Participants:
| Scene Title | Changeling |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | "perforce withholds the loved boy, / Crown him with flowers, and makes him all her joy" — A Midsummer Night's Dream |
| Date | April 8, 2017 |
The birds do not relent in their screaming, for they are oracle, and know that past is prologue.
The black car that pulls up to the curb is nondescript enough, newer though, and relieved of its original owner. A single black shoe touches down on the ground when the door opens, sensible and flat, slacks accompanied. The second foot that follows likewise so, though there's a flake of ash on the toe. It is getting dark by now, buildings cast long shadows down the street and Eileen Ruskin's reflection in the driver's side window after the door shuts is dour. The birds above circle and scream, wings fluttering and throats hoarse from their protesting. Cold, lifeless blue eyes alight to the sky, watching the birds circle and swoop, but never close enough to threaten their well-being.
Steadily, on hard-soled shoes, she makes her way from the curb to the stoop of the nearby building. Black gloved hands clench open and closed, one reaching for a cane that is no longer there, the rhythm of an approach like this has long since been changed. Too much has already been set into motion to go back to the past however, there is only forward now, no matter the mournful cry of birds above. There is a moment where Eileen's body halts on the walkway between curb and stoop, a lost beat between her steps, and her brows furrow with a concerted effort. The entity behind her eyes reasserts control, and Kazimir Volken turns one more rueful look with Eileen's eyes to the birds circling and screaming invectives down at him from the heavens. "You wanted your revenge," he says in her voice, up to the birds that could hear it long before it left those lips as thought and memory, "this is how revenge looks."
Slowly, Kazimir turns Eileen's body once more and approaches the house, unfastening the bottom button of her sleek black suit jacket so as to not restrict her movement. Blue eyes briefly move to the driveway, a single look to the car there, and then back to the front door. Walking up the rest of the way, grass turns brown in the wake of the monster on approach. Birds now settle on the roof of the house, screaming and cawing warnings that no one here can understand. The ravens aren't the harbingers of death at all, they are trying to warn the living.
Run, death is here.
At the front door, Kazimir knocks with Eileen's knuckles in steady, rhythmic clapping. There's noise inside, likely that the adults that are home did not hear the sound of the door being rapped upon. It is likely that they were distracted by the birds trying to throw themselves into the kitchen window, the clattering of wings on glass, beaks tapping, claws rapping. Nevermore, nevermore.
But it is a child that opens the door for a stranger, her little hand turning the knob just enough to have the door slowly swing open and reveal the pale, blue-eyed woman in a black suit wringing her gloved hands anxiously as a storm of ravens swirl in a spiral above and behind her. The tiny child, blue eyed and ginger-haired, stares up at Kazimir Volken in Eileen Ruskin's body.
The child smiles up shyly at the shadow of death, which has not come to claim her life on this day. No, the shadow has plans for revenge far reaching beyond such petty engagements. As Eileen's body steps through the threshhold, birds slam against the door repeatedly, their cries echoing through the house.
The last thing they hear is Eileen's voice, and Kazimir's words.
"Hello little one," his words spill from Eileen's lips.
And she smiles, not knowing.
How could she?
How could anyone?
That he'd come for her.