#Mists of Midnight|Carpathian/Mage the Ascension

[brooklynislandgirl]

@karpatiivasilios {{xx}}

When she strains to catch each word he says in the local tongue she has to pay excruciating attention to the way his mouth moves. But when he switches to English? Relief floods through her because clearly she misunderstood him. She thought he’d said something about faery chickens and that couldn’t possibly be a thing. But she likes that phrase. Repeats it carefully.

“Iamti vol juti, kinta, ja zelem?” 

Not quite, but close enough in some regards.

His smile seems innocent in and of itself. And she wonders if he’s the owner of this little house she’s renting. A moment later he makes that clear that she’s wrong, otherwise he wouldn’t have called it her home. A neighbour maybe? She wasn’t sure what the custom is in Romania about strangers turning up on your doorstep...or in this case, the main room of what was not quite a hut and not quite a cabin, but some bastard child between.

The rest of the conversation takes on a vaguely sinister tone. She’s watched enough horror movies to know that much, and she wasn’t completely unaware of the whispers that ran in certain circles about what exactly lives in the night. Some part of her actually hopes to find them. Not that she can tell him this, mostly because she didn’t want to sound crazy.

“People fear d’ unknown. Dey fear da strange. Dey fear da big and strong,” she says, eventually. “But it’s da smallest t’ings dat are da deadliest. An’ I do alrigh’ f’ myself. Besides, we’re very welcomin’ where I come from.”

She pauses to take a sip of the beverage once she’s stirred the powder into the heated milk and considers his question again.

“Dracula,” she says and grins again. Little sharp teeth visible, and the corners of her nose crinkling. “..or mo’beddah, I should say...his castle. One is Bran jus’ up da road. Oddah two I know abou’ are Poenari an’ Hunedoara. I’m sure every girl say she wan go find da Voivode’s legacy. An’ as f’ alone...” Here, she pauses. Her pulse for just a moment ticks at her throat in a skipped wild beat.

“Why shouldn’ I be?”