Second Impressions

[wolfs_daughter]

Cian's note had caused Echo to shake off the vestiges of the weird mood she'd been in since the night she'd seen the meteor, and she put the stone he'd left for her where he'd directed her to. Just knowing it was there made her feel more secure.

She'd gotten up at her usual early hour, then had breakfast and did her exercises in the front yard. Sometimes she wondered if her nearest neighbors, the Snyders, ever saw her out there, and if so what they thought of it. Then again, if they thought she was weird, they'd never mentioned anything. That was strangely comforting.

After she did some tidying up, she picked up the keys to the van and locked the trailer up behind her. She wanted to go up the highway to Vegas and catch the Strip before it got crowded. If it was ugly without all the neon, that would make her drawings better, more realistic. She was always looking for ways to expand on her talent, and urban landscapes were good for that in her opinion.

The roads were deserted because of the early hour, and when the hybrid reached the city she parked her vehicle in a metered spot. Dropping coins into the slot, she studied the street. Where was the best vantage point to start from?

Comments

[primordial_visitation]

"Yes," Sabra answered, a corner of her mouth flexing back a little, as if in the beginnings of a sheepish grin. It wasn't, though. Sabra may or may not have the capacity for some variety of humour, as evidenced at the crater, but it would probably be a different one, if so, to what Echo might recognise. It was just... Muscular reconfiguration, like someone who had been yelling in an argument and was taking a breather, relaxing their aggravated posture. "He's 'dumb'... And does not deserve our support."

Eyes quickly glanced over the surrendered bag.

"They are your possessions?"

[wolfs_daughter]

"Yeah, that's my stuff. It's art supplies. I don't know if you had art in your world. But I draw."

Echo crouched down slowly and picked up the bag, then opened the flap and pulled out her sketch pad. She'd just bought it, so the pages were still pristine and unused. She pointed at the still-quiet street, then at the buildings. "I was going to draw what this looks like without people and cars crowding the space. It's for a new series."

It was hard to tell if the other brunette could grasp any of the concepts she was trying to impart. Was being from another dimension similar to being from another planet? The hybrid's mind flashed back to the alien from the crater. Such weirdness for such a quiet space.

"Did you have, uh, leisure time where you came from?"

[primordial_visitation]

"There is art. Not like yours, but there is art."

It was probably for the best that Sabra wasn't pressed for clarification on that point.

"We have strength and dominance. There is enslavement of the weak. Pleasure can be taken from them... It is where conflict, oppression and suffering are given form. Do you pleasure yourself with slaves, Echo?"

A perfectly acceptable question. If, that was, you didn't come from contemporary Western culture. Technically, there were still a number of places around the globe where slavery still existed - and would continue to do so for a very long time to come.

"I miss it," the demoness admitted. "And then I remember... Here, I am strong. Here, I could change this place... Remake this world as once it was."

[wolfs_daughter]

Echo stared. Slaves? Seriously? Yeah. she knew enough history to know that it existed, but it wasn't happening in America anymore. There'd been a war over it, and after that it was made illegal. If Sabra was talking about sex...

"People look for companionship here," she said with a slightly uncomfortable shrug. She knew she was looking for it. Yearned for it, in fact. But she doubted that an explanation of that would compute for the other woman. She put her sketchpad away, closed her bag.

"Marriage is a thing we do here. Weddings are a really big deal."

[primordial_visitation]

Echo's assumption about sex was understandable, but where entities like that came from, there were a whole host of ways to gain pleasure from another without sexuality ever coming into it. Then again, Sabra hadn't exactly spelt it out. It was quite possible that was exactly what she was referring to. The thing was, most of those other varieties of pleasure would likely sound a whole lot more horrific than she was prepared for.

And a few, a lot more amusing, too.

"Yes. Your weddings are spoken about. They're... Different."

A look of what seemed genuine puzzlement settled over Sabra's features when she said that. 'Different' was probably the best compromise of verbal distinction.

"It depends on the species..."

[wolfs_daughter]

"You don't have to tell me."

'Species' was an interesting way to put it, but in Echo's case it was also accurate. Mama said that when she decided to be with Papa and have a child with him, she'd known he was a were, but not that he might pass it on to their offspring. She'd seen the pictures during the pregnancy. It was why she was always torn between her love of kids and her uncertainty about whether or not she could pass it on too.

"I should probably...go," she told Sabra slowly. "The light changes really early because it's winter, and I want to get some drawing done before a lot of people are around. I hope you adjust to this place soon."

[primordial_visitation]

"No... You don't."

It was spoken as brutal common sense. Either Echo was being polite for the sake of it or, if genuinely friendly, she would likely still reverse course on that expressed sentiment after she had time to think about it. To hope an entity like this would easily adapt to Earth? At best, it was something expressed without fully thinking of the consequences. Especially in light of Sabra's repeated assurance that she was inclined to reshape Vegas as the start of some kind of netherworldly kingdom.

Whether or not something would happen to make Sabra reconsider or even throw her lot in with the mortals, was another question. So far, she was at least helping to rid the streets of its vampiric population.

"You should take slaves," the parting Sabra observed. "They could undertake such works for you."

But with that advice, she was already turning, stepping away. With Echo having declared the need to go, Sabra's cultural inclination was to do just that in an almost robotic fashion. The day she exhibited anything close to genuine warmth, let alone prospective friendship, would be a... Very interesting time.

[wolfs_daughter]

It made Echo think as she went to find a good spot for drawing. Was adapting even possible for someone like Sabra? She certainly wasn't expressing much desire to want to, and you had to want to fit in first. Still, there was that whole killing vampires thing, and hybrid or not, she just couldn't see that as a bad thing.

Maybe she would add the other brunette to one of her sketches, doing something really random like running through an open meadow. With flowers in her hair. Just to complete the weirdness. It wouldn't be any more odd than everything else she'd been drawing lately.