Victor Frankenstein (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lifeskills) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
entrancelogs2014-11-01 11:19 pm
lifeskills) wrote in entrancelogs2014-11-01 11:19 pm
OPEN | and the moon gazed on my midnight labours
Who: Victor Frankenstein (lifeskills) and whoever!
Where: Basement, caverns, and the library.
When: Oct. 30th, 31st, and Nov. 1st.
Rating: Let's go with PG-13 just to be safe, IDK.
Summary: He's no explorer, but he is a chronic insomniac with time to kill and he can't hide in his room forever, strangeness or no strangeness. Poking around is better than nothing.
The Story:
Basement/Caverns
[It doesn't take Victor long to start feeling the loss of hearth and home. It's more than just existing in a land dredged up from the depths of the human imagination, it's the loss of smaller, mundane things. A familiar workspace. His clothes. His books, his notes, his materials... Unadventurous and unfulfilled though it may seem to some, those bits of flotsam had made up the whole of his life. His hands don't know what to do with themselves without something familiar to touch, to do. He is his work and has been for a long while. As far as abductions go, this one is particularly hard to fathom for all the freedom it grants without the one ultimate liberty: being able to leave. He misses Caliban least of all, but even the task he'd assigned himself in his monster's name had been his choice. A purpose.
Here his sole purpose seems to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's not a fan of this waiting game, aimless as it is.
While Vanessa takes her rest, Victor is restless. His senses are too raw for him to eat or sleep, and that imbues him with a false courage, enough to propel him out of their room alone. Wandering isn't a habit he's indulged in since boyhood, but it comes naturally, driven by curiosity and a need to do something that isn't just pacing the length of his room. Anything he finds he can report back to Vanessa, and that is of benefit to them both.
Despite his better judgement, he ends up spending time outside their shared lodgings longer than he intends, whiling away the night hours. Before too long, his evaluation of the mansion takes him down floor by floor, to the ballroom, to the kitchen, down halls that never seem to end, and finally down the stairs into the basement.
On the first night, he doesn't stay longer than a minute. On the second, he hunts down the source of the generator hum and adds it to the notes he's already started to compile in a small notebook.
On the third, after danger fails to appear to rip him into shreds and no horde of white-haired blood-eaters swarm him, he returns with the notebook and a lantern to test his luck a little further. Maybe it's simply a desire to reconstitute his notes and have something of comfort around him, but he finds marking down the caverns' first few turns on paper provides a fruitful labor. Tentative at first, Victor doesn't mean to venture very far into the dark maw under the stairs, but it's the same sort of lie he'd told himself when he'd considered giving up his research after the Monster's birth. His need to know overrides good sense. A left turns into another, which turns into another, which turns into the beginnings of a map.]
Library
[The mansion is as lavish as he's ever seen, there can be no denying that, but Victor doesn't come to appreciate much of it until the library. Ah, the library. It puts the "wonder" in Wonderland. Once Victor stumbles across it for the first time, the sharp, metallic edge of tension that characterizes his days softens just a bit.
Books have been some of his only companions over the course of his life; they've filled the roles of friend, colleague, and mentor. They give, not take. If there's a place outside of the surgical room where he's in his element, it's in a place of knowledge. He supposes he has to take what he can get, all else aside. If what he and Vanessa have heard about this new land is to be believed, the discomfort of being in it is of the pervasive and long-lasting variety.
One needs small comforts where one can find them.
During the days, people may find this well-dressed lad making a concentrated effort to hunt down the library so he can walk the aisles, running his fingers along book spines. It's not just for the aesthetic pleasure; he finds the publication dates of material more bewildering the more items he finds from centuries not his own. Amazing how all life in the universe had seemed to stop at the year 1891.]
lifeskills) and whoever!Where: Basement, caverns, and the library.
When: Oct. 30th, 31st, and Nov. 1st.
Rating: Let's go with PG-13 just to be safe, IDK.
Summary: He's no explorer, but he is a chronic insomniac with time to kill and he can't hide in his room forever, strangeness or no strangeness. Poking around is better than nothing.
The Story:
Basement/Caverns
[It doesn't take Victor long to start feeling the loss of hearth and home. It's more than just existing in a land dredged up from the depths of the human imagination, it's the loss of smaller, mundane things. A familiar workspace. His clothes. His books, his notes, his materials... Unadventurous and unfulfilled though it may seem to some, those bits of flotsam had made up the whole of his life. His hands don't know what to do with themselves without something familiar to touch, to do. He is his work and has been for a long while. As far as abductions go, this one is particularly hard to fathom for all the freedom it grants without the one ultimate liberty: being able to leave. He misses Caliban least of all, but even the task he'd assigned himself in his monster's name had been his choice. A purpose.
Here his sole purpose seems to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's not a fan of this waiting game, aimless as it is.
While Vanessa takes her rest, Victor is restless. His senses are too raw for him to eat or sleep, and that imbues him with a false courage, enough to propel him out of their room alone. Wandering isn't a habit he's indulged in since boyhood, but it comes naturally, driven by curiosity and a need to do something that isn't just pacing the length of his room. Anything he finds he can report back to Vanessa, and that is of benefit to them both.
Despite his better judgement, he ends up spending time outside their shared lodgings longer than he intends, whiling away the night hours. Before too long, his evaluation of the mansion takes him down floor by floor, to the ballroom, to the kitchen, down halls that never seem to end, and finally down the stairs into the basement.
On the first night, he doesn't stay longer than a minute. On the second, he hunts down the source of the generator hum and adds it to the notes he's already started to compile in a small notebook.
On the third, after danger fails to appear to rip him into shreds and no horde of white-haired blood-eaters swarm him, he returns with the notebook and a lantern to test his luck a little further. Maybe it's simply a desire to reconstitute his notes and have something of comfort around him, but he finds marking down the caverns' first few turns on paper provides a fruitful labor. Tentative at first, Victor doesn't mean to venture very far into the dark maw under the stairs, but it's the same sort of lie he'd told himself when he'd considered giving up his research after the Monster's birth. His need to know overrides good sense. A left turns into another, which turns into another, which turns into the beginnings of a map.]
Library
[The mansion is as lavish as he's ever seen, there can be no denying that, but Victor doesn't come to appreciate much of it until the library. Ah, the library. It puts the "wonder" in Wonderland. Once Victor stumbles across it for the first time, the sharp, metallic edge of tension that characterizes his days softens just a bit.
Books have been some of his only companions over the course of his life; they've filled the roles of friend, colleague, and mentor. They give, not take. If there's a place outside of the surgical room where he's in his element, it's in a place of knowledge. He supposes he has to take what he can get, all else aside. If what he and Vanessa have heard about this new land is to be believed, the discomfort of being in it is of the pervasive and long-lasting variety.
One needs small comforts where one can find them.
During the days, people may find this well-dressed lad making a concentrated effort to hunt down the library so he can walk the aisles, running his fingers along book spines. It's not just for the aesthetic pleasure; he finds the publication dates of material more bewildering the more items he finds from centuries not his own. Amazing how all life in the universe had seemed to stop at the year 1891.]
The Library
She pauses in front of the closest shelf to look at what was on offer, scanning the titles with great care. Out of the corner of her eye Bela spots someone but doesn't recognise him; she turns to offer the man a polite nod before looking back at the books again.
Maybe he didn't want to be disturbed so she let him carry on with what he was doing.]
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The moment he finds himself in proximity to Bela and their eyes meet, his gaze wavers. It leaves hers and then returns again; hesitantly, he nods back. Victor had never considered himself a shy person, but what does one say when the strings tying together life as he knows it have been cut and he's been left with a place beyond his understanding and people equally so? No combination of words seem like they would aspire above ridiculousness once they've left him.
Perhaps it would be different if he were not who he is. In a few days' time, Victor has gotten a sense that he, too, is a curiosity as a result of his name. A name he'd strove to keep separate from looks of doubt and disbelief.
Another failure to mark down beside Caliban's name.
As such, he finds himself resigned to silence, though he spares the woman another look.]
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His behaviour piques her curiousity, as most people did, and Bela wondered why he decided to look at her for a third time. Perhaps he wanted to engage in a conversation. There was only one way to find out.]
Hello there. [Spoken in a warm, friendly tone and with a smile. Being warm was a fairly recent development within Bela and if she wanted to get it just right, then she would need to practice.]
Are you looking for any book in particular?
[A safe query, nothing really intrusive. And significant, since they were in the library. Bela didn't work here but she knew her way around the majority of the shelves.]
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Long stretches of time spent in sunless conditions has done little to bring warmth to his complexion, at that. The eyes, though are bright. Bright and speculative.]
Hello.
[The standard greeting bring some relief to him, as well, and with it, he curves his lips in a tepid sort of smile. She's strange-looking to him as he must be to her; it compels both curiosity and hesitation.]
No, I... [Unless the book is "Snap Yourself Out of Psychosis," his interest is nowhere near that refined.] I'm looking at all of them and none of them.
[A tourist on a sightseeing expedition, in other words.]
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[Which leads Bela to believe that he was a fairly recent arrival and had yet to explore everything that the Mansion had to offer. The library was admittedly one of the better parts of the Mansion, alongside the kitchen and the magic closets.]
Is this your first time to the library?
[There was something about him that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but it only served to pique Bela's interest all the more. Perhaps she would have time to learn things about him, even if it was just a name. ]
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The library does indeed seem to have a vast collection of knowledge, but maintained by who? And for what purpose? These are questions he'd like answers to, but ones he doubts he's about to find within its books. If anything, just more unanswered questions.]
In a library like this? No. To this one after finding myself on an especially foreign trip abroad? Close enough to a "yes," I suppose.
[He hazards a rather more sarcastic smile. Victor has tried to see the humor in the situation.]
Nothing is quite what it seems anymore.
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Nothing is. I think that's an apt way to describe this place.
[There are many more words that Bela could use to describe Wonderland and not all of them were clean; nothing she would say in front of polite company.]
My name is Bela by the way. What is yours?
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Library.
Toothless, instead, is sitting under a table, watching people come in and out, when he spots a new scent. He turns his head to look at Victor, remaining motionless and soundless while he watches the viking look at the spines of books.
Everyone in his head is a viking, no matter what Castiel had said about vikings being humans and not all humans being vikings.]
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Blood-eating vampires are enough, and let us not speak of demons.
He has tried his best to take a methodical approach to taking his lay of the land; discovering the existence of dragons, though surely exhilarating in its own way, is not a part of that. Looking up from the cover of a book and seeing the light catching on some of Toothless' scales is not what he'd wanted to find in the library. In hindsight, it was an overambitious expectation, since he hadn't been expecting to find himself in a live performance of Carroll's Wonderland, either.
Victor stops short. His lungs stop moving air along with the rest of him. He's fairly certain there's a creature under a table and that those large yellowish orbs are its eyes, but that can't be right, giant creatures don't just appear in libraries.]
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The Nightfury notices Victor's returned gaze. And, maybe, smells some of the surprise. He has a very sensitive sense of smell, like all dragons. His tail twitches behind him — not exactly helping the general image of the dragon's dog-like behavior. Although, in this case, perhaps it will help.
He gives a loud rumble, canting his head to the side.]
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My God...
[The murmur is an awestruck one. He lowers the book, holding it limply in his hands.
Whatever he might say about his own role to play in this ongoing dramatization of the weird, it doesn't take away from the fact that everything he's seeing seems as real as night and day. The reptilian creature, too. What a big brute it is. For a normal reptile, the first thing Victor might think to do is determine species and sex, but sexual dimorphism is a bit difficult to establish when he's never actually seen anything like the dragon in nature before now. (If one can call this "nature.")
Toothless stares. Victor stares back.
No signs of aggressive behavior just yet, but again, a good assessment needs context, which he doesn't have. He wishes immediately he could go to it, see for himself if those folds of membrane peeking from beneath the table are wings as they appear to be. Trying to examine a live creature poses more risk of losing an arm than performing a necropsy on a dead one, however. The elder vampire and Fenton had been more obliging.]
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Then, very slowly, watching Victor with wide eyes, he steps out and stretches his limbs. Including his wings, thanks to the fact that he isn't constrained by a bookcase on either side of him. He stretches his impressive wingspan briefly, before tucking them against his side once more and taking another step toward the viking, trilling again.]
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What is it?
A wise man probably would flee in this situation to at least try and avoid the fate of being devoured, but Victor gawks on.
The birdlike note out of the reptile's mouth just inflames his curiosity all the more--does he know of any reptiles that even communicates in that manner? Yes, but what kind grow to this size? What has four legs to complement a pair of wings? His calve muscles tense as Toothless starts to emerge from beneath the table, readying him to run in case the worst should happen.
He leans back. Toothless' wings disturb the air; even so slight a breeze threatens to make him tremble.
A wise man would tremble with fear, but Victor is still not all that wise.]
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Caverns!
Rebekah Mikaelson was not a woman who was easily made to be complacent. She never had been, despite what those who looked in on her relationship with her brother from the outside might think. It took a great deal to convince her to accept anything she didn't want to, and this was no exception.
Exploring the caverns now that panic had subsided seemed like a wise idea. If nothing else, perhaps she might learn a little something more about how she and Hayley had come to be here, seeing as they'd both awakened in the dark and damp the caverns offered. It's only when she catches the scent of another person, a human, that she slows and proceeds towards the next turn with caution.]
Whoever you are, I know you're down here.
[Maybe not that much caution.]
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Without being able to rule out danger, alone and unarmed anywhere in this place is not a good combination, but perhaps a glimmer of what had transpired during the hunt for Mina Murray had stayed with him--a touch of Malcolm's boldness, a scrap of Van Helsing's surety. What else could possess him to put himself at the mercy of the unknown?
Had he not, after all, been reminded time and again that he is but mortal in these last months?
Victor tamps down all of the reasons to worry before they become fear; if he were to become afraid, he doesn't know how he would confront any of what's happening, letting every diagnosis for fractured mental health take him over. He sets the pencil inside the journal and switches it to his other hand so he can raise his light higher.]
A thing no one here is concealing. [Except her.] What do you want?
[Don't leave him in suspense.]
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Wasn't that interesting.]
Nothing that concerns you. [She narrows her eyes at him, momentarily suspicious.] I didn't realize anyone else might have taken an interest in exploring this place.
[The caverns are damp and thoroughly unpleasant. She wouldn't be here if she didn't have so many unanswered questions.]
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Likewise, his expression can't seem to decide what it wants to be--inquisitive? indifferent? nervous? concerned? confused?--under the guidance of conflicted emotions. It settles into a slightly discomfited shade of solemnity instead. It's been the predilection of his face after a prolonged exposure to things that horrify the heart rather than warm it.]
My own concern.
[Her standoffish response is a thing Victor understands and can draw some comfort in, oddly enough. Two can play at being tight-lipped.
The problem with that game is that now would be the time Victor asks what she's interested in looking for--the question is already in his mouth--but with that line of inquiry already shot out of the sky, he's left to lick his lip, holding back the words along with the curiosity behind them. Asking again seems like a lost cause already.]
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[It falls from her lips an idle musing rather than a direct question; curiosity has certainly begun to prick at her, though it's not the innocent sort. This cavern is where she woke up. Where she'd first realized she was without Hope.
The location alone makes him immediately suspect.]
You seem at ease down here.
[Moreso than she would imagine. Could that, perhaps, be because he had grown used to this place? Spent a great deal of time here? She'd missed his introduction to Wonderland, and though his scent was new to her, so were the scents of many who had been here longer than her. It took time to learn them all.]
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Most of the time, he's even at ease being alone in dark and dank conditions. But not here. Not here where the people themselves wish to convince him the very fabric of reality has changed around him from one moment to the next.
Victor retracts his head a fraction, doing a poor job of hiding his own wordless audit of her.]
I wouldn't say that. If I were with any part of this place, I wouldn't bother familiarizing myself with amateur cartography.
[He slips the journal free from its place beneath his arm. As to what his business is, that should suffice as an answer.]
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Library, pick a day any day.
Six weeks is plenty of time to come up with something creative and worthy of his time and energy.
Hannibal, now already gaunt and irritable, requires more physical effort to hold his arm up to scan the books in the library, though he persists. He peruses with one thought in mind, to allow Wonderland to grasp it and tug him towards what he searches for: Anthony J. Crowley. Where does he come from, exactly? What more can he know. His finger stops on a book title, Good Omens, and he pauses before he takes it down with the Bible already heavy in his arms. To skim it is easy enough; he ignores the shaking of his arm at holding the bible's weight in order to stop and leaf through a comparatively small paperback. ]
Any day sounds good, and SORRY FOR THE LATE.
And a certain someone is going to surreptitiously watch this from down the aisle, attention split between the resources at hand and the people he unintentionally keeps crossing paths with.
He can't help it. Ironically, after so much time immersed in transcendent science that subverts the natural order of things, it's now the normal, unexceptional human acts that give him some kind of foothold in a place for which he has no frame of reference. He has no place airing his voice here and he doesn't intend for company, but the human tic nonetheless catches his eye.]
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He barely glances out of the corner of his eyes at Victor as he adjusts the bible under his arm, but he recognizes him. He's new, and he's staring; an unfamiliar place is no excuse for rudeness. ]
Can I help you with something?
[ And he doesn't even look up from the pages of Good Omens that he's trying his damnedest to keep steady. ]
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He looks down before his impulse to ask gets the best of him.]
No... no. My apologies.
[A lie is better than nothing, and he's getting more and more used to spinning them. He slides the book in his hands back into place on the shelf.]
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Are you sure that's the answer you want to go with?
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Presently I find myself unsure about many things.
[If the known world were a toy box, this land represents what happens when you take that box and upend it. But had he been asked to answer under normal circumstances, then...
Victor looks at the man and this time accounts for what he'd noticed in his initial glance.]
Famished musculature, dry skin, fatigue--all signs of prolonged malnourishment. It occurred to me you might be the one in need, but I presume there's more to it when there's no lacking for nourishment here.
[His tone holds the resolve of someone who'd thought to ask but has already decided against it.
In a place that offers enough food for an army day by day, what man could starve? It's a perfect example of Wonderland's illogic, something Victor's in no place to question.]
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