It is standard army practice to bring with it wherever it goes a modicum of
disciplined structure. Wherever goes disciplined structure, so too goes
hierarchy. Wherever goes hierarchy, so goes bureaucracy. Wherever
bureaucracy lies, there lies red tape. And wherever you have red tape, of
course, you have vampires. So, when the world converged its beady little
Cold War weathered eyes upon the little war-rife country of Korea, you can
make a safe bet that the Camerilla was no more than two steps behind, along
with all the headaches and politicking attached thereto. Temporary power
over the hastily constructed princehood of Seoul and the outlying areas was
swiftly allocated, and the games began.
A clever little bit of influence shuffling was executed by a Nosferatu orderly who happened to owe his life to a small brotherhood of Brujah who pieced him back together to heal after he stepped on a landmine. You see, these particular Brujah had come to Korea to put their two cents in against the pink spread, and when they decided that it was time to swell their ranks, they called in the favor.
The Brujah supplied the rocket launcher, the ammo, the manpower, and the blood. The Nosferatu supplied a cleverly executed lie to the U.S. Army that the airplane of Lt. Col. Henry Blake had been shot down and had sunk to the bottom of the sea of Japan.
~
Henry, roused to consciousness, couldn't quite muster the force to open his eyelids. He felt wholly restful, incredibly peaceful, like one snuggled safe in bed after a hard day's work. A real bed, too, no army cot which held no rest for even the weariest of souls, and a real day's work, a few appointments, errands for the wife, some time in the lab, picking the kids up from preschool, no 30-hour stretches of nonstop surgery, amputations, and death. The frantic nightmare of the plane being struck, the plane plummeting - all these were far in the past, he could only remember them as an afterthought. As an afterthought, he smiled at the dream, at the embodiment of every man's fear that he'd not return to his loved ones alive. As he smiled, he knew, growing more aware, that he was not in bed, but sitting up. 'Still on the plane,' he reminded himself, 'must have landed already,' he added, hearing no noise of motors running or blades spinning. 'Maybe I'll just sit here and wait for one of the stewardesses to come wake me up,' he pondered, his posture much too comfortable to move from, his eyelids too heavy with sleep to lift. The thought of a pretty young stewardess tapping him on the shoulder with a high-pitched, "Sir.? Sir?" did much for his morale. But no such voice ever came.
Finally, with a heaving sigh, he lifted himself from the chair, opening his eyes and leaning down to grab his bag from under his seat. It wasn't there. Nor, in fact, was he on the airplane. As he stared down at his feet in the motion of grabbing the nonexistent bag, he saw that his feet were bare. A few feet away lay a pair of rolled up socks and a pair of tennis shoes. No trace of the sleek black beauties he'd bought to go home in. His pants, likewise, were one of his normal pairs, and his dress jacket was missing.
"Great jeezy peezy," he finally commented on the entire situation as a whole, as the semi-tattered state of his previously brand-new white shirt sunk in for him. Especially telling, the missing patch of hem cloth along the right-hand side of the shirt's bottom, which he had torn in a desperate attempt to staunch the wound of the stewardess who'd gotten - wounded--- in the ---------- explosion.
Henry stood stock still as the 'dream' came vividly rushing back upon him, and he leaned back to steady himself on the back of the chair on which he'd been sitting, not entirely surprised, or at least not registering any further shock, to find his vest draped there, and his (old) hat perched on one of the edges. Sitting down again, he slowly replaced these articles of clothing, pulling the fishing cap down firmly over his scalp.
Just as he was about to find the wherewithal to wonder how he could have possibly survived such a catastrophe apparently unscathed, a voice captured his attention.
"'Great Jeezy Peezy?'" questioned the questioner, a slim, short man with fetching brown curliques of hair and an incredulous snarl across his face. "Can't you do any better than that, soldier?" he sneered, as two more individuals moved into the doorway after him. Their vague semblance of army clothing made Henry feel more ill-at-ease rather than comforted. These people obviously didn't belong to the United States Army. Emphasizing the positive, they sure as hell didn't look Korean.
Leaning against the chair in an awkward attempt to appear at ease, Henry bobbed his head from side to side and, with a customary quirk of the brow, spoke, "Well, I didn't exactly expect to survive that plane crash, you see. I was just a little put off - ehh.. Henry Blake, by the way."
As Henry spoke, his usual timidity sloughed off a bit, his eyes sparkled with his innate charm, and to the unwary would appear to be the smoothest operator in all Korea, leaving the childish wit of Hawkeye Pierce by far in the dust. The Brujah, on the other hand, were what one might just call wary, and they looked amongst themselves at their new initiate's attempt to charm them. This was not at all what they were expecting. After all, if it flew in an army airplane, had army identification, and had army papers, it ought to have been a sparkling specimen of a brave U.S. soldier that they had just recruited. oughtn't it? He ought to have flown into a temper at having found himself re-dressed and so modified, and tried (unsuccessfully enough) to knock the block of his sire and the collective blocks of his comrades right off. oughtn't he? Something had gone terribly wrong.
The short gentleman with the brown locks suddenly disappeared, and Henry was jarred up into the air. It took a while for his thought processes to register the fact that the fellow was now under him, holding him up as easily as a stack of newly filled out supply requisition forms. Before the sight of the pointy wooden stick in the man's other hand could thoroughly sink in, the world went black. Again.
~
Joles Traveneau, Seneschal of Seoul, a tidy little fellow with an aquiline nose and an air of joviality tempered by one of impatience, was getting fed up, in several different definitions of the term. A warm bath, as per usual, had been drawn and was ready to slowly bring his body temperature up after his day's sleep had allowed it to cool so dramatically.
"Testing. . . don't you understand? TESTING." He repeated emphatically as he drew a few syringefuls of blood from the crook of his elbow, his use of the needle skillful with decades of practice. But it was no use. The lovely Korean concubines he'd allocated to this evening's bath and meal, still giddy and giggling from the kiss, didn't seem to give a flying hoo- hah about having the wool pulled over their eyes about their new companion. Attempting a graceful leap from the water to the floor, Joles was knocked slightly off-balance by one of his toes catching on the rim of the tub, but was able to land on his feet nonetheless. And all without spilling a drop. Perfect. Wrapping the syringes up in a washcloth, he sheathed his steaming, well-fed body in no less than 8 towels to insulate it from the cold as he opened the door and headed across the street -- if one could call it that -- to the main office of the Evac Hospital.
His clerk, a highly useful fellow despite the appearance of disorder that was embodied in the catastrophe that was the office, had his feet up on the desk, was nursing a soda pop, and was paging through an issue of National Geographic.
To an outside observer it would seem that the young man didn't notice, or perhaps just didn't care, that Joles took up the soda from the desk, and took it over to a small, grungy wall-mirror, unwrapping the syringes and beginning to slowly add the drawn blood to the brown fuzzy liquid. The seneschal looked in the mirror, squinting a bit at himself, and called over to the boy, "How's the evening going, Sparky?"
"Oh, just fine, sir. Radar's right, if you skip all the scientific stuff, this mag's pretty good." He randily eyed the half-naked tribal women displayed in its pages until the modified soda was returned to his hand, along with a curt but cheerful, "Drink up."
"Mm-hmm," Sparky agreed. Somehow or other, after the second or third time, this blood thing gets a lot less weird. A few moments' worth of silence later, the clerk felt on odd prickle on the back of his neck, a feeling like there was something he ought to be doing. Looking up to Colonel Traveneau, he noted his bright baby blue eyes fixed seriously on the opposite side of the room.
"Oh-" was all Sparky could get out.
"Sparky." Joles interrupted. "What is that?"
Feet came flying down from the table, the magazine was shut in a matter of instants after Sparky got over the shock of forgetting about the staked vampire in the corner. "Um, the Brujah left him for you, sir. It's-" he checked the topmost papers on the mountain of them on his desk, "Lieutenant Colonel Blake." The name, of course, was familiar to him, but it was only after it passed between his lips that he recognized where it was he knew it from. His eyes widened, but he said nothing, not having been asked.
Joles, for his part, took no note of the sloppy ghoul's epiphany. Approaching the body with a pert little frown, he held out his hands to either side. "Gloves," he muttered, and Sparky duly shot out of his chair and gloved his regnant. "Never know where these Brujah have been," he explained, a picture of perfect seriousness as he stepped forward and gently tore off the note that the Brujah had stapled to the end of the stake.
His eyes scanned the paper. The prince wasn't going to be happy.
~
In just about any other circumstance, of course, a vampire in the position of Joles "Joly" Traveneau would never be in the particular position in which he was currently situated. Once you've wrapped your head around /that/ one, I'll explain. Joles was not what you'd call an ambitious member of the Camarilla. He was quiet, retiring, unassuming, and delighted in pleasures other than those of wielding power over the lives of millions of kindred and kine. Still, a vampire doesn't reach his advanced age and power in Camarilla society without either being elevated in position or murdered as a threat. In this manner Joles floated to the top of the vampire barrel, as it were. He might have been prince of his own city decades ago, perhaps even half or three-fourths of a century. But Joles preferred the company of his bride, Irene, to fancy get-togethers and elbow- rubbing sessions, which wearied him somewhat, and wearied his coatsleeves to an even greater extent. As a student in Paris he'd picked up the adage from his good friend Bossuet, "Coat-elbows are precious, and easily worn. Make sure to waste them away only on someone you love."
So, when the princedom of Seoul was being organized, one of his proponents pulled some strings and had him sent off to act as seneschal, with the hope of inspiring him to hunt for his own princedom once the war was over. Joly had had the dourest impression that he'd just been drafted.
It was the greatest blessing of his existence that Irene had been able to accompany him to Korea. Still, deep in thought as he was, he was somewhat surprised to find her lithe white arms wrap up around his chest and give him a gentle hug. "Oh," her quiet voice came from behind him, "That fellow looks like some kind of great puppy. What happened to him?"
Joles smiled. There WAS something about this colonel that lent an irremediably cute element to his dogged - or, as Irene would prefer, doggish - features. He folded up the note, and the pair looked down upon the torpored Brujah childe, Irene's head tucked snugly up under Joles' armpit.
"Hilson seems to have leapt before he looked; you might think that filling out those CTAF-3s in triplicate and having had the AOP form go across the desks of the entire court, he would have taken more time to make sure he gets the right guy. But I suppose that's Hilson for you," he added, and Irene chuckled agreement. "I hope he realizes that that form only gets across the Primogen council with the frequency that the Earth's polarity changes. I HOPE he doesn't have any ideas about going after another childe, after this fiasco."
Meanwhile Irene had fished the note from Joles' hand, and touched a finger to her nose in concern. Not a week old, never been presented to the Prince, and already slapped with the Brujah clan status "spineless." "What's going to happen to him?" she whimpered lightly, already having a feeling she knew the answer.
Joles looked into her eyes, confirming her fear for Henry's safety. This is a war zone, nobody wants to be stuck with an abandoned Brujah they'd have to show the ropes to.
"I'll see what I can do," he murmured, and kissed her lightly on her pretty, smooth forehead, parting her short black bangs with his lips.
"Sparky!" he called, releasing his wife and heading for the door. "Get the prince on the horn, will you? Patch it through to the house. And get the files on this Blake fellow over to me ASAP. I'm going to get dressed."
"Yes sir-" Joles barely heard the voice as he went to cross back over the dimly lit alley that passed for a street in Korea at night.
~
Joles had, of course, been correct in the prince's displeasure with the troupe of Brujah in question. But he had spoken well on the young vampire's behalf, bringing up various anecdotal material that had found its way into Blake's file, and furthermore commenting that the status 'spineless' given by a man such as Hilson could be taken any number of ways - most of them, despite the technically negative value of the given status, quite positive, when taken in context. The context being, of course, that Henry would present very little obstacle, and could even be a helpful puppet in one theater or another. Joles had spoken such things so delightfully that even the prince had to laugh over the assured incompetence of the new kindred. Once the prince showed such a high level of good humor, Joles spoke in a tone that retained its levity while simultaneously becoming a solemn vow.
"Yes, sir. See? Quite harmless. I'll even take full responsibility for him myself. You won't have to hear hide nor hair of him, and if, for one reason or another, he gets into mischief, I'll clean it up myself, and, with your permission, of course, be disposed of him."
He had turned his chair to face the wall. Through the studded leather seat, through the towel still wrapped around his neck and shoulders, a chilled breeze of air blew across his cooling earlobe, causing him to turn around. As expected, Irene stood in the doorway. Joly froze, his mouth open to reply to some tangential question the Prince had asked. He knew that face. That was the "I'm so sorry" face. That was the face she'd had on right before she told him that she'd set all his lab's rats. . . no. He didn't dare finish that thought.
He didn't have to. He dropped the phone onto his lap as she guiltily held up the dripping stake between her two fingers.
The swooshing of the cold-blowing breeze his wife seemed to continuously waft grew into a torrent on his ears as he unconsciously lifted the range of his hearing to clearly listen to the voice of the prince buzzing from the phone on his lap.
"Joles? Traveneau? Are you still there?"
"I'll get back to you on that, sir."
~
A clever little bit of influence shuffling was executed by a Nosferatu orderly who happened to owe his life to a small brotherhood of Brujah who pieced him back together to heal after he stepped on a landmine. You see, these particular Brujah had come to Korea to put their two cents in against the pink spread, and when they decided that it was time to swell their ranks, they called in the favor.
The Brujah supplied the rocket launcher, the ammo, the manpower, and the blood. The Nosferatu supplied a cleverly executed lie to the U.S. Army that the airplane of Lt. Col. Henry Blake had been shot down and had sunk to the bottom of the sea of Japan.
~
Henry, roused to consciousness, couldn't quite muster the force to open his eyelids. He felt wholly restful, incredibly peaceful, like one snuggled safe in bed after a hard day's work. A real bed, too, no army cot which held no rest for even the weariest of souls, and a real day's work, a few appointments, errands for the wife, some time in the lab, picking the kids up from preschool, no 30-hour stretches of nonstop surgery, amputations, and death. The frantic nightmare of the plane being struck, the plane plummeting - all these were far in the past, he could only remember them as an afterthought. As an afterthought, he smiled at the dream, at the embodiment of every man's fear that he'd not return to his loved ones alive. As he smiled, he knew, growing more aware, that he was not in bed, but sitting up. 'Still on the plane,' he reminded himself, 'must have landed already,' he added, hearing no noise of motors running or blades spinning. 'Maybe I'll just sit here and wait for one of the stewardesses to come wake me up,' he pondered, his posture much too comfortable to move from, his eyelids too heavy with sleep to lift. The thought of a pretty young stewardess tapping him on the shoulder with a high-pitched, "Sir.? Sir?" did much for his morale. But no such voice ever came.
Finally, with a heaving sigh, he lifted himself from the chair, opening his eyes and leaning down to grab his bag from under his seat. It wasn't there. Nor, in fact, was he on the airplane. As he stared down at his feet in the motion of grabbing the nonexistent bag, he saw that his feet were bare. A few feet away lay a pair of rolled up socks and a pair of tennis shoes. No trace of the sleek black beauties he'd bought to go home in. His pants, likewise, were one of his normal pairs, and his dress jacket was missing.
"Great jeezy peezy," he finally commented on the entire situation as a whole, as the semi-tattered state of his previously brand-new white shirt sunk in for him. Especially telling, the missing patch of hem cloth along the right-hand side of the shirt's bottom, which he had torn in a desperate attempt to staunch the wound of the stewardess who'd gotten - wounded--- in the ---------- explosion.
Henry stood stock still as the 'dream' came vividly rushing back upon him, and he leaned back to steady himself on the back of the chair on which he'd been sitting, not entirely surprised, or at least not registering any further shock, to find his vest draped there, and his (old) hat perched on one of the edges. Sitting down again, he slowly replaced these articles of clothing, pulling the fishing cap down firmly over his scalp.
Just as he was about to find the wherewithal to wonder how he could have possibly survived such a catastrophe apparently unscathed, a voice captured his attention.
"'Great Jeezy Peezy?'" questioned the questioner, a slim, short man with fetching brown curliques of hair and an incredulous snarl across his face. "Can't you do any better than that, soldier?" he sneered, as two more individuals moved into the doorway after him. Their vague semblance of army clothing made Henry feel more ill-at-ease rather than comforted. These people obviously didn't belong to the United States Army. Emphasizing the positive, they sure as hell didn't look Korean.
Leaning against the chair in an awkward attempt to appear at ease, Henry bobbed his head from side to side and, with a customary quirk of the brow, spoke, "Well, I didn't exactly expect to survive that plane crash, you see. I was just a little put off - ehh.. Henry Blake, by the way."
As Henry spoke, his usual timidity sloughed off a bit, his eyes sparkled with his innate charm, and to the unwary would appear to be the smoothest operator in all Korea, leaving the childish wit of Hawkeye Pierce by far in the dust. The Brujah, on the other hand, were what one might just call wary, and they looked amongst themselves at their new initiate's attempt to charm them. This was not at all what they were expecting. After all, if it flew in an army airplane, had army identification, and had army papers, it ought to have been a sparkling specimen of a brave U.S. soldier that they had just recruited. oughtn't it? He ought to have flown into a temper at having found himself re-dressed and so modified, and tried (unsuccessfully enough) to knock the block of his sire and the collective blocks of his comrades right off. oughtn't he? Something had gone terribly wrong.
The short gentleman with the brown locks suddenly disappeared, and Henry was jarred up into the air. It took a while for his thought processes to register the fact that the fellow was now under him, holding him up as easily as a stack of newly filled out supply requisition forms. Before the sight of the pointy wooden stick in the man's other hand could thoroughly sink in, the world went black. Again.
~
Joles Traveneau, Seneschal of Seoul, a tidy little fellow with an aquiline nose and an air of joviality tempered by one of impatience, was getting fed up, in several different definitions of the term. A warm bath, as per usual, had been drawn and was ready to slowly bring his body temperature up after his day's sleep had allowed it to cool so dramatically.
"Testing. . . don't you understand? TESTING." He repeated emphatically as he drew a few syringefuls of blood from the crook of his elbow, his use of the needle skillful with decades of practice. But it was no use. The lovely Korean concubines he'd allocated to this evening's bath and meal, still giddy and giggling from the kiss, didn't seem to give a flying hoo- hah about having the wool pulled over their eyes about their new companion. Attempting a graceful leap from the water to the floor, Joles was knocked slightly off-balance by one of his toes catching on the rim of the tub, but was able to land on his feet nonetheless. And all without spilling a drop. Perfect. Wrapping the syringes up in a washcloth, he sheathed his steaming, well-fed body in no less than 8 towels to insulate it from the cold as he opened the door and headed across the street -- if one could call it that -- to the main office of the Evac Hospital.
His clerk, a highly useful fellow despite the appearance of disorder that was embodied in the catastrophe that was the office, had his feet up on the desk, was nursing a soda pop, and was paging through an issue of National Geographic.
To an outside observer it would seem that the young man didn't notice, or perhaps just didn't care, that Joles took up the soda from the desk, and took it over to a small, grungy wall-mirror, unwrapping the syringes and beginning to slowly add the drawn blood to the brown fuzzy liquid. The seneschal looked in the mirror, squinting a bit at himself, and called over to the boy, "How's the evening going, Sparky?"
"Oh, just fine, sir. Radar's right, if you skip all the scientific stuff, this mag's pretty good." He randily eyed the half-naked tribal women displayed in its pages until the modified soda was returned to his hand, along with a curt but cheerful, "Drink up."
"Mm-hmm," Sparky agreed. Somehow or other, after the second or third time, this blood thing gets a lot less weird. A few moments' worth of silence later, the clerk felt on odd prickle on the back of his neck, a feeling like there was something he ought to be doing. Looking up to Colonel Traveneau, he noted his bright baby blue eyes fixed seriously on the opposite side of the room.
"Oh-" was all Sparky could get out.
"Sparky." Joles interrupted. "What is that?"
Feet came flying down from the table, the magazine was shut in a matter of instants after Sparky got over the shock of forgetting about the staked vampire in the corner. "Um, the Brujah left him for you, sir. It's-" he checked the topmost papers on the mountain of them on his desk, "Lieutenant Colonel Blake." The name, of course, was familiar to him, but it was only after it passed between his lips that he recognized where it was he knew it from. His eyes widened, but he said nothing, not having been asked.
Joles, for his part, took no note of the sloppy ghoul's epiphany. Approaching the body with a pert little frown, he held out his hands to either side. "Gloves," he muttered, and Sparky duly shot out of his chair and gloved his regnant. "Never know where these Brujah have been," he explained, a picture of perfect seriousness as he stepped forward and gently tore off the note that the Brujah had stapled to the end of the stake.
His eyes scanned the paper. The prince wasn't going to be happy.
~
In just about any other circumstance, of course, a vampire in the position of Joles "Joly" Traveneau would never be in the particular position in which he was currently situated. Once you've wrapped your head around /that/ one, I'll explain. Joles was not what you'd call an ambitious member of the Camarilla. He was quiet, retiring, unassuming, and delighted in pleasures other than those of wielding power over the lives of millions of kindred and kine. Still, a vampire doesn't reach his advanced age and power in Camarilla society without either being elevated in position or murdered as a threat. In this manner Joles floated to the top of the vampire barrel, as it were. He might have been prince of his own city decades ago, perhaps even half or three-fourths of a century. But Joles preferred the company of his bride, Irene, to fancy get-togethers and elbow- rubbing sessions, which wearied him somewhat, and wearied his coatsleeves to an even greater extent. As a student in Paris he'd picked up the adage from his good friend Bossuet, "Coat-elbows are precious, and easily worn. Make sure to waste them away only on someone you love."
So, when the princedom of Seoul was being organized, one of his proponents pulled some strings and had him sent off to act as seneschal, with the hope of inspiring him to hunt for his own princedom once the war was over. Joly had had the dourest impression that he'd just been drafted.
It was the greatest blessing of his existence that Irene had been able to accompany him to Korea. Still, deep in thought as he was, he was somewhat surprised to find her lithe white arms wrap up around his chest and give him a gentle hug. "Oh," her quiet voice came from behind him, "That fellow looks like some kind of great puppy. What happened to him?"
Joles smiled. There WAS something about this colonel that lent an irremediably cute element to his dogged - or, as Irene would prefer, doggish - features. He folded up the note, and the pair looked down upon the torpored Brujah childe, Irene's head tucked snugly up under Joles' armpit.
"Hilson seems to have leapt before he looked; you might think that filling out those CTAF-3s in triplicate and having had the AOP form go across the desks of the entire court, he would have taken more time to make sure he gets the right guy. But I suppose that's Hilson for you," he added, and Irene chuckled agreement. "I hope he realizes that that form only gets across the Primogen council with the frequency that the Earth's polarity changes. I HOPE he doesn't have any ideas about going after another childe, after this fiasco."
Meanwhile Irene had fished the note from Joles' hand, and touched a finger to her nose in concern. Not a week old, never been presented to the Prince, and already slapped with the Brujah clan status "spineless." "What's going to happen to him?" she whimpered lightly, already having a feeling she knew the answer.
Joles looked into her eyes, confirming her fear for Henry's safety. This is a war zone, nobody wants to be stuck with an abandoned Brujah they'd have to show the ropes to.
"I'll see what I can do," he murmured, and kissed her lightly on her pretty, smooth forehead, parting her short black bangs with his lips.
"Sparky!" he called, releasing his wife and heading for the door. "Get the prince on the horn, will you? Patch it through to the house. And get the files on this Blake fellow over to me ASAP. I'm going to get dressed."
"Yes sir-" Joles barely heard the voice as he went to cross back over the dimly lit alley that passed for a street in Korea at night.
~
Joles had, of course, been correct in the prince's displeasure with the troupe of Brujah in question. But he had spoken well on the young vampire's behalf, bringing up various anecdotal material that had found its way into Blake's file, and furthermore commenting that the status 'spineless' given by a man such as Hilson could be taken any number of ways - most of them, despite the technically negative value of the given status, quite positive, when taken in context. The context being, of course, that Henry would present very little obstacle, and could even be a helpful puppet in one theater or another. Joles had spoken such things so delightfully that even the prince had to laugh over the assured incompetence of the new kindred. Once the prince showed such a high level of good humor, Joles spoke in a tone that retained its levity while simultaneously becoming a solemn vow.
"Yes, sir. See? Quite harmless. I'll even take full responsibility for him myself. You won't have to hear hide nor hair of him, and if, for one reason or another, he gets into mischief, I'll clean it up myself, and, with your permission, of course, be disposed of him."
He had turned his chair to face the wall. Through the studded leather seat, through the towel still wrapped around his neck and shoulders, a chilled breeze of air blew across his cooling earlobe, causing him to turn around. As expected, Irene stood in the doorway. Joly froze, his mouth open to reply to some tangential question the Prince had asked. He knew that face. That was the "I'm so sorry" face. That was the face she'd had on right before she told him that she'd set all his lab's rats. . . no. He didn't dare finish that thought.
He didn't have to. He dropped the phone onto his lap as she guiltily held up the dripping stake between her two fingers.
The swooshing of the cold-blowing breeze his wife seemed to continuously waft grew into a torrent on his ears as he unconsciously lifted the range of his hearing to clearly listen to the voice of the prince buzzing from the phone on his lap.
"Joles? Traveneau? Are you still there?"
"I'll get back to you on that, sir."
~