Art Under the Stars

[Guest Charlie Steele]

A new kid on the block, introducing my character Charlie Steele. Please feel free to jump in for a little lighthearted (or not?) interaction, all comers welcome.

 

 

 

Street Festival

West 21st St, Chelsea

9:30pm

 

 

 

 

‘Art Under the Stars’ they called it, which was laughable because who ever heard of being able to see the stars in New York City? There was far too much pollution in the air for any such ambiance. Of course the Nevus was visible…but then it was always visible from anywhere in the world. ‘Art Under the Nevus’ held a much more ominous ring to it, not really what the event was going for. 

 

West 21st Street between 8th and 9th Avenue had been shut down entirely, and open only to foot traffic. It was now the scene of bustling activity as vendors hurriedly set up their tables and food trucks clustered around the intersections to jostle for prime positioning. Between the street lamps and the awnings of local businesses hung gossamer strands of lighting, a few nightclubs and bars added their own touch of neon and the spill of ponderous bass into the riotous mix of noise and scent. A few musicians did combat with the clubs’ techno, interweaving their own brand of melody between each opened-door crescendo. Early perusers already had begun to flock to the event, and curiously eyed half-unpacked tables or cued up around the more popular trucks waiting for them to open for business. 

 

At least the evening hours had finally given a reprieve from the more stifling heat of the day. A breeze picked up, offering much needed ventilation, and the worst of the humidity was lifting. Charlie was thankful for small blessings as she dodged between raucously laughing groups of tourists and a few other artists balancing similar stacks of their work. Her spot was already claimed with a small table and several easels set up, but it wasn’t easy to choose which pieces should be displayed. In the end, she’d settled on a selection of smaller watercolors and a few oil paintings, along with half a dozen examples of stoneware-clay sculpting that she’d been immersed in recently. Mostly simpler and lower-ticket items, but that’s what she anticipated selling at an event like this. It was much lower-brow than a gallery open-house, but she really needed the exposure. 

 

The armful of framed canvases thumped against her hip with every step and hampered her natural grace, making every movement feel clumsy as she tried to wind her way through the throngs without dropping anything. It was a relief when she could finally lay them gently on the tabletop of her stand, would have been just her luck to damage something en route. Fortunately it seemed to have all survived the short trip. Canvases were sorted and attractively arranged on display while sculptures and the few thrown-vessels spread over flat surfaces along with a collection of business cards intended to direct the interested towards her studio. Charlie unfolded a chair and settled in for the evening, laying a sketch pad across her lap. No one liked a pushy saleswoman, or someone watching them like a hawk while they browsed. Sketching gave her something innocuous to do while she surreptitiously people-watched.

[Mana Aizawa]

It was a 30 minute walk from the Kimono House to the art festival.  Mana had seen the posters on one of her daily walks.  Having nothing better to do than to search the streets for dropped coins and discarded but still edible food, she decided to try her luck there.  

 

She was still hoarding the remaining dollars from the windfall that a woman named Jo had bestowed upon her not long ago.  That was her secret stash of some $40.  Not much, but it represented the most Mana had had at any one time since coming to NYC.   

 

With her eyes more focused on the ground than on the art she almost walked right past the very young woman with tattooed arms sitting on a folding chair with a sketch pad.  It wasn't every day that Mana noticed anyone, she was more into noticing potential finds: nickels on the ground, bags of not quite completely eaten Nacho chips, and occasionally even a half a sandwich still in the cellophane wrap.  

 

But this woman did have something that attracted the eye.  She seemed, well, prettier than most.  And it wasn't as though NYC lacked for pretty women.  And it wasn't as though Mana was looking for pretty women--there were plenty of men doing that.  

 

Still, when someone stuck out so much as this woman did, well, it gave one pause.  Mana wondered what the sketch pad was for?  She supposed it was for the obvious--pay her some money and get your portrait drawn.  

 

Most of Mana's wounds from the twin blasts of last winter had long healed.  So, Mana was pretty close to being at her best.  But, she suspected she would be invisible standing next to this woman, because the woman truly was stunning. However, Mana didn't want to stare too long because she wasn't buying and didn't want to give any of the more pushy type of artists the chance to start their sale's pitch.  

 

So, Mana shifted her gaze from the woman on the folding chair and looked at several other artists, all having an almost too artisty look to them: goatee bearded, or long hippie dress with tons of silver jewelry, or men with long graying hair tied into a ponytail.  

 

Mana stubbed her toe on the curb and it hurt enough that Mana leaned over and took off her worn shoe and rubbed her toe.  

[Mana Aizawa]

 

A new kid on the block, introducing my character Charlie Steele. Please feel free to jump in for a little lighthearted (or not?) interaction, all comers welcome.

 

 

 

Street Festival

West 21st St, Chelsea

9:30pm

 

 

 

 

‘Art Under the Stars’ they called it, which was laughable because who ever heard of being able to see the stars in New York City? There was far too much pollution in the air for any such ambiance. Of course the Nevus was visible…but then it was always visible from anywhere in the world. ‘Art Under the Nevus’ held a much more ominous ring to it, not really what the event was going for. 

 

West 21st Street between 8th and 9th Avenue had been shut down entirely, and open only to foot traffic. It was now the scene of bustling activity as vendors hurriedly set up their tables and food trucks clustered around the intersections to jostle for prime positioning. Between the street lamps and the awnings of local businesses hung gossamer strands of lighting, a few nightclubs and bars added their own touch of neon and the spill of ponderous bass into the riotous mix of noise and scent. A few musicians did combat with the clubs’ techno, interweaving their own brand of melody between each opened-door crescendo. Early perusers already had begun to flock to the event, and curiously eyed half-unpacked tables or cued up around the more popular trucks waiting for them to open for business. 

 

At least the evening hours had finally given a reprieve from the more stifling heat of the day. A breeze picked up, offering much needed ventilation, and the worst of the humidity was lifting. Charlie was thankful for small blessings as she dodged between raucously laughing groups of tourists and a few other artists balancing similar stacks of their work. Her spot was already claimed with a small table and several easels set up, but it wasn’t easy to choose which pieces should be displayed. In the end, she’d settled on a selection of smaller watercolors and a few oil paintings, along with half a dozen examples of stoneware-clay sculpting that she’d been immersed in recently. Mostly simpler and lower-ticket items, but that’s what she anticipated selling at an event like this. It was much lower-brow than a gallery open-house, but she really needed the exposure. 

 

The armful of framed canvases thumped against her hip with every step and hampered her natural grace, making every movement feel clumsy as she tried to wind her way through the throngs without dropping anything. It was a relief when she could finally lay them gently on the tabletop of her stand, would have been just her luck to damage something en route. Fortunately it seemed to have all survived the short trip. Canvases were sorted and attractively arranged on display while sculptures and the few thrown-vessels spread over flat surfaces along with a collection of business cards intended to direct the interested towards her studio. Charlie unfolded a chair and settled in for the evening, laying a sketch pad across her lap. No one liked a pushy saleswoman, or someone watching them like a hawk while they browsed. Sketching gave her something innocuous to do while she surreptitiously people-watched.

 

 

It was a 30 minute walk from the Kimono House to the art festival.  Mana had seen the posters on one of her daily walks.  Having nothing better to do than to search the streets for dropped coins and discarded but still edible food, she decided to try her luck there.  

 

She was still hoarding the remaining dollars from the windfall that a woman named Jo had bestowed upon her not long ago.  That was her secret stash of some $40.  Not much, but it represented the most Mana had had at any one time since coming to NYC.   

 

With her eyes more focused on the ground than on the art she almost walked right past the very young woman with tattooed arms sitting on a folding chair with a sketch pad.  It wasn't every day that Mana noticed anyone, she was more into noticing potential finds: nickels on the ground, bags of not quite completely eaten Nacho chips, and occasionally even a half a sandwich still in the cellophane wrap.  

 

But this woman did have something that attracted the eye.  She seemed, well, prettier than most.  And it wasn't as though NYC lacked for pretty women.  And it wasn't as though Mana was looking for pretty women--there were plenty of men doing that.  

 

Still, when someone stuck out so much as this woman did, well, it gave one pause.  Mana wondered what the sketch pad was for?  She supposed it was for the obvious--pay her some money and get your portrait drawn.  

 

Most of Mana's wounds from the twin blasts of last winter had long healed.  So, Mana was pretty close to being at her best.  But, she suspected she would be invisible standing next to this woman, because the woman truly was stunning. However, Mana didn't want to stare too long because she wasn't buying and didn't want to give any of the more pushy type of artists the chance to start their sale's pitch.  

 

So, Mana shifted her gaze from the woman on the folding chair and looked at several other artists, all having an almost too artisty look to them: goatee bearded, or long hippie dress with tons of silver jewelry, or men with long graying hair tied into a ponytail.  

 

Mana stubbed her toe on the curb and it hurt enough that Mana leaned over and took off her worn shoe and rubbed her toe.  

[Kelan Bishop]

He yawned as he wandered through the streets of New York, his paratrooper shoulder bag slung hap-hazardly across his body. The light was fading fast enough that the streetlights had already turned on, and it was time for the things that parents used to use to scare their children at bedtime to come out of hiding. Kelan wasn't afraid of them, per se, but he increased his pace nevertheless, working to get himself into a more populated area of New York City. He hated this place. Hated the feeling of new-ness that it held over him. Hated the unfamiliarity of it all. He longed to be back in Los Angeles, the now-burning City of Angels. There, he was known by most people who he might run into at this hour, and was virtually untouchable. At least, in his mind. Here though, in this once monolithic city, it was more that he was virtually unknown.

 

He'd made the transition to the "Big Apple" to open up a second shop, but it was proving to be far more difficult than he'd anticipated. The mob, Bhakkos, had their hands in almost everything in this town, and it was frustrating him. Everywhere he went, some branch or another wanted protection fees, or free services. And with what he could provide them....they were sure to send their people to him in droves. He'd finally managed to find something small, a little hole in the wall, just outside their turf. For how long though, he didn't know.

 

Kelan paused, and sighed. Looking down a side-street, he saw the road blocked off for some sort of street festival. With a shrug, he trudged down that way. The press of random people in a normal world would have annoyed him. In this crazy, fucked up world they lived in now, it was a straight-up health hazard: lycanthropes, vampires, altered humans, and vampires, oh my.

 

An audible groan passed between lightly parted lips as he crossed the barricades and found himself in the midst the festival. It was just his luck that it was a damn art festival. He absolutely hated these things. They were usually a bunch of self-taught, stuck-up, no-talent hacks who had some friend or family member in their life who, in an moment of pity, told them they had talent and should pursue it as far as they could, and see where they ended up.

 

Well, he thought to himself, it may be some shitty little art fest, but it's a hell of a lot better than wandering around on streets you don't really know. So into the depths of untalented hacks Kelan launched, not really paying attention to anything. There was your typical grotesquely obese man, drawing caricatures of patrons for a fee. A skeleton of a woman working with a little blowtorch...no, that was her finger that was on fire...melting little bits of colored glass to form animals and other shapes. Kelan shook his head in wonder. Despite all the shit that the Nevus had thrown at the world and the monsters it had created, some people were clearly still trying to live a normal life with their newly discovered talents.

 

The battling music from the clubs assaulted his ears, though he did his best to try and ignore it. Glancing balefully in their direction, he almost ran right over the diminutive Asian woman who was crouched over at the curb, rubbing her foot. He mumbled an apology, something about needing to pay more attention to where he was going, and looked around. Somehow, he'd found himself near the end of the line of artists, standing in front of the booth of a slender, porcelain-skinned beauty. At least, what he could see of her skin resembled porcelain. She was so heavily tattood that he found himself staring at the visible artwork on her skin, his eyes following the weaving, overlapping patterns. He hadn't a clue who was responsible for the ink, but it was truely a work of art.

[Guest Charlie Steele]

Charlie would have been appalled had she been privy to what was going through the tiny Asian girl’s head. Caricature drawing? She’d sooner stand on a street corner, and it had very nearly come to that at one point. In truth the sketch pad, like the lens of a camera, was a filter for her to examine the world. Sometimes it felt as if she couldn’t truly process an image until she had captured and dissected it with pen or brush. Being without paper and pencil was akin to being naked or unarmed. 

 

Right now she was just aimlessly doodling whatever passing inspiration caught her fancy. Her fingers flickered across the open page, almost without her focus, and Mana’s eyes took up residence in graphite lines as she paused to glance at the colorful paintings Charlie had displayed. The pencil lead retraced the slightly canted angles of the lids even as the artist winced faintly in sympathy as the unwitting model slammed her foot into the curb. It is always the small but annoying pains that draw the most sympathy. She probably would have been less concerned had the girl been attacked by a werewolf, but stubbing the toe was just cruel and unusual punishment. 

 

In the next instant another passerby nearly had a similar collision, though his steps faltered and then hitched to one side as he sought to avoid crashing into the first girl who still bent over to massage her aggrieved extremity. Charlie had opened her mouth to call out a warning, but after all it seemed unneeded. The man had decent reflexes…and a damn sexy jawline. Before the thought had fully registered her pencil was flying again. Brows parsed together in brief concentration as Kelan’s bone structure was analyzed and outlined before the scratch of stubble and the smoothness of tanned skin fleshed out the image. The pencil tip danced further upwards, shadowing the curves of lightly parted lips and roughing in placement for a narrow, blunt nose. His face was abandoned in favor of sketching rough knuckles that seemed littered with tiny scars, and smooth fingers with closely kept nails. The man obviously used his hands, but he carried them deftly. 

 

He was apologizing to his near-victim, and Charlie realized that she had been staring at him too long as she sketched. Sometimes that was an awkward by-product of her artist’s interest, social complexities. Her eyes skipped to his and realized that he had caught her looking, in fact he almost seemed to be staring in return. Not one to be easily abashed, her lips tugged up at one side in a playful smirk. She'd been caught red-handed, may as well finish her ogling.

[Mana Aizawa]

"Where had HE come from?  The big lumbering oaf!" Mana was thinking to herself.   There was an instant that Mana had imagined she was going to be crushed by the man.  Then, he was past her and seemingly he hadn't even noticed her.  That was typical.  

 

Still bent over, head turned uncomfortably far, Mana continued to watch him.  Clearly he was an oaf--meaning too handsome for his own good, and about as smart as male praying mantis.  

 

The problem was that Mana had always had a secret weakness for men that looked like that one--tall, muscular, raw, and attractive.  But, it was clear from the way the man walked, or lumbered, or rambled, sort of like an under-nourished, lone wolf, that had Mana thinking the man was more clever than smart (definitely not smart) and probably not even clever, probably just another stupid, beer-guzzling, creepy man, and Mana had known way too many of those types.  Still, he was easy to watch.  

 

Mana slipped her totally worn canvas shoe back on.  She turned and caught the beautiful artist looking at the man.  That was NOT strange--there was no reason for the artist to look at Mana.  Mana considered herself to be mostly invisible and there wasn't any reason at all for anyone to watch her.  She was a nobody, and a seriously poor nobody at the present moment.  But the man was seriously handsome.  Mana wondered what the artist actually was thinking, thinking about the man.  Was she thinking exactly the same thing Mana was thinking, or were her thoughts totally, totally different?  

 

Mana was so intrigued by this question and she took a few steps and said, "What do you think?  I mean of that man?  About that man?"  Mana gave her cute, innocent smile, and she was very, very good at that, at giving the innocent and cute look, and probably one reason she was so good at it was because Mana truly was as innocent as one with her background could be, and cute to boot.  Mana was pretty certain she would know which man Mana was referring to.  But, would she actually be willing to speak aloud her secret thoughts?  That too intrigued Mana.  She was definitely in one of her curious moods.   

[Kelan Bishop]

Kelan just stood there, laughing inwardly. Even as he was checking out the ivory-skinned artist, he caught her staring right back at him over her sketchbook. A smirk crossed his lips, mirroring hers. And then he realized that not only was she staring at him, the diminutive Asian woman was also staring at him. He wondered if this is what women felt like, when a group of men oggled them.

 

He glanced back and from from Mana to Charlie, and then back again, debating whether or not he should strike a pose. But then, what kind of pose would he even take? He shook his head, dismissing the idea. He simply couldn't think of one worth of it, so his he cocked his head to one side, and stared right back at the pair, waiting for one or the other to say something.  And then inspiration hit him.

 

With a wry grin, he unclasped the flap of the bag that was riding across his body, and pulled out his sketch pad and a pencil. Putting the sharpened tip against the paper, his hand began to fly across its surface. As a tattoo artist, he normally didn't draw actual people so much as take them from photographs and try to give them life. Kelan loved to paint, though it was rarely with live models, preferring mostly to do it through inspiration and emotion. This, however, was to him the perfect chance to play around. Maybe the artist on her little seat, her own sketch pad across her lap, had been drawing the woman who had stumbled. And now here he was, with his own pad, sketching the artist as she sketched the woman, and possibly him. This is some serious "down the rabbit hole to Wonderland" stuff right here, he thought to himself. The thought alone was enough to make him chuckle and smile, as he tucked the eyes and mouth of the Cheshire cat beneath Charlie's table, and wound the smoking worm up the metal pole of her neighboring artist's booth.

 

An eyebrow quirked up briefly as he heard Mana speak, but she was facing Charlie, so he didn't pay much attention to what it was that she said. It being an art festival, Kelan figured she was just asking the woman about her inspiration, how she got started, and all the usual bullshit questions that people pretend to care about when they go to festivals like this.

[Guest Charlie Steele]

Charlie licked her upper lip unconsciously, her eyes drifted up and down the muscled frame of the blonde standing on the street. Cocky bastard returned her smirk as their gazes connected and continued with his own visual appreciation. Fine then, she had nothing to be ashamed of. With the drugs out of her system, Charlie had managed to put a bit of much-needed weight back on. The hollows of her cheeks and razor-sharp angles of bone structure had softened just enough that she didn’t look one skipped meal from an early grave. The whole Vampirism thing hadn’t helped any with her coloring, however, at least she wasn’t “sallow” anymore…just ashen. That was a thing though, wasn’t it? The fair complected with broody dark eyes and untamed curls…it was kind of an artist style. At least that is what she told herself. In truth, Charlie was accustomed to forging her own path be it financial or fashion. Since stepping off the reservation, nothing had been ‘normal’. Becoming a Vampire was the cherry on her tattooed Sunday.

 

She let the man stare, even considered giving him a good reason to do so, but before any mischievous, shameless ideas crossed her mind, his own sketchpad made an interesting appearance. So he was an artist as well then. He must have been checking out the competition. Rather than irritation, the realization only caused her smirk to spread into a white-toothed grin. Hunger was well enough contained that her fangs were only a slight hint of something sharp and dangerous that glinted in the periphery of her expression. Just there enough that it might be subconsciously noted by the human instinct and play on the prey instinct to shy away from its predator. 

 

He didn’t seem to shrink from her, rather his pencil began to play across the page with the softest scratch that her hearing picked up like white noise. She knew without hanging over his shoulder that she was his subject. Indeed he didn’t seem to make any pretensions about hiding his observations. Raising her pencil, she ran the lead lightly across her tongue, the gesture faintly suggestive, though practical in its application as the moistened tip now added a smokier, thicker quality to the graphite layer she smoothed on to give coal lashes their duskiness. 

 

So absorbed in the artistic foreplay had Charlie sunk, that Mana’s cheeping inquiry felt breathed down her neck, rather than piped up from a few steps away. Dark eyes flashed up from their fixation on her sketchpad. The address was a bit unusual, it wasn’t often a social norm to inquire about a stranger’s interest in another complete stranger. Not that she often clung to the social norm. Obviously. 

 

The Vampire tilted her head to one side, returning her gaze to the half-finished portrait. It seemed as though she intended to ignore Mana as a long silence stretched unbroken. Then her lips quirked upward into another amused, smirk.

 

“I think I’d love to sink my teeth into him” 

 

There, let her take that however she wanted.

[Mana Aizawa]

"Okay," Mana thought.  Thank goodness there were no vampires, but the comment about sinking her teeth into him certainly put that thought into Mana's mind.  Mana thought next, "I have watched too many vampire movies in my life."  

 

And finally Mana wondered just what had gotten into her to even ask that question to the beautiful artist.  The last time Mana had actually spoken something that wasn't idle chatter or idol chatter was when Mana had, in a moment of extreme weakness, offered to do anything or be anything in exchange for a warm meal, a hot shower and a real bed.  The woman, Saranna, had at first decided to take Mana home--which paradoxically, frightened Mana more than comforted her.  In the end, Mana had been left behind by Saranna, sort of just abandoned, and that had been six months ago (more or less).  Since then Mana had been quiet as a lemming (though Mana had no idea just how quiet lemmings were).  

 

Now, she had again opened her mouth to speak something more than talk about the weather.  And there it was, a response that had Mana again frightened.  "Why bite him?" Mana had wanted to ask--but didn't.  

 

Instead, Mana shifted uncomfortably, her weight on her left hip, her right foot turned slightly outward.  Mana didn't have a clever response and was thinking too hard so that by the time she replied, the woman was again looking at the man, a man who instead of being simply a beer-guzzling, football watching idiot, was also working with a sketch pad.  "Jeez," Mana thought, "does one have to be an actual artist to come to an event like this?"  

 

So, when Mana finally spoke, Mana whispered, sort of as though she were conspiring with the beautiful artist, "At first I took him for some sort of half-brain dead, beer-guzzling guy with a great body, but probably I was wrong.  What do you think?"   

 

 Mana belatedly realized that the woman probably hadn't even wanted Mana to respond and probably didn't care.  

[Kelan Bishop]

His eyes darted back and forth from the women standing a few feet in front of him, back down to the page he was sketching on, and then up again. So consumed was he in his own creation, that when Charlie smiled, the barely visible fangs escaped his notice. His former lieutenant would have been ashamed that such an important detail had been missed by someone so meticulous on the minute details that it was borderline obsessive-compulsive at the best of times.

 

Kelan eyes, and brain, did not miss the suggestive way that the other artist moistened the tip of her pencil. An eyebrow quirked up briefly, a predatory grin spreading thinly across his lips as he watched the woman scratch away at her parchment. He hadn't caught what Mana had asked Charlie, though he could probably guess based on the artist's response. Giving Charlie a teasing wink, he looked down at the pad he had been scribbling away at. A brief brush of a fingertip across his tongue, and the finger swiped faintly across part of the paper, smudging something, before the pencil went back down and added a bit more detail to what he had just done.

 

A brief nod of self-approval, and the pencil and sketchpad disappeared as quickly as they had been brought out, deftly stashed away in the bag with practiced ease. The man stepped up a bit closer to the display booth, and slowly let his eyes rove over the works of art. There seemed to definitely be similarities in the line structures between what was on display on both the tables, and on the vampire's body. Not one to be rude enough to explicitly point with a finger, Kelan head tilted up briefly, causing his chin to jut out in Charlie's direction. He considered briefly putting on the Irish in a thick manner, but decided against it. As much as he loved playing along with that aspect of his heritage, it was something that he had more fun doing in a bar, surrounded by drunken idiots. When he spoke, his voice carried the thin veneer of an accent, of someone who hadn't been home in a long time and was loosing a little bit of it over time. 

 

"Designed it all yourself, did you?" he asked.

 

He turned briefly towards Mana and smiled, nodding his head slightly in way of greeting. It just wouldn't do to be rude to the woman he very nearly ran over.

[Guest Charlie Steele]

Brown eyes rose from their intent fixation upon the page before her, a bit of puzzlement clouding them at Mana’s response to their brief exchange. The girl was one of those that could be called “cute as a button,” with her angular eyes and glossy black hair. She was tiny too, petite even beyond Charlie’s own small frame. She had at first taken the young woman for a child, though even with her simplistic mannerisms, it was obvious that she had at least passed from adolescence. It was hard to pin her down. A quick scent of the air was enough to confirm that she was indeed human. Since the Resonance, Charlie had run into a few strange beings of Faerie origin, they held a similar youthfulness to them, and she certainly had no desire to renew such acquaintances. Fae were trouble in tiny, pesky packages.

 

Her appearance aside, it was more Mana’s observation that confused the vampire. Nothing about the strange artist would have said “brain dead” or “beer guzzling” to her. Was it something she could sense with her enhanced awareness? Was she truly that comfortable with the virus-gifted changes that she no longer even noticed the difference? There was nothing obtuse or impaired about the man’s gaze, it was observant and quick. His movements were deft and graceful for the size of the fellow, and there wasn’t an ounce of beer-gut on him, no could she smell any alcohol clinging to his breath as he exhaled in a rhythmic pattern. Not that she intended to share such a wealth of minutiae with the Asian chick. 

 

She watched Kelan work in silence, her own pad laid down on the table, unconcerned about exposing idle, rough work to the public eye. Her reply to Mana was just loud enough to be heard by the topic of their discussion. 

 

“I’d say he looks more like a whiskey man to me. As for brain dead, in this day and age being still alive is proof of some mental capacity. Survival of the fittest.”

 

The man either overheard the remark or he was headed in their direction already, because the sketchpad was tucked back into his bag and a few steps spanned the distance from curb to display. A close-lipped smile greeted him as the vampiress settled her hips back into her chair and crossed one leg over the other. The direction of his gaze skipped between her displayed work and the canvas of flesh she presented beneath jean shorts and light tank top. His words and the vague jut of his chin didn’t seem to specify which he meant when he questioned her originality.

 

The coy lift of a brow played upon that as she allowed her own generality to echo his. “It’s all mine.” She lifted a hand in welcome, gesturing that he was welcome to take a closer look at the displayed pieces. “Feel free to take a closer look, I encourage hands on shoppers.” Again the smirk twisted her lips, making dark eyes laugh at him as she lightly teased him with the mild innuendos. Her gaze skipped briefly back to Mana as she included the young woman with a nod. “You as well, I’m and equal opportunity artist. Let me know if you like what you see."

[Mana Aizawa]

Mana tried hard to not feel out of place.  An American saying was coming to her mind.  Something like being a third wheel.  Was that it, she wondered?  Here were two vibrant and talented artists and Mana just wasn't in her element (whatever that was nowadays).  Mana also pondered on that survival of the fittest comment.  Mana was not feeling like one of the fittest at the moment.  In fact, she hadn't felt like one of those types since the Nevus Event.  She wondered if that meant 1) that she was doomed, or that 2) that so far she had been extraordinarily lucky.  Recently, the feeling of being doomed had been foremost on her mind.  

 

Worse, Mana considered the following: what if vampires, for example, were as real as zombies.  My god! Mana thought, the world simply wouldn't be worth living in.  

 

Mana was also wondering how she could politely extricate herself from between these two.  Obviously they had a lot in common.  All the smiling at her seemed more like forced politeness--not wanting to make it obvious that she was being left out.  

 

More out of a total lack for some better option or plan of action, Mana turned her head and looked at the drawings of the two artists.  She was hoping to stay politely far enough away so that they wouldn't smell her clothing--digging in dumpsters simply left an odor on everything.  

 

It didn't take a genius to guess that both of these two artists were nothing short of geniuses.  How they had sketched so much and so well in such a short time actually perplexed Mana.  It just didn't seem possible.  It would have taken Mana at least an hour to do what each of these two had done in a minute (was it even a minute?).  

 

So, Mana warned herself to simply keep silent--silence was golden, after all.  But she blurted out something so stupid that she blushed a deep red:  "You two sketch better than Picasso."