Consequently

[Laszlo]

When the bar patron finally delivered the coinage, Laszlo scooped up the payment and absently pocketed the amount to put in the coffers later. For a moment, he watched the diminutive halfblood, capped with a shock of wispy white hair, busying himself on the other side of the tavern. Among the older, gruff-looking customers situated at their tables, he would look so out of place in this dark, little pub were it not for the bright, glass moon shining overhead, cradled fast by the slow-moving artificial sky.

Then a needle of guilt prodded at him as Abalia's muttered comment reached Laszlo's gray ears. With the slightest turn of his head, he smoothly swiveled his amethyst eyes back toward the girl. Surrendering with a sigh, his posture broke and he looked helplessly downward. His lanky form moved, long legs taking easy strides as he walked back toward her. A slender, clawed hand placed itself on the bar near her drink. "I'm sorry, Abalia," he offered her, placing his violet eyes on hers with some difficulty. "I'm usually not so short with my customers. Especially not one so lovely, I just…"

Laszlo leaned back, retracting his sinister hand so he could cross his arms over his thin chest. He took a steady breath as he aimed his eyes outward, keeping a half-hearted vigil on his albino associate. "There was a murder, almost two months ago. Seven and I… we both watched a Symenestra woman die. Right in front of us, this brute, this oaf, beat her to death with his shield until she no longer had a face. He mutilated her corpse and then defiled it. It was… the most… horrifying thing I think I'll ever see." The Ethaefal turned back toward Abalia. "It was at the Alvadas tournament, you might have heard about it."

Roxanne the raccoon. Laszlo shuddered. Her blood had been all over Seven and Victor's room. Both of them had become covered in it. And then… "A short while ago, her murderer came in here and asked for a drink. The man was stark raving mad, speaking in prose and nonsense. I thought for sure he might try to kill any of us, to justify his mad reasons. He's still out there, somewhere, probably talking to the air. I've been a little on edge."

Untying his spindly arms, Laszlo threaded his fingers into his dark, silver hair, and pushed it out of his face and behind his ears. "It bothers me to see a young girl, on her own, in a place like this." He narrowed his eyes at Seven. "I worry about what could happen to her."

[Abalia]

Abalia stared pensively at his hand where it curled atop the bar near her drink. She had loved a hand like that, once. Loved it very much. Nothing had felt better in her admittedly short human life than the scraping of ebon claw against her delicate human flesh. She was lost, for a moment, in a rush of heated memory that left her pretty cheeks flushed and her heart aching, if only a little. He was no longer a welcome memory, but one that was impossible to avoid in the face of such a similar likeness. A long draught of mediocre wine, and her big brown eyes were following along again. Or, at least, trying to. Her gaze drifted to Seven, following that violet focus. Seven. Such a peculiar name. But then, the man behind it had been equally as strange. Hardly impressive, at least in regards to his sociability, Abalia was content enough to tuck that bit of information away for later and return her gaze to the one who had, unintentionally, made her blush. His story quickly became morbid, but if Abalia was bothered by it she certainly didn't indicate as much. She simply peered up at him as he explained, his unspoken language doing as much to tell the tale as the words themselves. That he was on edge, agitated, and a myriad of other things was obvious. Abalia was certainly not one to push. Personal space was a strange entity in a place like Alvadas, where one couldn't count on the city to leave them in peace, much less it's inhabitants. The pretty little street rat held it as almost a point of honor, staying out of business that was hers. At least, unless the circumstances necessitated a quick justification. "You have me at a distinct disadvantage. I've given you my name, and you've given me his," she said, with an easy glance towards Seven. "But I do not know yours." She smiled, and it might have been interpreted as flirtatious if her dark eyes hadn't lowered as quickly as they did, if that mug hadn't been lifted as it was to grace wine-sweetened lips. Had Dolvich's hair been as long? She couldn't recall and, ultimately, couldn't decide if she was glad that his memory was slowly beginning to blur with the passing of time. She'd never forget him, but some of the more insignificant details were passing through her memory like a sieve. "And," she intoned again, "as much as I regret what you witnessed, I do not understand why you bring it up now. I can't find Roxxie. What does that have to do with the murder of another young girl?" Was she baiting him? The arch of her elegant eyebrows, the way she bit at her lower lip and leaned forward into his bar seemed to indicate so. In reality, Abalia hadn't connected the two in all seriousness. A dry sense of humor and the natural inclination to challenge everything prompted her words, not a genuine inkling that this man knew anything more about Roxanne than he stated. At least, not yet.

[Laszlo]

As Abalia turned away, Laszlo found his eyes drawn to the stain of color that had appeared on her cheeks. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a woman blush. Immediately he remembered Raelynn, Siofra… Laszlo closed his eyes and sighed to himself, suppressing a very Symenestran response that teased at his beating heart. Both were women he'd "preyed" on for little other reason than the fact they had been women. It had come so naturally. To even consider this girl in such a way, after he'd already lied to her knowing who had killed her friend in cold blood, was absolutely vile. "Possibly nothing," Laszlo answered with a mild shrug, opening his eyes and fixing his large pupils on the girl's angular face. He realized immediately that he'd made a mistake: implying that the woman was murdered. The sharp sensation of being caught on a lie stabbed hard in his chest, and with a great amount of effort, he kept his facial expression blank. One clawed hand found its way into a pocket as he quickly averted his eyes and glanced across the tavern, performing a casual sweep of his customers and looking for any in need. A few of them looked like they could use refills, but Seven would get to them. The halfblood should already know Laszlo wasn’t going to say anything to incriminate him, at least not yet. He'd understand that Laszlo's attentions were better paid to the girl asking about the dead Kelvic. "It was an apology, azo," the false Symenestra continued as he returned his eyes to the human woman. "And a warning. Alvadas is treacherous, but there are men, depraved men, more dangerous than the illusions in this city. I am sorry you can't find your friend, but if something has happened to her, there's little more that I can do than offer my best guess." Pulling his hand from his pocket, Laszlo produced a handful of colorful miza coins, rimmed with gold and silver and each with polished stone in the center of all different hues. With the thick, sharp claw at the end of his spidery index finger, he began to count through the sum. "As for my name… well that's always an awkward question for me. No one knows it, except me and the goddess." From beneath his silvery eyebrows, Laszlo sent a flesh of amethyst toward Abalia. "But, you can call me Laszlo, if you like."

[Abalia]

The mood, the tone between them had somehow become something somber and dark. The release of that came, first, in the form of his admonition. She appreciated the care he seemed to invest into the thought of warning her. Really, it was endearing. She couldn't help but be amused by it, however, as she knew nothing of life other than Alvadas. The tricky city had been her ally in more than one instance where a depraved man had intended her harm. It was the only mother she had ever known. "Ooh," the merely human girl said, her serious countenance breaking into something much more radiant, something far lighter than the atmosphere of the whole dank tavern. "A mystery!" She was clearly teasing him, whether he chose to accept it or not. A soft laugh parted those full lips, sounding treacherously out of place in the den of drunkards and shadows. "Laszlo," she said, in little more than a purr. "Laszlo." Her voice caressed the syllables in a way his own hadn't, infusing the flavor of Alvadas and her colorful culture into the simple word. "It sounds important. Does it mean something?" Abalia's gaze dropped to the colorful coinage in hand, and then drifted as easily onwards. While she might manage to steal a piece or three, it would hardly be worth the risk. Her belly was full, her pocket was not empty, and she needed to focus on Roxanne... after her drink, anyway. As was the tendency with alcohol, the average quality of the beverage seemed to improve the more she drank, the world softening ever so slightly around her. "Mm," she murmured thoughtfully into her mug. Another drink, and she was peering up at him again, with once last indulgence of his spoken name. "Laszlo."

[Laszlo]

"Stop that." Laszlo stared at her, unconsciously tilting his head to the side. He fought to avoid a smile, distracting himself by funneling the coins noisily back into his pocket. His hands unoccupied, he crossed his arms again, shifting his posture against the wooden wall. A stray ribbon of dark gray hair fell from behind his ear and rested itself against the curve of his jaw. Of course Laszlo's true name meant something. To reassure himself that he could still remember the name Syna had given him, he ran the sounds over in his thoughts, and took a quick, mournful breath as he also remembered that no fleshy tongue or set of a lips could pronounce them. "'Laszlo' doesn't mean anything. It's just a sound. It used to be the name of a pet raven." He briefly pried one of his arms from his chest and scratched thoughtfully at his temple. "I like birds." As the conversation moved passed Roxanne, Laszlo began to relax a little more. So did Abalia, apparently, who appeared to be enjoying the wine (or trying to). In any case, she was drinking it. Victor would be amused.

[Abalia]

Stop she did. In fact, for a long moment Abalia even stopped breathing, her half smile frozen on her face. It was that hair. The damned piece of hair, simple a thing as it was, had shaken her. It was attractive in it's own right, Laszlo was attractive in his own right. But it was a shadow of the past, a haunting echo from the pages of her heart. It had been a standing joke between them, she and Dolvich. He had loved his hair awry and free, falling into his ruby eyes and shielding the fine boning of his face. She had loved her fingers in it, had loved to push it back again so that she could see his handsome face all the more clearly. More than one mock argument had started over something so trite; more than one heated make-up had eventually followed. Abalia suspected, for a moment, that it was Alvadas. Alvadas the trickster, plucking at the strings of her heart for some worthless amusement. When she did move again it was to flicker big brown eyes towards the moon above her, as if it were traitorous. That bright expression melded into something sullen, almost a pointed pout, and then the moon had stolen all of the attention she was prepared to give it. Leaning into the bar, the tips of her fingers and toes warmed by wine, Abalia grappled at his words, trying to draw herself back into the pleasant present. "Birds?" She laughed at the ridiculousness of such a random observation, but it wasn't the same. It was not as free nor easy as her infectious laughter had been when she had been so pleased to learn his name. "Why do you call yourself after a pet bird?"

[Laszlo]

This girl was strange. Why was she looking at him like that? And yet in another moment she appeared so uncomfortable. Was she playing a game with him? If she wasn't really Roxanne's friend, or… if she somehow knew everything and was only toying with him… Laszlo felt his teeth grind against each other. No, no, it wasn't wise to jump to conclusions. He just needed to see where this would go. If she was only upset about her friend, Laszlo could at least try to understand that much. The young Ethaefal couldn't honestly know how she felt. "It's a long story," Laszlo replied stiffly, arcing an eyebrow at her. The wine was unhinging her, it looked like. If there was any ulterior motive to her being here, supposedly by chance the place where her friend had died, the alcohol might draw some truth out of her. Leaning over, Laszlo picked up the opened bottle of wine from under the counter, then stepped up to the bar again. After refilling her mug, he left the bottle on the bar top. Laszlo cast a quick upward glance at the sky, just to see what Abalia had seen, then turned back to her. "Why do you call yourself Abalia?" It was an inane question, but Laszlo wasn't interested in recounting his tales of Syliras.

[Abalia]

Abalia pursed her lips as he poured more wine into her glass. She considered complaining, as she had no intent to pay for more, but ultimately decided that there wasn't too much he could do about it once it was gone, anyway. She trailed her finger around the rim of her glass, chasing a drop of crimson that skittered along it, running away from her. When Alvadas got the best of her, she picked up the mug instead and took a hearty drink. When she placed it atop the bar again, the droplet was gone. A smirk of self satisfaction sat quite prettily on her face as she shrugged one smooth shoulder, causing the nearly translucent fabric of one sleeve to fall. "Mm. I dunno. We have to call ourselves something, don't we? I never had a ma, and that was just what I was always called. I thought about changing it, once." Another pleasant sip amounted to a content little sigh. Abalia cast a wary glance in the direction Seven had gone, the alcohol heightening her wariness of him. It was a fleeting glimpse, though, and she was peering upwards at the beautiful creature who had the good fortune or misfortune to look so similar to her lost love. "But Roxxie loved it," Abalia said, still quite sober enough to follow her own train of thought. She handled alcohol pretty well, and wouldn't be found slumping onto the bar over a glass or two. It did loosen her jaw, though, and soften her responses. If anything, it made her more sincere, blocking the filter through which she usually measured life. "She said it was pretty, like a song. And if it made Roxxie happy," Abalia said, smiling with outright warmth and affection at the thought of a dear friend. "Then it was good enough for me." There was a pause in her speech, but it was not an uncomfortable one. At least not for Abby, who utilized that time to take another sip. "You know," she said, with an uneven grin. She propped her chin on her palm, and fixed her bright eyes upon him. "Birds got us into trouble, once. We were starving, really. I was too sick to.. ah, help," Abalia said, sidestepping a confession about her general profession. "And Roxxie decided to chase this little bird up the side of a building. It was a scrabbling mess, and when she got to the top he flew away. She was so upset that she shifted. Right there, hanging from the side of the building. Can you imagine? She's gorgeous anyway, and 'course she had no clothes. And then she was stuck, and scared out of her skin, so she didn't think to just change back." Abalia giggled into her wine, which she'd finished half of once again. "Anyway, she survived. We've survived worse scrapes than that in Alvadas, Laszlo." The emphasis was on his name, that word somehow meant to make sense of the story. Abalia unfurled her legs from beneath the stool she'd tucked them beneath, reaching for the floor.

[Laszlo]

That look again. Swallowing, Laszlo lowered one of his eyebrows in mild confusion, but in the end simply absorbed her stare. Although he had gotten used to odd looks, being what appeared to be a Symenestra owning a tavern, he wasn't so accustomed to fond stares from women. Outside of the pub, he was open to scrutiny, and still wore his traveling cloak with the handy hood. He'd been hunted in Syliras, and watched a woman be killed for little more than being a 'spider'. So why was this girl so unafraid? More than that, she seemed to like him. Did she not understand why Symenestra were so commonly known as Widows? Oh, well. Add that to the list of things Laszlo wasn't eager to tell her. Taking the wine bottle by the neck, he considered refilling her mug again, but decided after all that it might become too overt that he'd prefer her drunk. He was still a Symenestra, after all, and open to rumors if it looked like he were trying to take advantage of a pretty girl in public. Hanging the article between two slender fingers, he stowed it away under the counter again. That done, Laszlo leaned onto the bartop near Abalia, resting his weight on his elbows. Though he tucked away the rebel lock of hair back behind his ear, the other half of his tresses escaped all at once, draping a curtain of silver on the other side of his face. "I knew a Kelvic once." Laszlo gave the woman another sidelong look before aiming a lifeless, amethyst stare at the head of white across the room. He needed to have a conversation with the halfblood after this. "A falcon, in Kalinor. Her name was Dor, of all things. Whimsical thing she was… she could scarcely make sense whenever she spoke. Or I could scarcely make sense of it. It was hard to tell." Peculiar, that Abalia didn't have a mother. Laszlo didn't either, not in any traditional sense. Still, it didn't occur to him to find that particularly tragic. He'd spent a year in Kalinor, where most people no longer had mothers. It was a point of fact. Step-mothers were cherished instead. "You're native to Alvadas then. I suppose that makes sense." His violets turned to give the moment a half-hearted onceover. It was difficult to imagine what it must be like, growing up in a place like this. Reality didn't make sense here; imagine her shock if she ever left the place. "You look like you'd fall apart if you tried to travel. It takes the better part of a season to get here across the Unforgiving from the west. The mountains are aptly named."

[Abalia]

"Mmm." Non-committal agreement. Laszlo was talking about birds again. On the morrow Abalia would laugh about it. For now, though, she was hardly focused. Dor, Kalinor, mountains. His hair was just skimming his cheek now, where it'd fallen free. That elegantly sloped jawline, so pale as to be ashen. She might break, the unforgiving, an entire season. Words, swirling around her in a pleasant blur of his voice. He pronounced each word so precisely, so perfectly. Perhaps she'd had one sip too many. Somewhere in the midst of his rather logical discourse, Abalia lost him entirely. Her breath had caught when, breathing in to settle herself, she'd caught his scent. It was something subtle, sweet like comfort, nice. It made her head swim, as if the alcohol wasn't doing well enough on it's own. It would have been so easy to supplant the face she knew so intimately upon this one, to blur the edges around their differences. It was, primarily, those beautiful violet eyes that prevented her from doing so. So it was that, when Abalia lifted her hand to touch that hair hanging so close to her now, it wasn't a memory she was stroking. It was the attractive man behind the bar at the tavern. She lost her slender fingers in the curtain of his hair, stroking all the way through to the very tips. She became more ambitious then, reaching up to stroke her fingertips against his scalp as she once more slipped her fingers through his hair. Abalia gave a little sigh, and her breath tasted of wine. She relinquished the hold she had on his dark hair, and splayed her very human fingers directly against the skin of his cheek. "Laszlo," she purred, inching closer. "I can't trust you, but I'd like to like you. Even if we just play pretend." Having said as much, Abalia trailed those exploratory fingertips across his lips, watching their trajectory with avid interest. At last she found her footing beneath her and slipped off her stool, losing inches enough to separate their faces. "Laz," she smiled up at him, wavering the tiniest bit on her feet. "Your wine was shit," she said, with a smile full of mirth, "and I can't have anymore. I've got to go find Roxxie." Soft fingertips that had stroked his cheek only a breath before now diverted to tug the sleeve of her dress up to where it belonged.