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[Victor Lark]

Exotic. Victor nodded agreement when the Eypharian admitted it, but behind his mask of understanding, frustration began to brew. Most reveled in their own uniqueness, but he could not tell what the man saw in such a trait, and so he could not tell whether to pursue the subject. All he could sense was the pride, and he was beginning to think it was a figment of his own persistence. It was not often that he could spend so many minutes with a man without flash of passion, but the challenge was more delicious a prospect than any. Maybe, if the quest for vanity fell through, Victor might be granted the familiar (though far inferior) taste of irritation.

“Not at all. Forgive me if I seem a simpleton! I’ll follow your wandering if you let me rest my feet every once in a while.” With that, he unhooked his fingers from the wooden mug and splayed them on the table, all the better to toss his legs over the bar and slide to the other side. A single sweep and he was sitting in the stool beside his customer.

A few of the cards from the sprawling pile beside him flitted to the floor, and his sleeve brushed a few gold-tinged arms as he leaned to reach for his drink. “I don’t know what Lhex is,” he admitted with a small smile and a smaller shrug. “But I donnot think all men are so self-centered, if you’ll forgive the term.” The common tongue offers such a crude description, said his sigh.

“Some would rather improve the world, I mean. Is that not how Acting is? Giving art to the people?” He lifted the lager towards his face, then remembered something and set it down again. He offered his hand before he realized that he maybe should have offered three. “I’m Victor, by the way. Victor Lark.”

[Ifran]

As Ifran was attempting to put self-centered in the proper context in his own mind, Victor initiated a proper greeting and he returned it, taking his hand and covering it with another, warming Victor's hand between his own. There was nothing forced or insincere in the gesture, and those dark blue eyes sought out Victor's own, attempting to make more than just that physical connection, even if for a moment. "Ifran of the House of the North Winds," he said, then repeated it in Arumenic. Ifran stayed mostly the same, but the naming of his house became that word of which they spoke: exotic. "You are welcome to walk the road with me, rest stops and all. Acting is, I would say, a communication of living experience from one being to another. When more people get involved, it gets more complicated, but that is it at its root. Theater is life without masks." That last, though, might confound.

[Victor Lark]

Victor could not know to acknowledge any connection beyond the introduction; he met Ifran’s gaze because he was supposed to, because it was what he had learned was courteous. Now he avoided them, because he needed to be coy and curious. He watched his own thumbnail bear down on a crease in the bar’s failing varnish.

He did not guess that the eypharian might have been better flattered by cleverness. Though he could appreciate the honesty of storytelling and the complexity of communication better than most, tonight Victor preferred to be foolish and argumentative. “The masks are the best part of life, don’t you think? The tricks and the charades... it’s the heart of Ionu, is what it is. I thought that was why the old bird put up the Playhouse!” A breathy chuckle was interrupted by a thought. He forgot to sound jealous, and his tone became peculiarly dry. “But I don’t know, do I? I’ve never been. They say Ionu always has an eye or two on that place, so you must be doing something right.”

[Ifran]

"By that I meant that in the theater, by wearing the mask of a character, the artist is allowed to strip off those masks he or she wears in daily life, and channel something true. In essence, one puts on a mask in order to remove others, but the one worn is acknowledged by artist and audience, tangible and visible, whereas our daily masks are more subtle by far and, perhaps, less true." Ifran liked to think that if he sat down with Ionu for a beer, they would discuss that blurry line between illusion and truth. The deity was followed by a troop of actors, which had to mean something. Actors told lies in order to show the truth. There was an elegance to the paradox, but Ifran chose not to say any more just then. His philosophy of aesthetics was likely to confuse Victor as much from his limited grasp of Common as the convolution of the ideas. "So far as I know, I have not caught Ionu's interest. Unless..." He smiled. "Are you Ionu?"

[Victor Lark]

“You caught me!”

Victor laughed, perhaps too loudly. Ifran’s words intrigued him out of his own mask, put a new curiosity in front of his futile exploration of the man’s face. He would not talk about himself personally, not outside of his relation to the Ahnatep and his opinion of his trade; the human decided it was a mistake to pursue it, because he had become so instantly fascinated with the actor’s peculiar philosophy. Honesty is a tricky thing; at least, it was not a talent of Victor’s, however he sought it in others. For the first time tonight, he felt too much like the simpleton he had pretended to be.

“An honest mask. Now there’s a thought,” he mumbled through a lingering smile. His shoulders seemed lighter as he lifted a finger to scratch his temple. “But a mask is a mask, whatever the venue. Seems like you’re saying an actor lies to himself to tell the world a truth... one that isn’t his own. Where is the satisfaction in that? The self-improvement?” Despite his words, Victor thought the idea more than satisfying, he who knew nothing but masks and lies. He uttered the counter-argument if only because it was all he knew to do, to procure an answer of any kind.

He dropped an arm from his lap to hang beside his seat, and a forgotten card fell out of his sleeve. “If you told me about the mask you wear tonight, the subtle one that looks at me now... would you call it honesty or acting?”

[Ifran]

Ifran's smile was genuine enough. Few caught his subtle humor, and he refused to lower himself for a laugh, unless he was buffooning on stage. There was a difference and more than semantics, at least to his mind. He took a drink and watched the card fall out of Victor's sleeve from the corner of his eye, noted that this one was not a man he wanted to tempt with cards. Ifran was not the best player, though he was rather good at reading people. Still, one needed both skills to excel. He did not answer the first questions, whether they were rhetorical or not, because the quick words that followed made it clear Victor did not really want the answers he might give. Or was afraid of them, perhaps. "Which mask is that, Rhysol's lawyer?" he asked and chuckled like sand and sandstone tumbling down a dune. "Ah, honesty... acting... these are distinctions we might need Ionu to elucidate. Or perhaps they are, paradoxically, the same thing. There are philosophers who would tell you that all identity is fictional. And what have you to say to that? I cannot answer them with my weak mind."

OOCWow, devil's advocate becomes Rhysol's lawyer? Ha! I need to stop posting so late at night!

[Victor Lark]

Victor’s tongue filled his cheek as he floundered in Ifran’s sudden humility, unable to tell the genuine from the sarcastic. Where the artist’s mind saw nuance and contiguity, the human clung to those semantics, those words, the only certainty on the world’s vague divisions between deceit and honesty. Victor searched for some hint of a passion on that golden face, or at least some purpose beyond pleasant conversation. Something he could investigate, something he could hold on to.

The pause he took before answering was, perhaps, a second too long.

“If all identity is fictional then nothing is real!” He teased, and there was a hint of bitterness in the afterthought. He chuckled. “I could believe that’s true.”

With a sigh, Victor decided he was tired of the subject, as quickly as it had interested him. It came too close to what was left of his heart; it made his fingers itch for a distraction. As he ran a thumb over his mug’s rough rim, his attention fell on those silent blue eyes. “Don’t pretend you have a weak mind,” he grinned, holding his heavy head in his hand. “I don’t think humility suits you. At least, not the mask you wear tonight. Philosophers aside, your act should be consistent!”

[Ifran]

"But some wise man said 'consistency is the foundation of virtue'," he said, "and to be so virtuous would surely be consistently boring." His smile was playful, though cats were often playful with mice before they eviscerated them for their innocent pleasures. "And anyway, were I to remain my superior self at all times, the citizenry of Alvadas would make me their leader and I do not have the time or energy to run this little maelstrom of chaos." He wondered if he had scored some sort of point when Victor began backpedaling into safer waters. Ifran had spent a good deal of his time in Ahnatep just playing the role of a Noble House's scion, treading the dangerous waters of high society as the grandson of the man who had put the current Pressorah upon her throne and kept her there. He did not really know Victor well enough to gauge where they were relatively speaking, and so he played the game of sparkling conversationalist as he had done at so many parties, soirées, and gatherings of people with nothing better to do than play at intrigues.

[Victor Lark]

If Victor were another man, he might have frowned.

“Another man said you should be honest to a stranger,” he said with a shrug, then a laugh. “They can’t tell the difference and the truth is, allegedly, easier.” But he was honest with almost no one, and he was beginning to suspect that Ifran lived under similar pretenses. He should have known not to try and act to an actor, but he was not sure what else there was. Rhysol’s lawyer indeed. He felt like he was walking thirsty around a beautiful, golden desert, unable to find a path to water which he thought he had already tasted.

He leaned heavily against the bar, and lifted his mug for a drink. As he dropped it again, his gaze followed, dipping absently to the curve of Ifran’s neck, the extra hands on his knee, the corner of his mouth. Victor was not immune to the charms of the body, but he was hardly drunk enough to dismiss less tangible desires. “How selfish of you, to keep your greatness from the rest of us!” He teased. “You’re a self-improving man, who wants no fame or love or family.”

It was an assuming stretch, but he was happy to be corrected. “You must live for more than vanity.”

[Ifran]

"Perhaps the man who said that lived before the apocalypse that tore the world and depleted its population of sentient beings," he mused. "The world is too small now despite its vastness for me to take that advice. Secrets exist to be skillfully played. The reveal is everything." His smile was rather self-aware, though that steady flicker of curiosity remained. Perhaps he was trying to see Victor's insides. "The best lies are not lies, but half-truths or truths expertly woven. Artists use lies to tell the truth." He laughed. "Let me know when the beer makes things too blurry." He drank down some more himself. "I have fame and family in Ahnatep. Here I have some notoriety, perhaps, and a few acquaintances. Love... hm, perhaps someday. Vanity, well, that is a matter of perspective as most things are here. Here more than in other places where reality is malleable. "What do you live for?"