faderift | (no subject)

WHO: laura, petra
WHAT: well-intentioned stalking
WHEN: sometime in cloudreach
WHERE: the gallows
NOTES: tbd

Laura's in the habit of listening to conversations, watching others from shadows or rafters where she can manage it, but it isn't often than she outright follows them. That's reserved for people she's interested in, or people she cares about--or, in this case, people she can't seem to stop thinking about.

What she knows is still fairly basic: This is Madame de Cedoux, as small as Laura and twice as fair. She knows about codes and languages and needs people willing to talk about these things with others, not solely with her. And she moves like she knows everything in the world, like she's filled with secrets she doesn't need to tell. She is powerful and beautiful and fascinating.

Laura doesn't know how to be that, but she wants to be. And that's what brings her to dark corners and not-quite-nearby, not-quite-doing-other-things; she's watching, listening, trying to understand how Madame de Cedoux is what she is.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A transformation takes place, from time to time, with Madame de Cedoux; the plain knots and braids that she pins for herself replaced by more elaborate coiffure that she is protective of for the fact of its cost to achieve, the simple and mostly blue dresses to which she has added buttons whereby she might pin up by half their skirts and petticoats for better range of motion where required replaced by finer, more delicate and costly fabrics, embroidered, touched with lace and ribbon. Cosmetics that she would otherwise not bother with adding enhancement, and in the space of hours she becomes something suitable for Hightown, where she has been presently engaged in the endeavor of scouting a locale for Marcus's salon.

It is a far swifter transformation in the other direction, but she hasn't yet made it in total as she makes her way from the ferry slip to her office by several detours, absently unpinning from her hair that one thing that she is always wearing, a carved locket in jet, dangling from her fingers familiarly as she stops first to collect something more edible than Hightown's finger-food offerings and which hopefully she can just escape with quickly to eat and walk.

The lumbering old wolfhound who has been for some hours now sleeping at the foot of one of the towers makes his way to his feet, to fall in step with her.

She's never liked dogs. It isn't anything to do with the dogs themselves and everything related to a life before this one--but she still sniffs unhappily at the sight of the hound that joins Madame de Cedoux. Unsettlingly large, strangely shaped, generally not a creature she wants to have anything to do with.

But the woman he plods along next to is. Laura watches them go in the dining hall, waits for a few moments, and walks through the doors as well, taking a seat on one of the benches and pretending to be interested in the grain of a wooden tabletop. Her eyes flicker up repeatedly toward Madame de Cedoux as she peruses the sideboard, watching the way her hands move in particular.

Vysvolod is large, and grey, and moves with the deliberateness of the aging animal; he is nearly larger than his mistress, and she is too accustomed to the way he bumps against her to stumble when it happens, only to absently pat his large head and steer him a little with her fingertips and commands that are more hmmms! than actual words. He gives her a soulful look that fails to earn him any of her slightly half-hearted dinner, and thus stymied begins instead the trek back up the stairs.

“Julius will doubtless give you something,” is more to herself than to her dog, colored with fondness for them both and ruefulness because Julius is a softer touch with him than even she is, that spoiled old thing.

Armed with a tolerably put together sandwich and her pendant back about her throat (it is quick work, deftly done), she pauses long enough to make familiar if brief conversation with one of the maids clearing away leftovers, then—

Indecision. No; to work. The central tower, then.

This, too, is something to watch and memorize: the way Madame de Cedoux talks to one of the cleaners, the tilt of her head and the sound of her voice. The words she uses, pleasant and seemingly exactly the things to say, and the way the chat starts and ends without effort.

And yet, watching, Laura's certain that if she did the same things, speaking the same words and moving the same way, it wouldn't be the same. She doesn't know what it is that makes the difference. But there's only one way to figure it out.

After Madame de Cedoux leaves, Laura scurries after her. Their destination is unclear at first, but it becomes clear as they walk, Madame de Cedoux ahead and Laura at a distance--the tower. That may become a probem; at some point, there will be doors she can't go through. But for now, she'll follow.