Completed Amazing Art

[Amolina]

She decided to draw this show out by investigating the top too. It was easy to take just a little bit of berried and glossy gel and taste it. The taste was sweet, wonderful and intense. The gel felt cold and smooth. Delicious. Carefully she took a little more of it. It was too good to be true.

But she had her coffee too. Perhaps Xavier would speak if she drank some of the coffee instead and looked at him instead of at the huge pastry. She took the cup and tasted the coffee. It was superb.

Xavier laughed.“Well?”he said. “We will speak about other things once you are finished with this.”

What he really meant was ‘get it done now’. She could hear it in his tone. So she took the fork and started…the pastry felt a little bit wobbly to be honest, but cutting the first piece went just fine. She got a piece of the gel and berries top, some of the fluffy middle and a small piece of the brittle bottom cake. She also managed to move the fork to her mouth without dropping any of it.

Now when she could taste all the parts of the pasty at same time it was so delicious that she nearly felt it was worth the five gold mizas. She forced herself to eat it slowly, in a civilized way. No problems she thought to herself, while she quickly licked a stray crumb of cake from her lower lip and went to on the eat the rest of the pastry in the same way. Every time she took a new piece of the pastry she glanced at Xavier over it, in order to try to figure out if her acting had any effect and in that case what.

At one point she thought she saw him wince.

Amolina was quite focused on her task and her company was totally quiet. She ate on, theatrically. As it turned out it was easy work. The pastry was very light and not at all as overwhelming as she had feared. It was simply a masterpiece of baker-craft, she thought. It could make you forget everything around you even in a situation like this. Somewhere halfways through the eating, the pastry had fallen down and lost all its former elegance but by then she hadn’t care anymore.

The plate was finally empty. She looked up at her silent companion.

He looked back.

An odd and silent chime followed. Then Xavier put his cup on the table and this seemed to mean that act one of the odd surprise job performance was over.

[Amolina]

“Let’s go upstairs and have a look at the art exhibition” Xavier said. “Remember that this is a job and you are playing the role as my intriguing lady for the evening. Give nobody reason to think anything else. You can improvise and act on. If I say something that surprises you, just play along and make it seem like you know…everything. “

He pushed his chair back and stood, and Amolina immediately did the same. Once again he put her hand on his arm and once again she followed him. They walked up the stairs like they were just a couple of visitors like all others to this masquerade-like event, whatever it was about. It had still not been explained to her what she was attending. And she still didn’t know what their meeting was about, bar that she was kind of acting in a play, tough she wasn’t sure it could be called a play.

But she feared he would expect her to have lots of useful information to give him about the Nitrozian-Moletta project. She hadn’t. Truth was they hadn’t achieved a thing so far. Nobody had started any research of importance yet, at least not as far as Amolina knew.

They reached the top of the stairs and Xavier steered her to the right side of the lobby up there. They went through an open doorway and entered a room where the walls were full of paintings. It was also full of people, all wearing masks and none of them looking at the paintings. Amolina watched them and felt a bit…disapproving. It was like they didn’t care about the art at all, and to them the gallery was only the setting for a party, no more. Some of the laughs she could hear were definitely very false too. Amolina could make false laughs, but when she made them they seemed to be real. The false laughs she heard other people do now smacked of pretense and bad acting.

A woman Amolina didn’t know walked closer and stared at them through her elaborate mask, like she was memorizing every detail she could see. Feeling uncomfortable, Amolina found herself moving slightly closer to Xavier. It was only a small movement she did, but Xavier promptly moved closer too, and his arm came up around her back. He was suddenly giving her a very warm and affectionate smile - Amolina was flabbergasted but remembered her orders and played along as the knowledgeable actress she was. Obviously her role included making it look like they were very friendly with each other.

[Amolina]

“So!” The woman’s voice was somewhat shrill and she seemed upset. “I had thought you would invite me to come with you here. May I ask who your…lady companion is? A slave maybe ?”

“Good evening, Cicely” Xavier said in a firm voice. “It’s a masquerade. And it’s not polite to ask who’s behind the mask, an evening like this.“

He pushed Amolina slightly on and she started walking. She had no idea what was going on. “Who was that?” she whispered, leaning closer to Xavier as they walked, making it look like she was comfortable with being this close to him. As the woman had suggested that she might be a slave, Amolina decided to use the intended insult for the acting. She started to move the way she had seen bird kelvics move at KRI, nearly human movements, but with something light and fluttering to them. She moved her head discretely from side to side like that was her natural way to look around in a place, and moved like she was a duck kelvic where she walked on at Xavier’s side.

Nobody else stopped them to speak.

She felt it was time to try to get to business, so she gave up about waiting for him to speak first and asked why he had asked her to come and what it was he wanted. As they had walked on through the room and reached another doorway where they were quite alone she added that she found it incautious to meet like this, in a public place, and so easy to recognize too, with only the masks as scant disguise.

“Did you want to meet me in a dark alley, all alone and far away from any people that could see or hear something? It could be arranged.”

Amolina didn’t know what to answer when he put it like that. She followed silently when he steered her through next doorway. There were more paintings in the new room they had entered, but no people. It was also a much smaller room than the first one. “It’s much better to meet here than in a dark deserted alley, isn’t it? People will think we had coffee, then mingled at a party. That’s all.” He shut the door.

“Oh.” Amolina waited for him to continue.

[Amolina]

“If somebody opens the door and stumbles in I will pretend to kiss you. We will act like that’s the reason we went here. That will explain everything to anybody, we will be left alone and then continue to speak.“ He made a pause. “Now. What do you have to tell me about the activity in a certain research project? Which results has been achieved so far? ”

She remembered that he only knew the official cover for the research project, and nothing about what was planned behind the coulisses. What she could do was tell him all she knew about the cover, the medical care part and the plans to improve the general level of health in Ravok. As she owned 1/3 or the project and had her own profit to protect, she was going to tell him as little as possible.

“It has been a slow start” she said. “And the tests have mostly not given anything. But the goal is to make more tests and eventually start a program for making the ravokian citizens immune to some diseases and such. It’s a long way to go, but I guess it will be very profitable once the medicines are invented.”

Xavier laughed out loudly but composed himself at once. “So.” He watched her closely, searchingly. “I can see that it’s still in a very early phase. I’m not silly, I do understand that it takes time, but I want to be well informed all the same. You will report again. And one day… there will be new medicines many ravokians will want to buy…and then you'll be rich.”

He smiled at her. “It’s a really good thing that you aren’t married, isn’t it? When you own part of a promising business your chances to find somebody suitable will be much better than they are today. You’ll need someone to take care of you. And your business. Somebody able to keep you and your profit safe.”

[Amolina]

Amolina could hardly believe he had said these words. She had begun to guess where things were headed. It made her feel she was dealing with unbelievable intentions that could hardly be true.

He must be kidding…but she was certainly not going to ask him to explain what he meant. And in particular, she wasn’t going to ask him if he was married, or if he was looking for a promising business to take over by marrying the owner.

Instead she just looked blankly at him. “I have told you all I know” she said. “I’d like to leave now, if this was all.”

He smiled again. “I will contact you again later on. Like I have already said, don’t try to find me, I will find you. And if you aren’t insisting in meetings in dark alleys in the middle of the night, it will be places like this. I take it that will cost me a fortune in pastries, but I’ll surive.”

Amolina just nodded. She wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

Xavier paid her, first for the show she had done at The Spot first eve of winter and he paid her for this evenings acting job as well.This was done in a slightly amused way like he for some reason found it fun to see her take the money and put them in her pocket.

He escorted her out through the rooms and downstairs. They went out to catch ravonsalas but found the world changed beyond their wildest imaginations. It was snowing in Ravok. Big silent white flakes fell from the sky, gathering on the ground and on top of the roofs and everything else if fell on.

The city was turning white, all white.

No ravonsala’s were in sight and they ended up walking all the way over bridges, along walkways and streets. Xavier insisted on following her home, again. He had a new cloak, she noticed. It was a bit embarrassing, but she was actually wearing his previous cloak…it was really bad form to wear it. She ought to be ashamed to wear the cloak of a blackmailer who was putting pressure on her and forcing her to spy on her own business. She knew…but she tried to not think about it. The cloak was so warm and so luxurious. She didn’t want to part from it just because it had been Xavier’s.

“You are a performer, an actress, an artist” he said after a while. “A star, if you would go for it. Why would you want to bother with lots of lackluster drudgery, when you could lead a glamorous and luxurious life, be admired on the stage…and admired outside the stage as well ?”

Amolina avoided the question by speaking about the snow and the weather problems of this winter, all the way home. Xavier left her at the main door of the NHC block. She went up to her apartment, but didn’t go to bed. Instead she went to the window and continued to watch the new white world outside for a while.

And the snow kept falling.

[Verin Rush]

Amolina

Knowledge :

Skills

Skill	XP
Acting	+4
Composure	+1
Disguise	+2
Impersonation	+1
Investigation	+2
Observation	+5
Philosophy	+1
Rhetoric	+1

Lores

*Expensive Food Tastes Sublime
*Informants > Interrogation Subject
*The Conflict of Loyalty and Pressure to Betray
*The Frustration of Waiting
*Xavier: Requires Acting Services Too

Micellaneous :

Injuries

*None

Loot/Expenses

*-50GM for objects purchased in Azure Reflections
-- -1GM (Cloth Bag); -9GM (Mask); -40GM (Luxurious Handbag)

____________________________________________

Notes

*Loved reading this thread - was interesting to see Amolina struggling over her situation, and the internalisations were really good. It is nice to see that there's a darker side to Amolina's work with the NMSS, and I'll be interested to see if she caves o:
*I haven't awarded loot if you're using this as a Job Thread, but send me a PM if I'm mistaken in that matter! :3 The uh... items seem to cost a lot o.O
*Two points for the use of a disguise and then realising how rubbish it was!
*Just a funny thread, really, I did giggle at points... I quite like Xavier >.>

Feel free to PM me with questions, comments, or concerns, if you have any.
Also, remember to either delete your grade request or edit it as 'graded'.
Thank ye!