and he blinks as she does this, and he looks a bit... sleepy. Yet when she reaches the end of the quote, he picks up with the next line, all lack of inflection gone. Indeed, he shows more animation than anyone thought him capable of, his inflection oddly similar to hers:

"Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon."

And just like that he goes back to his usual expressionless appearance, though the slightest hint of a smile twitches at the corners of his lips.

[la_maupin]

Julie gives a pleased laugh, when he's finished the replying monologue, clapping her hands in appreciation.

"Well done, Monsieur, bravo!"

She studies him another moment, taking note of his curious lack of hair. In her own era, a man's hair was his pride, just as surely as it was the crowning glory for a woman. However, as she notes that he doesn't even appear to have eyebrows, she suspects it's not merely a question of his having gone bald, as some men did. It's intriguing.

"So, tell me, then. Who are you? Where is it you come from?"

[someonetowatchoveryou]

September is completely bare of hair, save for some rather criminally thick eyelashes. Some men have all the eyelash luck, it seems. They're oddly pretty eyes, too, even with the lack of eyebrows.

He blinks a little sleepily at the question and pauses to put the words together. In this state, as relaxed and slightly drunk as he is, his motions go from 'eerily graceful' to 'almost sensually languid,' as is evidenced when he picks up the wine glass and takes a drink from it, the wine appearing to slide between his lips in a bizarrely unchaste manner for a simple drink. He is completely unconscious of this, however.

"I am known as September," he murmurs. He's given up trying to come up with a pseudonym for his pseudonym. It seems to serve him well enough. "Originally, I am from the twenty-seventh century."

He's learnt to be forthcoming, you see, because he still has a tiny glimmer of hope that someone he speaks to will know enough about time travel to help him figure out a way to return to his Observing job.

[la_maupin2]

Julie watches the Observer raptly. One day, in the history books, Julie will be described as "beautiful, valiant, generous and supremely unchaste." As such, it should come as no surprise that she has a sudden urge to lean over and taste the traces of wine on his lips.

"Julie d'Aubigny," she says, offering her name in return. Her eyes widen, at the prospect of calling such a faraway time home. Being a native of a more linear timeline, she offers her hometown instead of her home century. "I come from Paris." As an afterthought: "1791."

She casually slides a little closer to him, a finger brushing against the wine glass in his hand.

"Are you enjoying this century, Monsieur September?"

[someonetowatchoveryou]

He seems to have no objection to her coming closer. When she gets nearer, his scent becomes obvious, however subtly so: wool and ink, pepper and wine, a whiff of cool, wide-open spaces, a tiny hint of some warm, vague musk. His eyes are hazel. The wine glass has been warmed by his hand.

His gaze drops for a moment, then comes back up. "I have not been here long enough to make an assessment as to whether I enjoy this century or not. I do not... dislike it. I must see more of it before I form an opinion."

"What is your opinion of it?"