event 18 | threading

[cryptsleeper]

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Jaskier;

[cryptsleeper]

What season are we in? Cacti are terrible for marking time.

[Walking with Jaskier through their park (still their park six hundred years on) is a ritual as old as they are. Alucard spends a few decades living in a place (Libertas this time), takes a nap in the Horizon (thirty five years, the average), then wakes up to find his friend waiting. The dhampir grumbles about being awake. Then somewhere in all of the regular greetings, routine settles in. Alucard arises and throws together something to eat while Jaskier catches him up on what's been missed over the past few decades.

Eventually the conversation sees them exit the Horizon and arrive in the park. Always arm in arm. Always at night, usually by one of the garden features. Alucard knows his friend's biases and welcomes them readily.

The world changes. But the people Alucard trusts don't. Not really, not in the ways that matter. Jaskier is a steady rock to reach equilibrium besides. The first few days awake with him around feel like a wave crashing against the rocks, then settling into the tide line properly.

This time is no different and the dhampir is just as grateful as he's ever been for that consistency.]

Astarion; circa Divorce

[cryptsleeper]

[Alucard has come to suspect that 95% of the Summoned, which is to say pretty much everyone excluding himself, Geralt, and maybe one or two other people, are not made for effective immortality. People get too bored, too restless, too itching for the novel after the first century and a half. He's seen vampires like this in Wallachia, where existing close together makes people sick of each other. Then there are clashes. Then fights, and the world burns down because a vampire feels like being dramatic.

So there being great and sudden chaos in the Horizon in the direction of the floating ship that Astarion relies on is not a surprise to the dhampir. He's heard rumors. He's ignored them and kept to his human world, working in Solvunn this time around as a black haired, grey eyed young man to create better means of storing food and sharing information. It is a quieter version of past work, but the quiet is appreciated. He has a small home and workshop at the edge of the secondary settlement, and every so often at night, he slips into the Horizon to recharge himself more fully.

To say he's surprised when the only other Summoned vampire shows up on his Horizon doorstep a little while after the crash is an understatement. Alucard's face goes on a journey. Then he just lets Astarion in, gives him the only bedroom in the little hut, and lets him just...exist. Gives a few house rules (no wild parties, no orgies, please put everything back where you found it, don't change anything in here without my permission) and then leaves him to lick his wounds.

The bigger surprise comes four months in. Alucard isn't even sure Astarion's moved from the small bedroom he has in his little Horizon hut, heated by a wood burning stove and surrounded by books.

He sighs, leaning down in the doorway.]

You should get up and at least let me change the bed linens.

Geralt; Alucard Soup, Part 1 [CW FOR LIGHT CANNIBALISM]

[cryptsleeper]

[Alucard is aware that having a small, functioning kitchen in the middle of a forest is the absolute height of pants on head ridiculousness. However, the prospect of having to watch his own bone boil (and he remembers it is his bone only when looking directly at it, the whole bone-and-memory thing is baffling) on a sad campfire was unacceptable. Better to spend two hours creating a perfectly functioning kitchen, then spend another hour and a half making the broth than that.

The broth smells decent enough. Herbal for the most part, full of thyme and sage and orange peel along with onions, carrots, and celery. Salt and pepper go without saying. Something that could be truly great if it a chicken in there, not...weird dhampir bone, and just the one.

Time passes. Alucard gets up and ladles the broth into a small mug made of solid ceramic and a large handle that may be a fluffy wolf tail if one squints right.

Here goes nothing.]

Geralt?

Pink and Goth share a house and it is a delight

[cryptsleeper]

This is the last of what doesn't need to go to the workshop for adjustments. Which room do you want to start moving into first?

[Alucard knows how this got started, actually. His last lifetime was spent in Aquila where he spent a lot of time organizing for the arts professions but doing very little design work and even less building work. His glamor had him as a shorter red headed man with slim glasses and a good mind for the marriage of art and commerce, and while it had been enjoyable, it was not as fulfilling as he hoped.

In discussing that last point with Hilda (following an excellent faked death that appeared to be of entirely natural causes and a will that stipulated a burial at sea), they had discussed what might be a deeply indulgent lifetime for the next go around. A cozy house that was moved into but the interior was designed to the nines, indulgent in all of the baroque-over-the-top-ness Alucard typically didn't feel the need to let out into the wild.

Somehow that got into how that sort of style could be approached in two very, very different color palettes, how much could be bought and styled versus designed wholly a new, and wouldn't it be funny if the outside was deceiving?

It would be. And there'd be no better venue for that than Solvunn and...

...and that's why Alucard is standing in his own foyer besides the staircase, forearms resting on a secretary desk that needs to go somewhere on Hilda's floor. It is entirely hers excluding the kitchen (Alucard redesigned what was there to be a little more practical), whereas he has the second floor. The aesthetics mesh in a way they shouldn't, and it's fun except for when the community goats find their way into the house (neither of them has figured out how) and wreck havoc.

For now, they're goatless and full of furniture. There's a few other pieces crammed into the space that also need to be moved, with two intended for upstairs.]