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Damian wasn't surprised to find himself alone by the time night fell. Whoever chose to be in Nathaniel's bed near dawn was usually up and about long before he rose with the setting sun.

Now, however, he has taken to the grounds surrounding Milliways... or, more accurately, the skies. Usually he isn't keen on levitating where he can be easily spotted, but the desire to feel the wind in his hair is too much to ignore tonight. It is one thing that reminds him a little of the sea, though the air doesn't have that salty density to it. The sea has been a comforting thought throughout his long existence, even though he hasn't more than glanced it in centuries.

He loses himself in the sensation of flight, letting his mind go blissfully numb for a short while before picking an inviting, sturdy tree and sitting high in the branches so he sways lightly with the pulse of the wind.

Escapism can be a wonderful thing sometimes.

He's botherable by those who can climb well (or don't need to climb in order to reach him). He has no intention of coming down from his perch.

[[ooc: Primarily slowtimes, as the mun has an appointment and a worsening cough... plus homework. Slowtimes welcomed! ^^]]

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Damian is not the only one enjoying the night -- or what passes for night -- at Milliways.

It's been a long time since Kendra's visited Milliways, and as always, her door is unpredictable. After an extended series of ruminations (and plenty of talking to one Clark Kent), she's concluded that said door is eccentric, impulsive, unfathomable, and downright coquettish, particularly when her door manifests in the air. One second she's flying over St. Roch, and the next she's over the lake at Milliways, the cool scent of water, trees, and grass soothing what had been a hot and humid night back home.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's been frenetically busy back in St. Roch and at JLA headquarters, and it's quiet here, without the glowing latticework of the city below her.

The lake is inviting, of course, and Kendra can fly very quickly when she so chooses, but the rhythm of Milliways usually demands a more leisurely investigation. This is why the winged woman masked in gold -- and wearing a heavy assortment of weapons -- spirals down, catching thermals and updrafts and gracefully threading through them, eventually coming to hover over the lake, then eventually drifting closer to the trees.

She's aware of Damian's presence - the Nth metal she wears means that her senses are superhumanly acute. She might smell of alien metal; it certainly sings to Clark, a finely wrought hum far beyond the perception of baseline humans.

Damian can sense something out there. Something in the darkness a short distance away... but it is vague and formless as of yet, and he chooses to pay little attention.

Milliways is filled with countless creatures, no doubt, and though he can assume not all of them are automatically benign, he finds he can't muster the wherewithal to care. An outright attack on a random redhead in a tree doesn't seem logical, so he (perhaps unwisely) predicts that whatever he senses will either take no notice of him or pass him by.

He lets out a sigh as a soft gust of wind moves the tree, the leaves rustling around him.

[[ooc: You may still tag a bit. Damian, as you probably know, isn't much of a talker, especially when he's in such a broody mood, but curiosity can be piqued if Kendra is engaging. ^_^ AIM = ashekthordin, if you wish to contact me.]]

Edited 2009-07-15 21:44 (UTC)

After hearing the sigh - it's subtle, woven into movement of the wind and the leaves - this presence, which Kendra had, for lack of more specific information (and because Milliways is generous that way, both with the lacking and the presence of such diverse forms of life), categorized as 'someone' now becomes categorized as 'person, more information pending.'

It's not a demon bunny, clearly. She's heard about them but never been unfortunate enough to come across a horde of what she still pictures as pink-eared doe-eyed adorable balls of white fluff with an unfortunate tendency towards being savagely homicidal. Nightmare fuel, that.

There are many kinds of people (and things) that take comfort and joy in the night, most of them benign, many of them beautiful, many of them a mixture of both, and some of them nothing of the first, second, and third.

Still, she's curious and tenacious enough and, despite her normal tendencies, feeling sociable enough to at least make herself known - it's simply good manners to acknowledge a fellow nocturnal traveler.

She's still above the tops of the trees, her wings a soft sound in the air, and when she judges herself to be close enough to this particular tree, she simply descends slowly, her body vertical in the air, a controlled and utterly silent descent, until she's floating perhaps a dozen feet from Damian's branch. Hopefully she won't seem like a riotously colored apparition.

She doesn't need to use her wings to fly. Not everyone gets to see this.

"Hello," she offers, voice quiet - it would be obscene to shout on such a beautiful night.

Edited 2009-07-15 21:59 (UTC)

The sound and greeting draw his gaze upward, and the first thought to cross Damian's mind is Angel? Of course, that is quickly discarded. Angels don't wear what look like the old tribal masks of the berserkers... do they?

His green eyes take in what they can of her appearance from such a strange angle. He is hesitant, but eventually decides that, like Xaldin, there is no point in assuming an attack until clear hostility is established.

"Hello," he greets, his voice equally quiet, though infinitely more masculine, as it carries on the wind.

She knows that look.

In Kendra's universe, angels do run around armed Old Testament style, with shining helms, flaming swords, blood red eyes, glowing axes, and an appalling affection for early nineties romantic comedies starring Meg Ryan. Add to the equation that Kendra's been, on at least one occasion, mistaken for an angel by other angels, and it gets complicated.

Her hawk mask is clearly stylized, skillfully made with remarkable detail, down to the individual vanes and barbs beaten out in gold, bronze, and accented with black.

She's worn it (and its predecessors) for over five thousand years. When she's on duty, that is.

The wings are large, made of lustrous feathers that shine with black tips and, for those who are uncannily perceptive or who know her well, happen to not actually be a part of her physical person.

She's got a miniature arsenal of archaic weapons strapped efficiently to her body - a 14th century lion's head flail in pristine condition, with the impressively long chain and grip looped tightly to a hook at her waist, and various other bladed weapons - a short sword, a Syrian dagger, spiked cestus on each of her knuckles, and three large red disks of a shining metal that adorn her forearms.

Nothing, at least in terms of military technology, dates from the 20th century.

"I hope I didn't startle you. I mean you no harm, even if I do look like death from above. Which I suspect you'll dismiss out of hand until you've collected more data."

She floats lower so she can get a better look at him, toes of her red boots pointed as they are wont to do when she's ascending or about to hit ground, and the feathers of her wings brush the leaves of the trees.

Eventually she folds them tightly against her back - but they're still large enough that she can't easily climb up and down a multi-branched tree without hacking her way through with a machete, and besides, Kendra doesn't attack nature unless it attacks her first, which means no assaulting greenery. Greenery is to be cherished.

She settles for hovering eye-to-eye, although she's giving him plenty of room - he's still an unknown quantity.

"Looking for tree crustaceans?"

Damian mistakes the wings for being part of her body. He's not as perceptive as usual in his current state of mind. Her words are a bit confusing, but he understands enough to know that, despite all the weapons attached to her, she means him no harm. Part of him isn't so sure, because of said weapons, but he also doesn't believe any of them are made of silver. Unless she was able to get a straight blow through his heart -- unlikely -- she can't do him permanent harm.

His unnaturally green eyes dart a few different places in the tree before gleaming up at her again. "I don't believe so." A polite way of expressing that he has no idea what she's talking about without making himself look completely incompetent.

Look at those eyes, is what she thinks, once his gaze becomes mobile, apparently charting the sum of her person.

He might be surprised at how quickly Kendra can move when powered by Nth metal, but tonight she's not in a martial mood, and she's no reason to mentally categorize him as 'needs managing.' Practical? Always. Hypervigilant? 24/7. Aggressive against total strangers sitting peacably in trees? Not without good reason.

She smiles - and even though her mask obscures the upper half of her face, it's clearly a genuine smile, the smile of someone with an expressive and animated face, a face equally fluent in expressing joy, sorrow, grief, pain, happiness, love, and the grim intensity of someone about to plow through a swarm of bad guys and pummel them into so much biomass.

She's still floating in the air, of course, right hand resting on the sword hilt at her waist (and the weapons she carries are worth enough to ransom a medium-sized industrialized nation), but there's nothing aggressive in the cant of her hand - it's simply the way her hand naturally finds purchase unless otherwise occupied. She was and is a warrior eternally born.

"I hear tree crabs are good cooked in butter. Unfortunately you'd practically need a microscope to see them, let alone sauté them. I think you're safe. Watch out for the coconut crabs, though - big as a tank and hungrier than the Ravening Jeremiad of Krull. Are you normally this arboreal at night?"

Yes, she's teasing him. Plus, Kendra spends a lot of time in the air - and therefore has much learning on the subject of the micro-ecology of trees.

He takes her at her word on the crabs. He can't eat them, whatever they are, and sucking their blood would do nothing but make him rot from the inside out, if he had no other source of sustenance.

Damian is well-versed in combat, so he doesn't need to see her use the weapons to know that she is capable of doing so. There is a certain physique and movement to trained warriors, and he can see that in her as clearly as the folded wings.

He may not return her smile, but he does keep steady eye contact. After all, rule number one in the vampire handbook on 'how to win over strangers' is always keep your eyes on the prize. "Not normally, no," he says in answer to her question. "I needed an escape tonight."

Don't be fooled by the walking armory - Kendra has a profound weakness for Godard films, German Expressionism, kittens, flapper dresses, and is all kinds of sappish when she's not geared up and ready for war.

A few pleasant seconds is spent looking him over - when Kendra does slow down enough at Milliways and talk to people, she considers them a gift (later if not sooner) from the gods, a sign that people usually fall into her path for a reason, even if that reason is nothing more than an ephemeral flash of a mutual road traveled or a conversation three quarters of the way up a tree.

She pauses before she answers him; that's because she has to slowly look up to take in whatever eldritch abominations pass for the stars here, the sky, the astral bodies, a hushed reverence writ in every small movement.

Then she turns in the air to gaze at the shadows of the distant mountain range (she still wants to explore there - one day, one day), then to the lake, and then slowly turns back to face him, back to the invisible, palpable sense of presence that he possesses.

"You couldn't have picked a better place to escape."

She picks her words with precision, because she means them in every possible way, with every possible nuance, all at once.

"When pressed, I'll admit to being fond of it for that reason. Oh, well, no hot buttered crab forthcoming. Such harsh justice for such a beautiful night. Didn't your mother warn you about strange flying women appearing during your quest to find vertiginous solace?"

"No," comes the simple answer.

He watches her closely, thinking on the irony of her statement. If it was the perfect place to escape, why was she disturbing him?

"Wise woman, your mother. Did someone at the bar give you grief, if I may ask? I'm Hawkgirl, by the way - I should have mentioned that before."

Having pulled more than a few spectacular storm-out-the-door-and-into-the-bountiful-bosom-of-nature escapades herself, she recognizes the signs. Hints of them, at least. Or he's simply a man who enjoys trees at night, and this is an unassailable position with which she cannot and will not argue.

Damian had left in order to escape his problems, not readdress them, but he sighs, looking away from Hawkgirl in order to look out between the branches at the moonlit trees that sway in the night wind.

"I'm Damian, the vampire servant of a master necromancer. My mistress presents me with several problems... and two of my friends love one another but are being forced apart."

That sums things up rather nicely, giving the hawk girl the basic information without revealing too much.

That's a packet of concise exposition that would do someone from her home Earth proud.

Wow. Honesty, brevity, and a few generous dollops of telenovela.

She knows, of course, that every manner of creature and person in the multiverse can fall prey to the emotional vicissitudes that inevitably come part and parcel with entangling your life and/or destiny with another, be it by accident, design, or something worse.

Do vampires have their own soap opera channel? They should, she decides, and then revises that to they do in at least one reality, they must, and maybe they need own version of Dr. Phil.

Kendra doesn't bat an eyelash at 'vampire' or 'necromancer,' -- okay, well, she does, but it's more of a sense of recognition that yes, Milliways really loves bringing people in from all over every creation ever -- although she's certainly, as a professional costumed vigilante, interested in the moral ambiguities that may or may not be present for any given value of either.

"That's very...honest of you."

This is said simply, with an undercurrent of acknowledgment and respect.

"Are you here against your will? I know that some people are Bound," and this is said in such a way as to make it clear that Kendra detests the notion of people being imprisoned, with a prickly, rising heat bracketing her words, and with the sense that yes, she considers vampires full citizens, entitled to all rights therein. "I don't blame you for hightailing it out to the nearest tree. I would have brought a diary, though, and scribbled out frustration furiously. Very cathartic. Or just ranted angrily and raged against the dying of the light on Twitter."

She has questions, yes she does, but she doesn't want to spook or irritate him, and the night is young, it's summer, and things should simply go more slowly in summer in Kendra's psychological landscape.

Damian hears that respect and appreciates it.

"My door is gone, but my mistress is from the same time, and I believe that I may return with her when she wishes it." If not, then... oh well. In some ways, he is eager to get back. In other ways, he most definitely is not.

"Diaries can be used against you," he says matter-of-factly, as if that fact alone is enough to dissuade anyone from the method of draining frustration.

[[ooc: Must slowtime now... I have a cough/cold and must sleep. ^_^]]

"They sure as hell can," she agrees immediately, speaking from obvious firsthand experience. "That's why you're supposed to write them in code and periodically hire a private contractor to stuff them into lead capsules and fire a few volumes into space. Costly, but worth it."

She's grinning at this point.

"Not that I can afford it, of course. But a woman can dream."

"Sounds like more trouble than it is worth," Damian states flatly. In his opinion, it's much wiser to simply avoid all the extra work and not keep a diary in the first place.

"Anger has long since been trained out of me." In other words, he sees no need for a diary in order to scribble furiously and seek a release for anger, because he simply doesn't anger easily.

[[ooc: Sorry about my own slow response. I have lots going on myself. We can continue this slowtime if you like, or we can drop it if you prefer. ^_^ Not a big deal to me, and I'd hate to be an added stress on top of crises.]]

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