Lisztomania

[Lysandra]

Somewhere on Ession // Midnight​

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Streets draped in scarlet and silver crooned into the night air, the heavy thrum of Ession's cantinas and clubs pulsing with the swarm of hedonists that claimed the red light district as their own. A cloying smog of oily street snacks, sugary perfumes and the pungent saltiness of sweat wafted through the districts veins, basting the chrome towers and littered lane ways with an aroma distinct to such hallowed grounds. Men and women, of all colours and creeds, came to the throbbing district like pilgrims converging upon the bosom of a fallen goddess. Here, under the veil of night, they worshiped with all the shameless zeal such debauchery encouraged.

Credits upon credits were spent on the fleeting bliss of a courtesan's touch and the sweet high of spice that powdered the darker corners of the neon drenched district. It was a cacophony of sound and scents, coaxing every desire of the flesh to relinquish the tethers of modesty and dive head first into the wanton embrace of hedonism that marked the area for what it was.

Many, if not all, of the district's visitors came for something. An experience, a memory, an addiction or some semblance of worth to whittle away in the early hours of the morning. None would fall sway to ignorance or discontent, for even the most prudish of folks were bound to engorge themselves on some form of entertainment, be it the readily available food or the parade of performers that peppered the pastel lane ways.

It was this chaos, the musical orgy of sound and colour, that beckoned the presence of one silver haired waif.

Lysandra knew not what she was doing before the tide of music called out to her from the void. Like a siren, the symphony clutched the typically immodest creature by the heart and lured her away from the safety of the capitol's gaze, relinquishing her of the stern and tired murmurings of a prince that would be far less than impressed by her nightly 'stroll' into such degeneracy. With feet bare, hair messily tumbling down her porcelain visage and a simple silver slip of a dress covering her waifish figure, the girl quickly blended into the tide of intoxicated revelers and lost herself within the storm of delight and debauchery.

"...Two Twi'leks for the price of one! I'll say it again, two Twi'leks-"

"...that the Archlord himself slew the mastermind behind the recent-"

"You there! Pretty girl, looking for work! We got clients that like young thi-"

"...Dried kelp strips, with the enyak mustard and-"

The surging tide of voices filled her vision with a crackling buffet of vibrant reds, speckled greens and flares of gold and grey. Each noise was its own stroke of paint on to the canvas of her vision and soon enough Lysandra stood frozen in the central hub enthralled by the cascade of colour that danced in her peripherals. Perhaps, to any onlooker, the dainty creature was on an intoxicated trip of a lifetime, mesmerized by the throbbing lights swaying over her silvery, petal laced crown.

"Sweet meats and deep streets, pretty girls with their rosy pearls..." Lysandra sang to herself, aimlessly wandering past a riotous brothel and several food stalls, her feathery voice melting into the cool blanket of night.

How long had it been since she'd been surrounded by so many people? She could not remember, nor did she particularly care.

She was simply enjoying it for what it was, a gift to her senses.

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

Amongst murmuring crowds and forgotten nights, amidst drug binged party-goers and the temptations of sultry women and potent drugs, a single man departed a party of people that would soon discover the asphyxiated corpse of a young woman buried in coat closet. A congregation given a destiny, one of horrific screams and a night to remember.

The thought brought a pleasant grin to The Slave’s face, his silver hair brushed back as he meandered through the cramped streets. Each face a new victim, each lips one yet tasted, every experience something new and profound for him to experience with every sensation he had. He was nothing more than those around him, a senseless hedonist with nothing but abstract passion for a happiness he could never achieve.

And yet, there was a curious beauty to it all. To search through the experiences of the universe for the perfect feeling, the single moment in your existence that will tug at your heart and soul for millennia to come. Mere moments before death, the only event in one’s life that they ponder on without regret, without a singular question as to ‘What if?’. No, what he sought was a magnum opus of pleasantries, a finalization of fantastic feelings.

His lips parted with a devilish coyness, crowds calling out to him for his attention, for his credits to be spent in their negligible shop full of imported goods. All things he had experienced prior, all things he didn’t care to try again. No, tonight he was out for something more than the oddity of strange food, or the miracles of a local spice he could inhale into his lungs.

No, tonight was a night for sensations of the sensual kind.

His tongue lazily lapped over his teeth, eyes wandering high over the crowd for a point of interest. Whatever people were drawn to, so would he; as the more appeared in a single group the less likely they’d notice the mysterious disappearance of one of their many drunk companions. Perhaps it wasn’t the first time he’d gone through with such a plan, but who was to say?

Certainly not him. Certainly not the beautiful vixen stuffed in a closet.

As his mind passed over these thoughts, he was interrupted by a solid thud. With feet coming out from underneath him, the entirety of his weight came forward with a resounding inertia; his balance a meek memory in these fleeting moments. Both wrists came out to cushion his fall, a careful tense of his muscles keeping him up to not crush whatever he was to land on.

With his thoughts soon gathered at the current situation, his viridescent eyes opened wide to the beautiful sight before him. The silver haired artistry that lay beneath him was thin, her grin as gracious as his own; a face so subtly fascinating that it stole his breath and his attention in one careless rip.

Oh how his heart quivered.

His silver tongue rushed for words, the looseness of his shirt falling to meet her chest without a second of modesty. His mind was caught in a loop, desperately searching for something to say before giving in to the basics of what his vocabulary consisted of, a single utterance of fragility.

“Hey.”, he said in a quiet tone, a heavy set gaze meeting her own.

Smooth, he thought. Good work.

│ [member="Lysandra"] │

 

[Lysandra]

Bathed in the ruby red glow of a gilded brothel, Lysandra aimlessly tip toed past the murmuring establishment with her attention flitting between the vestiges of flesh and lace that lingered just beyond the mouth of the building and the women that peeked out from its neon crown. Silhouettes garbed in silk sauntered in shadow and smoke, their hushed voices mere flutters of mist in the canvas of the girl's vision. The tide of sound was a rhapsody of lust and desire, the chorus of whores joining the throb of music and the indistinguishable murmur from the crowd of revelers. It was a proverbial banquet of sensations, some of which the wide eyed waif marveled at with the awe of a child.

Such debaucherous distractions provided ample opportunities for Lysandra to lose herself in, although her fickle attention would not allow the girl to indulge in just one delight. Her gaze jumped from a barricade of food stalls to a troupe of jugglers all the way over to a grey skinned Hutt coaxing a band of armed men into dimly lit basement just beneath a throbbing billboard.

'Delicacies and Delights at Delilah's Bordello'

The billboard sung, a hologram of a scantily clad twi'lek flashing across the screen before fading into a burst of cherry red petals. The sight was enough to summon a feathery giggle to escape Lysandra's lips, the visual splendour caressing the teenager's senses unlike anything she'd experienced before. No wonder so many people congregated in this part of the city.

Everything was so colourful.

Alas, Lysandra's naive justification for the boisterous crowds came to an immediate halt when she felt something warm collide into her body and the force of gravity drag her down on to the concrete. With a gasp, the dainty creature's palms caught her fall before her silver tresses could kiss the sidewalk. Shaking her head, the girl was met with a particularly odd sight, one that caught her lips between a grimace and a lopsided grin.

Unbuttoned and smelling like peaches and sweat, was an alabaster stranger cradling the space above her. With a face carved from stone and eyes that blazed with emerald green, the pale oddity forced a particularly dazed Lysandra to recapture her thoughts and return to reality, away from the kaleidoscope of colour that graced her peripherals. The heat from the stranger's breath plumed over her cheeks like a sweet smog, the intensity of his gaze dulling the liquid red neon that illuminated their little tumble and forcing the girl to scramble upwards on to her elbows to get a closer look at the curious looking klutz.

"Hello!" The girl chirped ebuillantly, cocking her head and remembering Cedric's vague warning about not speaking to strangers in strange places. "Where are you running off to Mr?" She inquired with flowery candor, lips shaped into a small 'o' as she peered at the odd looking stranger further.

Where on earth had he come from?

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

The Slave took a few moments to consider just where he was going, her abundant and rather bubbly behavior clearing his thoughts from what they were to what they are now. He hummed lightly before offering an equally jubilant smile and cheerful response;

“I’ve no clue! I forgot!”, he said as he carefully positioned himself to stand without bothering her more than he should have. Brushing off his loose tunic, he offered her an open hand to assist her getting up.

Fixing his hair, The Slave scratched his ear as he considered just what he was doing. In a drug induced haze, his own elation a synthetic formation of a bygone drug dealing artist, the lights around him seemed to blur together, forming a myriad of vibrant hallucinations; each a story in its own but a fleeting sight as the next came forth to give him an equally contrasting show.

In the next thought, he came back to the light hearted waif whose candor and grace gave him a sense of completion. His grin widened as he moved to speak again, each word carrying an almost careless appreciation for their surrounding and her form.
“Who are you, by the way?”

│ [member="Lysandra"] │

 

[Lysandra]

There was little in the way of resistance when the waif gazed up at the seemingly stranded stranger, her bright eyes flitting from one detail to the next as she attempted to compose an explanation for the scenario. Lysandra cared little for the concern that her absence may have caused Cedric, or rather, the men he'd apparently 'encouraged' to watch over her, and was rather content with the blissful chain of events that led her onto the cold grip of concrete beneath her. There was always something spectacularly enthralling about the scent and sound of a stranger, with the young man's so-sweet-it-stung aroma and the scarlet swirls that trailed every word that escaped the confines of his lips.

"Well we've got to find that memory and it put it back into your brain." The silver haired vagrant motioned with a finger to his skull, her voice a buttery flutter of sound that cooed underneath the murmuring maelstrom around them.

With a dainty bounce of her feet, the wistful echani twirled upwards with a flourish of her hands and a grin painting her lips. She stood a full head shorter than the stranger, nothing too surprising for the diminutive troublemaker. She could watch the throats of those she spoke to gurgle and vibrate, the formation of their voices forever entrancing the perpetually enchanted teenager. Perking upwards on the tips of her toes, Lysandra perused the scaled lights on the building behind the odd fellow before glancing upwards at his alabaster visage.

"No one knows." She answered with a playful shrug, a bounce of her brows and a wrinkle of her nose quickly following as she slipped to the side of the stranger and gazed at a streak of golden neon that led into a darkened alley. She'd not noticed that before. "I live in a tree, with three frogs, a rat and a a little itty bitty spider but sometimes I live in a castle with a boy who is some sort of m'lord, all fancy and proper. He talks big words and doesn't like this place but I like this place and his father is a ghost that talks to me sometimes but only when I'm alone and sometimes when I'm trying to sleep," The girl paused, inhaling deeply before she continued her flowery rambling, "and by the way, which way I wonder...north perhaps, I'm not so sure. But my mother named me Lysandra but some people call me Ophelia, for some curious reason." The girl noted with a brisk nod of her head and a finger tapping against her chin.

Blinking, the dainty creature glanced up at the young man, a loony little smile curling over her peachy lips.

"Perhaps Fate bumped you into me to help find that missing memory of yours." Lysandra hummed, furrowing her brow and briefly pursing her lips. "Or it was just an accident and we whisk our separate ways into this blazing night never to see one another again." The waif cooed, staring blankly into space as she feigned a step away from the stranger.

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

My, she was mad; he couldn’t help but think.

Yet, there was a pleasantness to it. She reminded him of well, him. Not the murderous, sexual deviant that was The Slave, but the kindred soul that sought journey and adventure at even the darkest moments in his lifetime. It brought a faint smile to his pale rose lips, in such a gracious laxness that it made the entirety of his face feel hesitantly warm. An ecstatic expression that patiently waited for him to speak; sending only great vibrations through his skin.

“I think I love Fate.”, his words a brimstone of jubilance.

“Instead of whisking our way into the darkness of the night, never to grace each other with our intoxicating presence, let us instead get intoxicated together while under the influence of the opposites personality?”

He himself coo’ed the words, feeding off her energy with a feedbacking mimicry. He offered a careless whisper to the night, an unsaid promise to the stars as he offered her a hand. A pale and callused appendage that had seen years of hard labor, yet in the subtle hints of the light seemed ever so soft in these graceful moments.

Yet, a darkness swirled around him. A gluttonous energy that contrasted the silvery aura of their hedonistic enjoyment, a drawing, painful, ever greedy essence that manifested itself in the abyss of one's soul, yet with The Slave made itself personified in an ever expanding wave. It surged in sync with his heart, a slow thump that beat against the very sternum of the frail and lithe alabaster stranger. It came for more than her skin, but the very being of who she was; the identity she held in the galaxy.

Somehow, it remained subtle despite it’s pulsating nature. A tinnitus stricken hum that riddled the background of the overwhelming music and laughter that littered the streets they stood in. Nothing more than the whisper one found in their ear, a careless touch on the shoulder that brought your attention to your rear; the ever incessant sensation that someone was stalking from the shadows, just out of sight. Careful, predatory behavior that brought only the slightest itch out of one's otherwise placid behavior.

It watched her. It wanted her, more than anyone ever could have.

│ [member="Lysandra"] │

 

[Lysandra]

Ah, the peculiarities of the enigmatic 'first'.

A first kiss, the first sight of death, the first encounter with a Rancor, the first time meeting a new person; all coiled in the peculiar and whimsical embrace of uncertainty and the fickle hand of Fate. Lysandra, beholder to such chaotic happenings, was an avid connoisseur of chasing them. Such 'firsts' fueled the waif's hedonism, with each new experience unwrapping a new flavour for the girl to engorge herself on. Sometimes, these occurrence were as sweet as nectar or as sour as a sundered lemon, and that was what made these 'firsts' so exciting.

The risk.

Lysandra teetered on the brink of something sweet or sour, she knew not nor did she dwell on whether poking the man would bring her good fortune or a quake in her step. Strangers were always odd folk and the newfound appearance of the pale young man was just like any other initial encounter. His face was new, his touch was new, his voice and the quivering lilt of his words were new and the wide eyed waif responded to all the new stimuli with glee and gusto. A new face to add to the splintered kaleidoscope of her memory was never a bad thing and she eagerly drank the colours of his words like a suckling baby against a swollen teat.

"You speak very pretty words, Mr No Name." The girl cooed lightly, standing up on the blushing tips of her toes to graze the level of his eyesight. "In-tox-ick-aysh-on...what a peculiar word, the fancy pantsy lord told me to avoid that because there's creepers walking around with their peepers and they like little things with wobbly liquored wings." Lysandra mused momentarily, scrunching her brow as she attempted to recall Cedric's warning before shaking her head and twirling around the ghostly stranger.

His words of wisdom would sprout out later, she told herself.

"Perhaps we should venture out and find that missing part of your brain." The waif sung, feathery words dancing in the spice soaked air. "Or even..." She leaned closer, eyelashes fluttering like a spastic butterfly, "we could go down there and see what lurks in the shadows." She whispered not-so-quietly, jabbing a dainty finger at the vaguely distant alleyway that lead into the underground stairway she'd seen men disappear into earlier.

Did she fear the dark? Not at all.

She was certain her odd new acquaintance was very much the same.

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

In truth, he was.

With every passing syllable, his grin grew in parallel with his glee; her words were the smooth like vanilla, and sweet like honey. Everything she said spoke to not only him, but his very soul; the dreams he held and the destined entropic futures he could imagine. So long had he sought someone to match him in chaotic behavior, to look for nothing more than the next thrill in no matter what it was, to let their energy fall around them and their heart on their wrist.

He sought to engorge on her, on the very personality she so carelessly offered the entire area around her in plenty.

“Why…”

He began, a careless glance to the alley offering nothing but an abysmal darkness in return.

“- Let's do it. To the abyss we go.”

A hand sprang out to her, one of pale tone and rough features; offering her a future encased in mystery. There was an infinite amount of choices that could come, and none of them became true until she made the choice; and forever would they exist until she did. Destiny waited on her, and she was the beauty that it sought to serve.

“I’m fond of those who lose themselves in the abyss.”

His words were faintly cold, but in the moment they were full of warmth and invitation. There was nothing he said that could give the slightest hint that he was as unhealthy as he was; a broken and scarred man that killed to hide the pain of his past and indulged in hedonism for nothing more than a lack of being taught better.

“Those that are full of longing. Let's join them.”

And so the devil spoke his words, and she was given the chance to play into Hell’s gates.

│ @Lysandra │