1964-06-25 - Genesis 2: Vox Clamatis
Summary: Just what is Michael up to, anyways?
Related: If there are no related logs, put 'None', — please don't leave blank!
Theme Song: None
michael lucian 


People get lost in repetition. Waking up in the morning, working, watching television like the new religion. Grey and black visions bomb new ideas out to entranced audiences. There's none of that here in Lux. The sorts of people drawn here don't care entirely for their dwindling brainpans turning to mush in front of selectively audited programming. Come for the jazz, the rock, the folk; come for the devilishly good drinks and the loosening morals. No one cares to quarrel with the fact the chalkboard again reads Worthy patrons deserve worthy drinks. Seek the normal elsewhere.

Lucifer Morningstar's territory, his kind of place. He sits in front of the piano bench. No spotlight on him and the Steinway at the moment, though the rigorous clamour of drinking and quiet conversations abound for the sensory adepts. He lightly clicks his fingers along the keys. A melody in progress spins out, moody and idle, the contemplations of Beethoven on a night before a thunderstorm breaks to wash all cares away.

Again, again. Where does that melody go?


The fact that Lucian can *make* music - create, play, issue forth something that isn't a repetition of the music of the spheres…..well, to some of the more ideologically rigid angels, that's suspect right there. Michael, it seems, is not one of them. He's sitting at the bar, watching Lucian, sipping from something sweet and cool but not cloying. Understanding the thing that mammals have with sugars, it's a worthy experiment. Someone gave him currency and rather than giving it away in turn, he's come in to try another drink. Merely listening and enjoying. Dressed plainly in t-shirt, fatigue pants, combat boots. But then….he's the ultimate veteran, isn't he?


Make, create. Fashion. Fuss over. He doesn't have a score in front of him. No list of notes on bars are found with a hurried jot of a pen to paper and a pile of discarded bits in the wastepaper basket. He incarnated dreams. He incarnates them now. Delicacy in formation has no purpose in the wooing of the muse, something best done a tad roughly and directly, impulses translated into crashing sonatas and soaring highs, elegies made in languid splendour when the mood takes him. Hard to understand what mood lies now, muddled and meticulously sorted through. Maz watches over the bar, a sword probably a breath away. The ultimate veteran's arrival causes her dark eyes to flatten and narrow in his direction, warning as much as there could ever be.


There's a hint of ironic hiss in the reassurance as Michael asides to Maz, "Peace." Of all the people who should get slapped into the next galaxy for letting it slip past his lips….and then he's watching Lucian again. A fit of longing, perhaps. The Host isn't complete, not with this ne'er-do-well slumming it down here. Michael's got no eloquence, they can't possibly have sent him as an attempt to woo Lucian back to the fold, certainly.


"Peace. What would you know about it?" replies the bartender icily. She reserves no emotion for Michael. "You have been at war since that dawn." Her arms cross over her bust and she watches Lucian for a reaction. The blond isn't so lost in the melody he cannot do two or ten things at once. No telling when he first notices Michael. Nor when he extricates himself from movement. His fingers move over the keys and encourage the complexities of an atonal melody to erupt in synchrony with the tap of his toe, a meter arranged to support the tidal wave. It crackles in an electric build-up and the hook buried in the middle deserves something, something elaborate and dramatic. The music has an air of anguish and longing of a night spent too long alone.

"Yes, brother?"


"But I remember before, when we all sang in harmony, the sons of the morning," Michael's protest is mild at best. His voice is always low, faintly raspy, and surprisingly light. "I have not forgotten," he adds, after a moment "And…..I'm here to learn more. Furlough, I think,is the term they use down here." Then he smiles at Lucian, without a hint of irony. "Don't mind me," he says, cheerfully. "I was enjoying the music."


"Sang for yourselves," Maz is quick to point out the flaws. She turns to fill another order brought on a tray by one of the other staff, her movements unnecessarily curt and contained to demonstrate a definite skill for physical awareness. And a threat, though it may be a fool's job to contest Michael. And maybe not.

She is the war-leader of the Lilim. Even now.

Lucian closes the case over the notes, leaving behind the melody to those who can hear its fading blends. The tempo started at one point, restrained, and then galloped in another direction. His smoldering summer-hyacinth eyes are dancing with the euphonic harmonies, chasing their own tails. "As you usually do." Can't blame him for being an appreciative audience, though Lucian circles around behind the bar. He gathers a glass and pours himself water, applying a sprinkling of shaved ice and a squeeze of lemon. It's all pretense, necessity played out elsewhere. "Your observations on your time in the city?"


"Humans and their congeries are fascinating," he says, softly. "Even in this limited space, the sheer diversity of thought, idea, creation, behavior. And there are billions more. I meant to only spend a little time here and then move on, but I find myself endlessly diverted," he confesses, glancing up. His own eyes are pale as aquamarines - he's rendered nowhere near so vividly as the Morningstar.


Pale brows skim higher. The usual golden hue of Lucifer's hair is greatly dimmed, almost reddish and softened from its usual glow. Nonetheless, he tears the gazes of the unexpecting in hsi direction over and over again. Those who go past can't help but look. "Yes. They have overrun the place in sections. That's to be expected, naturally." The water brought to his lips, the Morningstar takes a long sip. "Move on. Where should that deliver you to? Back to the Silver City?"


"Somewhere else on this planet, for a time," he says, almost airily. "I've no immediate plans. I'll…..I don't know when I'll be back to the City. Why?" he asks, bland, if not wholly innocent.


Else on the planet. Else in the solar system. Else.

"Planning ever was your strong suit." Lucian drinks the water and then sets aside the glass with a careless flick of the wrist. It spins over the marble, glass buoyed up on a cushion of meltwater. The slow turn ends with a straight line goal on a white towel laid aside. It could fall, but it doesn't. "Because I care to know whether you'll interfere with my interests or expect to bum a ride and cigarettes."


He doesn't play innocent. That high brow furrows in thought. "I've no desire to interefere with your interests," he says, slowly. "No plans to do so. I don't honestly know what they are, other than music. And….I can buy my own cigarettes and get where I need to go."


The slanted query from Lucian is far quieter and subtler than Mazikeen. Maz doesn't have to offer any subtlety. She haunts the other end of the bar and speaks to those other than the brothers. It's her question to fall into the void, not his. "Then you've decided to prowl around the streets you ignored for centuries for what reason, exactly?"

"Maz." A warning. Affectionate, but a warning all the same.


No offense at all, as he turns that pale stare on Maz. He still looks cheerful. "Because I can. Because I'm curious. Because I'm wondering if he," A jerk of a thumb at Lucian himself, oh so casual, considering the confession it's set in, "Hasn't had the right idea all along."


"You came to the conclusion rather late," Lucian strikes a fingertip against the marble bar. Music plays around them, a recording of pitch purity. Soul cuts a groove, calling out against the indecencies of sending boys off to fight a war they'll never return from. A war of dreams and votes, belief and education, rather than the knives and guns of a tropical country. "Perhaps too late to be of much use. The design rolls on and on and on."


"I've always been a slow learner," he allows, with neither shame nor ire. A broad target for insult, but hard to land a real blow on. Amiable or apathetic, it's all a shield. "And no doubt it does."


Lucian takes the white cloth and starts to pat down the bar, at least the internal side. It's incredibly rhythmic, dull work done without an iota of effort on his part. How could it be hard when they're so well and truly used to multitasking on a high level? "Slow. Yes, the man who heard the plan same as I did. You never showed any inability to interpret the rules. What made you turn things around, Michael?"


The other thing he's damn near incapable of is lying or dissembling. He can't even artfully mislead. "I doubt," he says, very quietly, like he's confessing the most sordid of sins. "The silence has gone on too long."


Artful deceptions contour a particularly fascinating balance between brothers. One the sun, the other the tableau of sky and sea, they mingle on the shores of night in this place entombed by a street and walls and coffered ceiling. Faint atoms practically vibrate around the broad-shouldered blond absorbing the news the way a plant takes up nutrients through the thick soil patted down around. "The silence. Oh, the deafening noise from on high where so ceased to throb the adoration of our blessed parent, He who would set the stars on their tracks and convince us He was the center of the universe? The purest, absolute narcissist. However have the crops grown without their sun to shine."


That's blasphemy, in tone if not in fact. And there's a hint of Michael beginning to bristle, a ripple of light along the unseen tattoos that can be dimissed as the gleam of electric lights over sweat on flesh. The shadow of gray wings. But it's gone nearly as soon as it appears, that tinge of righteous anger. He even resists the temptation to defend or argue. Not beyond a quiet, "Nonetheless, he created us. And he has been too long silent."


Blasphemy in the truth? Lucifer observes that fickle branching of white-blue embers along the unsuspecting pathways forged by electricity. Volumes spoken thus as he slowly and wordlessly curls his fingers, a leaching of the light to him purely an act of imagination except for those of superhuman observation. "Nonetheless. One does not always thank an absent parent, a dereliction of duty," he says in a low, clear tone. "Not when we are constantly counselled to fulfill those duties even in the neglect of any form of leadership. The boat's expected to move along, and everything else like clockwork, is it? That is not even the worst."


He inclines his head, grave as a hanging judge. But his eyes are stricken. To even possibly be in agreement with Lucifer on this….it hurts. It hurts…..and it can't be denied. That shadow of wings, drooping like the shoulders of a crestfallen child.


"Give or take a few millennia, you might even muster a few worthy arguments for why. Then spend a dozen more undermining those possibilities, stabbing holes into the very paper constructs you devised," Lucifer comments. His passions and rage are easily contained within his taut, supple voice. He allows nothing to be heard he doesn't want immediately to share, as a consequence of very careful practice more than anything else. "A luxury you may or may not have, wandering the wilds of this lovely little country. It certain beats spending aeons in a hole somewhere. New York is rather finer than that."


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