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[sunbaked_baker]

The other day had been... a good day. She had been able to save someone - no matter that he's a known drug-dealer. He's alive, thanks to her. Perhaps the experience will convince him to give up lingering in alleyways at night.

It had been a good day, for a given value of good. But still the nightmares steal her sleep from her, sending Sunshine retreating back into the familiar, reassuring smells and textures of the kitchen, though it stands empty at this time of night. Even the rats are asleep, wherever it is they do so.

The act of baking bread is comforting, stabilizing. Sunshine knows from years of experience and cultivated skill how the dough should feel under her hands when it is coming together as it should. Something her hands can make that is clean and good. Rae sings under her breath as she kneads the dough, a lilting, melancholy tune Mary sometimes sings in the kitchens on quiet nights at the coffeehouse.

(ooc: Mun will be absent for about five hours starting soon, but will return this afternoon and be available for threading. I'll reply to any tags made in the interim when I return. I'm back! <333)

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[ostro_goth]

Teja had being seeing to something in the office for a moment, and now slips back out towards the forge, taking the short-cut through the kitchen.

"Sometimes, plain bread is best," he says to Rae, instead of a greeting.

[sunbaked_baker]

Just... ignore how she had jumped, startled, when he'd entered the kitchen.

"Yeah, it is," she nods, kneading. "People sometimes forget that simple doesn't mean bad or boring." Sometimes, simple is best.

[ostro_goth]

"Indeed," Teja says. "Plain bread, wine, cheese and olives: - for that, I would forgo most elaborate feasts."

Pause.

"I did not mean to startle you."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Don't worry about it," she shakes her head. Her hair, nightmare-mussed and left unbrushed, is mostly hidden behind the triangular headscarf that keeps it out of her face, but a few tendrils have escaped. "I'm a bit... startle-able, at the moment. Bad night."

Her singing has definitely stopped, though.

[ostro_goth]

"You cannot be blamed for those, in view of what your world will burden you with," Teja says.

[sunbaked_baker]

"But it isn't your fault, either, for startling me - you simply walked into the room," Rae replies.

The world's fault, then? Whose fault is the world?

[ostro_goth]

"As I shall do at times, passing from this place to that," Teja agrees.

"For many things, none can be blamed: - they happen, without blame or reason."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Sometimes I find myself wishing there were someone definitive to blame when it comes to how my world has turned out," she says dryly. "So I could punch them in the jaw, or at least do something to make myself feel better."

[ostro_goth]

"I guess that what many cultures have religions for," Teja says, almost archly. "Or tales of gods in which one of them is ever to blame."

Like Loki.

[onceaviking]

Eric has been getting acquainted with Milliways. Looking through windows, opening doors.

This seems to be the kitchen. And the kitchen-maid. Singing.

He misses bread a little. Ale more of course, but bread too. It's the smell of home, the smell of dough. Even if that smell has changed too.

He has left the coat in the room, along with the waistcoat. His hair is still pulled back and as he stands there, halfway through the door, a casual observer might take his hesitation for politeness. Timidness.

Caution.

[sunbaked_baker]

The song she sings, audible before one even reaches the door, is an song of an old style. Formulaic, steady with the rhythm of her kneading, and tragic in subject matter, of course. The singer's voice has had no training, but is clear and lacks all signs of self-consciousness.

At least, until Eric reaches the door. Because there is no mistaking the feeling of there being a vampire in the room. The closest thing Rae could compare it to is the rush of strange adrenaline that comes when you meet someone's eyes for a long moment across a crowded room, though without the pheromone haze. Not exactly pleasant. Whatever it is, it causes one's heart to race.

Her singing stops, and Rae turns to face him. The sunlight web set into her skin and hair glimmers as she moves, the ward quiescent but awake in the presence of a vampire. Where one might glance at the face of a newcomer under normal circumstances, Rae's eyes comes no closer to the vampire's face than his left shoulder.

"Hello," she says, after a long silence. Because no matter what has been filling her nights and haunting her dreams, no matter the instincts at war within her to either run or fight, Milliways has rules.

[onceaviking]

His face becomes smooth and impassive as he drops the attempt to seem like something he is not.

Instinctively, he raises one hand to shield his face from the - light? His skin and hair is alight with -

"What are you?" he asks, neutrally.

Could she be of the fae?

He sniffs the air. She smells fairly human. Nice too. And she's pretty.

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunlight. Her element. Set in tiny pinpricks in a net through her skin and hair, gathering the sun's power for her from a world away, though she stands in the world's shadow. It is quiet, a mere glimmering at the moment, but it is awake with her awareness of what he is, ready should she need it.

Her face looks almost as though she's been hurt by his question, but it passes a moment later.

(Once again, she can see Con stagger back, stripped of his vampiric liquidity of motion, to impact with a thud against the wall of the abandoned ballroom. "What in creation are you?")

Rae eyes him - or his shoulder, at least, and what she can glean from her peripheral vision. "I'm human, thanks. No need to ask in your case, I think."

[onceaviking]

He lowers his hand slowly and looks harder at her.

It's not a blaze otr a brand. She looks like she has been caught with a net of gold.

Of sunlight.

He can smell that too now. The faintest trace. A whisper of light.

"But not just human."

He takes a step inside the kitchen. Towering.

She really does smell - lovely.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Just human," she assures him, flatly. If she'd had any Other blood in her, her magic would have driven her mad a long time ago, but she's not going to take the time to explain that to a sucker.

Dry, as though the presence of a vampire were nothing, she adds, "If you're here for the bread, it'll not be ready for another two hours." Her hands may be covered in flour, but the sunlight web runs there too, and she's careful to keep them free of any impediment. Still, her eyes will not rise above his shoulder.

[onceaviking]

"Oh, there is nothing just about you," he says in a confidential, low tone.

"I can tell. And do you think I am here for the bread?"

She acts like she might know what he is. But does she?

Oh, how her scent is maddening. Like warm, dripping honey.

[sunbaked_baker]

"There's nothing else for you to be here for," she says. Not off-hand, but as a statement of fact. A warning.

A warning accompanying the scars that mark her skin, not at all hidden by the camisole she wears above her pajama bottoms. Most are scrapes and scratches, long healed, though some bruises still show. Some are more unique, like the long, strange scar down her left arm, as though someone fell fangs-first after somehow missing her throat. Or the healed bite mark in her upper right arm, jagged as though the bite had been somehow interrupted unexpectedly. These are accompanied by the wide, shiny, sickle-shaped knife scar that marks her chest just below her collar bone on her left side. The wound that scar came from would have bled a lot, but would not have been fatal. The knife-scar crosses the long, thin burn scar that loops her neck like a long necklace, in a shape that may be reminiscent of some unknown rune.

Sunshine is not impressed by his tone of voice. "What you need, you can get from the Bar."

[vojvode]

Shadows shift, ebbing and flowing in time with the rhythm of her hands, of her voice. Darkness pools, and the scent of roses and myrrh mingles with the aromas of the kitchen. Ancient spices, dust and ash and earth.

He waits behind her in the door way, content to watch in silence until she acknowledges his presence.

[sunbaked_baker]

Her thoughts are already dark, the familiar act of kneading dough holding back the worst of them, of blood and violence, like a levee might hold back the flood. There is no way she wouldn't be aware of his presence. A vampire in the room. It's not something someone can just ignore. Her singing stops.

"Long time, no see," she greets over her shoulder, too-lightly.

Rae has accumulated a number of new scars since he last saw her. Some of them are even the kind that show on her skin.

[vojvode]

'My -- apologies, mistress.'

He places a hand over his heart, and leans forward at the waist, giving her a gentle bow.

'Time passes strangely in this place.'

[sunbaked_baker]

"I get that," she nods, thinking of the year and a half that has passed in her world, to the three that seem to have passed in Milliways.

She's in a bad place right now, after such a good day yesterday. She had saved someone. They were still alive, because of her. But still there is blood staining her thoughts, invading her dreams. She is still hopeless at lying. Everything under the surface shows on her face.

"Been keeping busy?"

[vojvode]

'Mmm.'

He sees it. Feels it, like the cold heart of the Danube, pulsing beneath the ice in the dead of winter. And he smells the blood of her thoughts, as easily as if it was his hands it stained, not hers.

He keeps his distance, eyes downcast, knowing that she can still see more of him than any other mortal he has ever known.

'I worry less for my well-being than for yours, at the moment?'

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine glances at him, but not for long. She shakes her head, as though trying to clear it of the nightmares that had chased her from sleep.

"Just having a bad night. Gotta pay for having a good day, you know?"

Sometimes she forgets to worry at how much her definition of a 'good day' has changed.

[vojvode]

The shadows shift again, black water in a green glass vessel, and he appears beside her, having not physically traversed the distance between.

One gloved hand removes his dark glasses, and carefully tucks them into a pocket in his vest.

'A man such as myself does not believe in such a balancing of ledgers.'

A warrior and a general, his entire existence revolved around making others pay, and pay dear.

[sunbaked_baker]

It is she who seems to be paying dear, though she fights to protect what she deems hers. Battle is not her nature - or, at least, is not what she has convinced herself is her nature. It takes its toll.

"I merely say that to try and put some sense to why tonight has been so bad, when yesterday was..." Good. Good enough. What seems like good, after what she has been through. "I was actually able to save someone, yesterday. He might be the scum of the earth, but he's alive and still mostly sane."

Why is she telling him this? A vampire. Why is he different than they?