This Girl is on Fire (Pt 1)

Posted on Tue Apr 30th, 2024 @ 14:23 by Alastair Temple & Liana Zhao

Chapter: Winter's Crest Festival
Location: Loch-side, Avalon Institute
Timeline: Evening of 16th December
2654 words - 5.3 OF Standard Post Measure

It had been a while since Liana had spent Christmas somewhere quite as prone to winter's delights as Avalon. When she did make it back to see her father, the German festivities often took decent advantage of the fall in temperature but provincial life in that regard involved a little more urban spread and certainly a much larger population. The school's elevation, along with its semi-remote location, definitely made the most of natural serenity but the perpetual sensation of slightly numb extremities was more of a sacrificial by-product than something the counsellor enjoyed much. It had been worth it, she reasoned, to have the front of the school decked out in lights and the other decorations that matched Claire's vision for the upcoming festival but spending half a day up a ladder had come with its fair share of repercussions.

Her shoulders ached.

Still, as she stood on the front lawn, gloved hands buried deep in the pockets of her knee-length woollen jacket, it was hard not to admire the fruits of her labour. (William and Cameron had put in their fair share of the actual physical work but none of them were likely to argue that the overall symmetry was thanks to Liana's precise insistence.) It was a shame the film crew was long gone, a night-time perspective really did show off the grounds in a whole different light, but as she waited to see if her admittedly-odd request for a certain music teacher's company would result in the man's appearance, Liana took the moment of cold solitude to quieten her own mind. It had been quite a week.

The increase in hostilities was only the start of it. Whilst several staff meetings had resulted in a general consensus that capitulation to public hysteria was only making room for more later on, it was hard to keep finding the right words of reassurance when it came to the wisdom of moving ahead with the festival when the truth of the matter was, anything they did was a significant gamble. A glance at her diary was enough indication of how the student body felt about the upcoming showcase, and Liana was starting to suspect that even Claire would be happy when it was all over and they could regroup to focus on the more intimate Christmas celebrations. She hadn't been back into town herself since Alastair's creative dispersal technique but news of the ongoing vandalism was a concern. It hadn't escaped the Counselor's notice that certain members of the faculty, those who perhaps considered themselves obliged in another capacity to prepare, had switched up the evening's pursuit of leisure for group training. No matter how much they could hope for a positive outcome from opening their doors, only the foolish wouldn't prepare for other eventualities.

She was starting to doubt any of them were sleeping very well.

Alastair would be the first to admit he hadn't been sleeping as well of late. Sleeping well enough, he supposed, but not as good as he'd like, for sure. For now though, he had other things on his mind. Liana had requested his presence on the castle grounds, outside. This puzzled him, as he knew her to not be someone who particularly enjoyed the cold weather; she'd let him know this last time they were out. Personally he didn't mind much - you could dress yourself against the cold. Not so much the heat of summer. But, to each their own, he supposed.

As such he approached at the appointed time and location. Dressed, as always, in his long, black, wool greatcoat, wearing heavy boots and warm leather gloves. Upon his luxurious hair a top hat, to help keep his head warm as well. Upon spotting Liana he smiled and offered a wave. "Hey," he began, though not knowing how to continue, so at 'hey' it remained.

"Hey you."

There was a warmth and familiarity to the simple greeting that Liana, whilst reasonably aware of it, had no reason to try and curb. Alastair's company had very quickly become a constant and and welcome one at that. As she had already pointed out to an all-too-knowing Claire, it wasn't often that she got to interact with genuinely gifted musicians anymore, and if she took a leaf from her own book of advice and properly analysed the last few years, it was also easy to conclude that she'd fallen out of the way of cultivating friendships that centred on her personal interests and not her work. Such an explanation did very little to address the remaining turbulence of emotion that had caught her completely off-guard, but it was a decent framework for not getting carried away by it.

She waited for him to catch up and then nodded towards the day's handiwork. "At least we look ready for the world's attention."

"Yeah," he agreed, standing next to her and admiring aforementioned handiwork. He took a few moments to let it all sink in, the way the lights played with the natural shadows of the castle, casting new ones, adding color and interest to an already interesting building with a colorful past. The way it reflected on the snow made the castle almost look like a whole different building altogether. "Too bad the film crew left already," he ventured, echoing her earlier thoughts though he was not aware of it. "Some night shots of the castle would've added a lot of pathos."

"I'm sure they got more than enough footage to impress them." It was an obvious compliment, punctuated by a smile that had grown accustomed to conveying its gentle admiration. "Claire said they spent twice as long with you as anyone else." With her hands in her pockets still, Liana extended an elbow slightly so that she could lean sideways and prod him playfully. "And here you thought escaping to the Scottish Highlands would liberate you from paparazzi."

"Did she now? That doesn't speak well for any of the others," Alastair seemed honestly surprised, he didn't think they'd spent a lot of time with him at all. He followed up that thought with a shrug. "Paparazzi will always be a part of my life, more so in the big cities and probably after I release that album I'm working on that you're gonna be on - if you still want to be," he explained. "The interviewer thought my choice of 'do you hear the people sing' was 'incendiary', as he put it. I told him in return that anyone taking offense at children standing up to being bullied - well, it says more about them than about the kids really."

"Well, with profundity like that, perhaps they just spent longer talking about you than anything else." Despite her soft chuckle, there was no sarcasm to Liana's tone, it didn't ever seem to be the woman's style. A hand emerged then from a pocket to slip through the crook of his elbow, a gesture that even a week ago might have felt a little presumptuous. Now it was just how they tended to move during their strolls, and since the altercation in town, Liana could definitely attest to feeling far more secure for the reassurance. "William has worked hard on lantern walk, should we take a look?" It was a simple enough request, though not without a partially-obscured agenda. The illuminated pathway down towards the loch was Claire's acceptance that people would likely want to explore the grounds and making an intentional tour route gave some control over the safest way to go about it.

"Certainly," Al responded, a warm smile at his arm being hooked in to. It was a gesture of familiarity and trust, one that he appreciated. "A bit of a walk sounds good to me," he added, letting her lead the way and falling in step. He took considerably longer strides owing to his height, adding a syncopation to the sound of their footsteps, one that the music teacher found interesting and which gave rise to a chuckle - the reason for which was perhaps not as obvious to the counselor. "So how are you holding up in this weather?" Beat. "I know you're not a fan of the cold and understandably so."

"Is it though?" A slightly self-depreciating chuckle was tempered by tired resignation. "One could almost argue that anyone able to manifest fire ought to be exempt from the extremities of the other end of the thermometer but that's honestly never been my luck. It is bracing," Liana agreed, as a slight breeze stirred the hedging as they moved from the manicured front pathways towards the side exit. Overhead, the weather was relatively clear for once, allowing for glimpses of starlight between fairly sparse clouds, which allowed for better visibility on the ground but also had plummeted the mercury several more degrees towards zero. "I've just about got the heating in the office to a tolerable level, just in time to spend virtually no time in it."

"It makes sense in that cold is the antithesis of what you are about, and when you're not actively controlling fire, I don't think it's a particularly big part of your physicality," Al's sonorous baritone rumbled, his tone kind. A soft smile played upon his lips as he snuck a glimpse of her thoughtful, Asian features. "Your hand for example didn't feel unusually hot, so I don't think fire particularly manifests when you're not - ... particularly manifesting it," he chuckled at his own awkward wordplay. "Besides, you spent more than a few words complaining about the cold when we last we went to exchange a movie tape," he added with a snicker.

"Discussing the weather is a national past-time, I was simply trying to fit in." The purse of Liana's lips barely resisted the urge to grin, though mention of that particular incident wound up provoking an elongated, thoughtful silence. The designated tour path down to the loch had been well-established, made semi-permanent Liana suspected by the laying of gravel to keep the surface underfoot from becoming too slippery. With the lack of fog and cloud-cover for once, the lights from the lanterns provided ambience without the eeriness and, up ahead, the moon's reflection off the surface of the water was disturbed only by the occasional ripple. It did feel like the precursor to a seasonal snow-dump that would start the festive season off on the right foot, but Liana didn't mention it lest her walking companion actually become tempted to consider her legitimately obsessed with the weather.

It just so happened that, tonight, conditions mattered.

"Do vampires feel the cold, I wonder?" The question became a tease as well as reassurance that she hadn't left the conversation entirely to daydream.

That question instantly occupied so much of Alastair's mind that he actually perceptibly slowed down, until the involuntary tug on his arm brought him back to reality again - though when discussing vampires, 'reality' was a relative concept. "I honestly don't know," he replied, a brow quirked in thoughtfulness. "I mean, they don't have circulation, right? Their tissue is theoretically dead, and in most vampire fiction I am aware of their skin feels clammy and cold, like room temperature. That would suggest they aren't particularly bothered by the cold. But movement, the function of muscles, requires a certain temperature range - so if they get too cold their movements would slow down, wouldn't they?"

"What about ravens?" As much as she had affectionately listened to his ramblings, Liana was not a woman easily distracted once her mind was set. There had been a point, after all, to dragging him outside on such a clear night when, as Alastair had already determined, the resulting temperature was not particularly comfortable. She glanced sideways, studying his features in partial-peripheral. "I suspect the Winter doesn't bother them too much."

At the question he drew his arms a bit closer - and in turn her hand as well. "Speaking from personal experience we do feel the cold, it just - ... affects us less than it does people," He spoke quietly, without the geeking-out enthusiasm of his spiel about vampires, before. She might also note the turn of phrase, using 'we' and 'us' when speaking about ravens and speaking about people in the third person. "When I was homeless in my early teens I spent several winters just in raven form, surviving on this 'n that, sleeping in old barns. I'm sure there are still some mild stories about a large bird cryptid in the area I used to call home," he added, only a vague, hollow sense of sad, introspective amusement in his voice.

"Have you ever been back?" As much as the preoccupation of her own intent had driven Liana to forge a path towards announcing it, there was something about the man's tone that her heart refused to ignore. In many ways, her choice of profession had become a legitimate expression of her tendency to regard her own needs as secondary to those around her but Liana would also have been the first to point out that her situation was hardly dire enough for that to be seen as much of a sacrifice. She certainly wasn't the type, in any case, to ignore the palpable melancholy of those she had grown to care about.

"Not in ten years," Al replied, his tone still a bit somber, as they slowly walked the path towards the lake. It was a clear night, windless, cloudless, quiet. No other people around, as being inside was much more comfortable. "Not that I'm avoiding it, mind. There's just nothing for me there but memories I don't need to be reminded of to remember," A quiet, almost inaudible chuckle. "Some times I wonder how my parents are doing, but then I remember what they did and I stop caring."

A gentle squeeze from her hand was Liana's only response at first. When it came to unpacking the experiences of their younger years, it would be a while before she could claim to have heard the bulk of what Alastair Temple had endured. She was conscious, however, that the timing and the setting were not exactly conducive to doing any justice to such disclosures so she allowed the empathy to settle as a comfortable silence until the path ahead split in two directions and forced a decision.

"I did ask you out here for more than just another opportunity to fuss about the weather," she eventually confessed, veering to the right to follow the path that meandered around to the small gap in the shrubbery that lead to the outcrop popularly used as an access point to the water. Under supervision, it was deemed suitable enough for wading and crab-spotting, though the temperature both in and out of the water was rarely tempting enough for this to be seen as anything more than a dare amongst peers. Foresight had seen it earmarked as a point of interest for the self-guided tour, which was a good thing because Liana wasn't convinced she'd have been able to find it without the illuminated markers. "And there is some point to my interest in your transformation experiences." She lifted her gaze to study his profile, backlit as it was by a moon in its last quarter. "Can I speak in confidence for a moment?" This was less of an actual query and more a way of letting him know that this conversation was about to touch on something she preferred not to disclose in mixed company.

Alastair never trusted it when people suddenly became serious, it always meant that he had to be serious too. As she asked her query he halted, turned towards her and placed a gloved hand on hers, that was looped through his other arm. A nod, as eyes met hers. "Of course," he replied, his rich baritone soft, his expression kind but serious.