Adela of Arc

The Tango Lesson (Part 1)

2008-05-02T01:24:29Z

So, I have been intending to write up and post a little portion of Adela's past that I have alluded to (in hopes of explaining away the improbability of her knowledge of the Tango in 1880's Paris). After encouragement by friendlies, I sat down with the honest attempt to get it down and posted. It was crap, as writing often is when you restrict creative writing with obligation. Luckily enough, however, I recently found myself on a seven hour plane trip and bored. With such conditions, I tried again, and was considerably more pleased with the result. So, here it is, The Tango Lesson: or How Adela Learned to Dance the Tango, and Other Fun NPC's You'll Likely Never Hear of Again... Except Arturo. There is still a little more to be said about him. I changed the end of the first part and so I'm going to have to entirely write the second part, but it will happen... eventually. Until then throw on some Carlos Gardel or Gotan Project and Enjoy!

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Adela had not always been as dour as the citizens of Paris knew her to be now. There was once a time in which her child-like innocence and countenance and ready laugh garnered her favor with all who met her. She made friends easily of her colleagues, classmates, and the young women that they were courting. In exchange for her affection, they showed her the world... or what little of it could be seen in Paris by those possessing slim pocketbooks. “Universities can only teach you those things that have been written down,” declared Jacques, the communist living on his father’s allowance. “What good is Latin and Greek when we are among the suffering of the Proletariat.

It was this way that Adela found herself in one of the more “bohemian” of cafés that the city offered: a place that her father would have declared “unsuitable for a lady of breeding, and her mother, “the very cesspool of Hell itself.” Late in the evening, after more wine had been consumed than considered polite, the entire, assembled party was gathered together on the main floor. Seemingly without instruction, they began pushing chairs and tables against the walls merrily, and collected at the edges of the space around two men at the center. It was explained to them that these men were to demonstrate a dance more scandalously exotic than the Waltz had ever been. The shorter, reedier man of the pair introduced himself as Monsieur Perrault, the translator for the taller, darker man beside him, Señor Arturo Perez. Señor Arturo struck Adela far stronger than Monsieur Perrault - Indeed, stronger than any other man had before. He had an erect, slender bearing with his high, Argentinean brow complementary to his strong, sharp features. A pair of grey, green eyes gazing piercingly from beneath heavy lids, gave the impression that his face had been carved from marble. His dark hair was well oiled and fastened at the nape of his neck, giving him a regal, old Spanish appearance, and Adela was instantly smitten. In broken and heavily accented French, he warmly thanked the assembled party for their hospitality and generosity.

With the assistance of Monsieur Perrault, Señor Arturo attempted an eloquent explanation of just what Tango was, beyond technical steps and etiquette, the very passion and inspiration of it, what made it so scandalous to the upper classes. These concepts were perhaps too poetic for poor Perrault, who was laughingly having all the difficulty on the world translating Arturo’s rapid Argentine Spanish, copiously laced with Lunfardo.

Finally, Arturo gave up trying to explain it so crudely, deciding that a visual display might more adequately express it. Turning, he addressed the crowd with open arms. “Por favor, a lovely Mademoiselle for helping me?” he asked warmly, a lopsided smile on his lips. The young women in the crowd knew well enough to turn away, blushingly. Even those of a more dubious morality tittered to each other at the boldness of this foreigner. Only Adela was too naïve to not turn away and found herself locked in by that piercing green gaze. Arturo gave her a dazzling smile of the whitest teeth she had ever seen and brought one of the hands theatrically towards her. “Con permiso, señorita?” he asked lowly, the words slipping off his tongue like murmurs from a lover. No stammering protests or blushing in the world could save her from this fate as her companions laughed and cajoled her loudly, pushing her into his arms. “A brave woman!” Arturo declared to the laughing crowd, who knew Adela’s reservation better than he.

“I- I don’t dance it!” Adela whispered, hot with mortification, “I have not learned the steps.”

“No steps,” he smiled warmly, “It is what makes Tango the most beautiful.” Leaning close to her, he placed his thumb and forefinger at her wrist murmuring, “You only must trust me for the Tango to happen. Can you be trusting me?” He ever so slightly began rubbing the pulse points of her wrist with his thumb.

She couldn’t explain why, if it was the ghosting sensation of his thumb at her wrist, but in that moment, she trusted him more than any other person in the world. “Yes,” she whispered in reply.

Gradually the room fell to a hushed silence. Drawing her close to him, he directed her arm over his shoulder until she was on the balls of her feet, pressing her upper body against his. She had been afraid that she would make a horrible partner, given the difference in their height, but now she found that she seemed to fit, as though there was a groove cut into him especially for her. “Don’t think,” he instructed, as Perrault sat at a piano across the room and rustled open a piece of music, “just listen to my body always.”

For a moment it seemed as though she hung suspended. The rest of the room, silent in anticipation, melted away to a fuzzy nothingness and all that remained was the feeling of Arturo’s steady breathing against her chest. With a few chords of introduction, he grasped her free hand, stepping forward. It was extraordinary. As though they had been joined with electricity, Adela could feel it, sense which foot he was putting the most weight on, the tightening of his muscles as he took that step. She had never realized or thought much on the sheer musculature required to take a step, but here, in such close proximity and in such study of the processes, she finds herself so awed that she almost misses his next.

And so, they danced. He seemed to read her emotions and slowly began unfolding propriety, showing her sensations that she would not understand fully for several more years, advancing as she relaxed. As the tempo heightened for the finish, she became aware of her breath coming quickly, but more intriguingly, that his breathing matched hers. As he took her around and back, grazing her legs with his, each catch and interruption of her travels was met with a tighter grip, a longer, more sensuous hold, until it seemed as though they were meeting in some graceful act of passion.

When the final strains of the piano had died away, the very last thing that she wanted to do was leave his arms. They were both out of breath, but she was not quite sure why. The only thing in the world were those green eyes looking down on her, his osculatory lips quirked in the slightest of smiles. The applause broke his gaze from hers as he turned to grin and bow. He gestured to Adela, warranting cheers from her fiends, and raised the hand that he still held, pressing it to his lips and giving her a meaningful look. Bending, he kissed her cheek decidedly, whispering, “I will dance again at --- the Thursday next.” Then, kissing her other cheek and locking her with a final stare, he was gone, leaving her to the sea of congratulations and her own consternation.

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The Tombs of Our Fathers

2007-01-20T10:13:37Z

Name: Adela Scribbles (pt. 4)
Rating: Everyone
Summary: So I had originally intended to do one more Adela entry before I took her back to Paris (mostly because I miss her there and Louis scares me... the other twisted individual in my head for those who are confused). While looking for the next post however, I found that it began awkwardly and I remembered why. So, here's just a short little piece. I like it because it best exemplifies what my band conductor used to say: "Once you know the rules, then you can break them." Those who love making sentence diagrams will hate this post. Also, those of you regularly read my stuff probably have started to notice a pattern in my writing as far a smells are concerned. I don't know why, but I remember things by smells so therefore, everyone else does too
P.S. Adela has a thing about rats based on an incident in her childhood. It didn't scar her mentally in any way other than giving her a touch of Murophobia. But you'll have to RP with her around rats in order to get that story ;)

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Her next task was to go into the lumber room. She knew that there was a trunk of old clothing, her father’s, so old that it would never have fetched a price. It had been deemed only good enough for charities. The room was unusually empty, luckily. She hated it when she couldn’t see into the corners or had to dig through boxes and large cloth bags to find what she was looking for. She might risk discovering a rat. The trunk was tucked into a corner of the mostly vacant room, well-protected, but out of the way. She felt as though she were disturbing a tomb, so quiet was the room and preserved the trunk. Lifting the lid, her nose was assaulted by the musty smell of old dust, and damp, and mothballs, and her father. She sat, rocked back on her heels in the guttering candlelight, a sharp pain beneath her ribs. There was the hunting jacket that he had ripped on their last trip to the seaside, his scarf that he used to wear every winter for as long as she could remember, still sweet with sweat and the smell of travel, the opera gloves that he had torn that night they had waltzed together in the parlor as he waited for her mother to finish preparing herself for the evening, his smoking jacket, still pungent with the scent of his spiced cigarettes that he used to smoke after dinner- just one, for his health, he’d said with a smile. One by one, each article she removed brought rushing back another memory, another ghost of her father. She –had- opened a tomb, the mothballs raining into her lap rasping against each other like whispers in the flickering darkness.
She finally found what she had braved the lumber room for. Neatly folded, in the bottom of the trunk, were the trousers. Each pair was stained or torn to a varying degree, but nothing that her limited mending skills wouldn’t be able to easily remedy. Four pairs came out of the trunk, along with a pair of unraveling wool mittens, likewise easily repaired. It amazed her how they had taken things like the price of clothing for granted when they were wealthy. Saving it for later repair and donation, was acceptable, however wearing something with a small mending job had been completely taboo, not to mention more than a year or a season old. It disgusted her now to think of the waste. Hearing a rustle along the opposite wall, she leapt to her feet, eyes wide. Taking the clothing that she wasn’t using, she pitched it, hodge-podge, into the trunk. She would come back and fold it neatly, when it was light out, she thought, gathering up her spoils. She wasn’t going to spend another minute in this place now that the rats had come out.

Scissors

2007-01-17T09:53:19Z

Name: Adela Scribbles (pt. 3)
Rating: Everyone
Summary: Adela finally reaches "home," soaking wet and greeted by a silent and mostly empty manor. More internal Adela metamorphosis. You actually get another one of my favorite NPC's in this one... Even if she is sleeping. Clara's such a cute kid, I feel bad putting her through this.

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     Her mother was out when she got to the manor and the hallways were still and silent without the servants. All for the best. No doubt her moistened state would have alarmed Amélie. Her teeth chattering as she took the stairs, it felt as though her hair had frozen on the short walk from the mill pond. Adela closeted herself away in her old room and peeled off the soggy gown, her damp underclothes, straight to the cold, clammy skin. Grabbing an old wool blanket from the top of her wardrobe, she shook the dust out of it and wrapped it about her thin shoulders to catch the water dripping from her hair and to hide her painfully bony frame as she rummaged through the wardrobe. She found what she was looking for: dry undergarments, an old walking skirt and a tired blouse. Sliding them over her skin renewed her energy almost as much as the water closing over her head had.
     Now for the most painful stage of her journey... Clara’s room. The little girl was resting easily, her tiny chest rising and falling in shallow, yet steady breaths. She was so pale against the sheets, her little face pinched and aged. Little Clara; no child as sweet as this deserved Potter’s Field. Adela sat for some time, willing what little warmth she possessed into the girl’s fingers. After a time, the sun ducked into the shadows, briefly illuminating the curtains a vibrant orange, to a glowing fuchsia, to a dusky violet. Clara couldn’t die, not like Papa, slow and weak and scared. And within that moment, Adela knew what had to be done. Rising from Clara’s bed, she strode purposefully from the room back to her own. There was so much that had changed about it that she was not sure if she could find what she sought, but there they were: her silver sewing scissors in the top drawer of her desk, still as sharp as when she had left four years ago. The briefest of thoughts fleeted across her mind, “why hadn’t these been sold?” but she shrugged it off, setting it down to fate, and carried them to her vanity. The glint of the metal fixed her attention, reflecting the dying light of the window. Striking a match, she lit the sooty lamp, basking her face in a flickering glow in the mirror. Her hair had mostly dried by now, hanging down her back in a mass of curls, a few damp strands limply interspersed throughout.
     She stared at her face for some time, strange in the weak light, the dark under her eyes more pronounced. “One shouldn’t look at themselves in the dark,” she thought to herself, “they will see only monsters.” She had been a fool. She had become weak and vain and selfish, losing sight of what truly mattered. When had she thought of her mother and sisters in Versailles before she received that letter? When had she last done something for the cause? She had lost her vision and the only way she could get it back was to sacrifice what was left of her.
     Almost as though she were performing some religious ceremony, she lifted a lock of her hair. Curling and glossy, it shone for a moment in the weak light of the lamp. In one calm and fluid motion, she picked up the scissors with her free hand. Hesitating for only a moment, she took a deep breath and closed the blades; the metallic rasp of metal against metal seemed to echo around the room. When she looked, there was her hair, one long, limp lock, lying like a fallen soldier in her hand, only three inches or so curling on her head. The first had been the hardest to bear and the other cuts came far easier. As she cut, she laid the strands carefully across the vanity, increasing in thickness until it appeared as though a girl had laid thrown her hair over the top of it.
     It was a liberating feeling, this lightness, coolness. She would have to wear a hat now or she would most certainly catch her death, but it didn’t matter. At first glance, the curls tufted up in a way that it appeared her hair was gathered simply at the back of her head as usual, a few curls falling over her forehead. She smiled at herself in the mirror for a moment and looked down at her hair. An expression of horror crept slowly into her face. She had shorn off her hair! That only part of her appearance that she truly treasured, even if she so carelessly arranged it. Her beautiful hair! But then that long dormant Adela returned, stoic, rational, and cold. This hair would fetch a high price, enough to at least pay for Clara’s medicine. Besides, hair would grow back. No doubt within the year it would be long enough to arrange once more. She took a deep breath, calming herself once more and reached down, extracting a ribbon from one of the drawers of her vanity. Her fingers only shaking slightly, she bound her tresses into a neat bundle.

Baptism

2007-01-14T11:17:46Z

Name: Adela Scribbles (pt. 2)
Rating: PG (There are some rather emorific thoughts and Adela shows most of her leg near the end... can't let the kiddies see that)
Summary: Still traveling, Adela walks across the countryside of Versailles, to clear her head and as she is too cheap to hire a cab. Warning: This is very long winded with several unnecessarily cumbersome sentences, but I liked some of the imagery, so you get it anyhow. That and the baptism scene is important (no, Adela is not all of a sudden a spiritual person, she's not even aware that I set her up for it, but it's a necessary transition... I think. That and Dupree is hot... yes, I did fall in love with an NPC that exists only in free write).

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     Adela walked from the station. The air was brisk, but not bitingly cold as it had been in Paris. She could not afford a cab in any case. Besides, she needed the air to clear her head after such a long time in the cramped steerage car. The task ahead of her was not going to be a pleasant one. How was she to convince her mother that if they did not auction the manor, the ancestral home of her late husband, the place where her children had been born and grown up, and move to smaller quarters, they were all going to starve? She did not relish the idea of the conversation. Unable to find a second means of employment, she had been sending “surplus funds” to her mother. It was beginning to skeletize her already emaciated frame. Her face, due in part to her brief stint in the jail, had not lost its pinched and haggard expression. It aged her face to where she was beginning to look like a woman of forty, rather than one of twenty-two. This combined with her time spent in the dark bookstore, strained and rimmed her eyes red. It was surprising to her that any men desired her at all.
     Her head was bare and she found comfort in the breeze that ruffled her hair like chilled fingers. She liked the winter in Versailles, the meadows turned a steely color beneath the frosty sky, and the ponds lay like puddles of mercury, copses of leafless trees surrounding them like sculpture creatures inked in silver. It set her mood at ease after all the brick and stone of the city. It felt good to be able to see unbroken sky again. All of your family’s problems would be over if you just marry a rich man, that voice in her head repeated over and over like a rhythm. But Jasper? There had to be another alternative. So far, however, her assessment of available males in the theatre quarter had not returned promising results. So many were as without money as she, that she knew any search would be fruitless at best. The only other candidate seemed to be Dragos, however she hardly believed that a connection with an opium-addled, Gypsy blacksmith would solve anyone’s problems, especially hers.
     But she did not want to be married! This internal cry drove her to passionately kick at a stone in the roadway and thrust her gloveless fingers deeper into her pockets. The battle was a difficult one. Whose interest would win out? On the one hand, her family could live in greater comfort, Clara would have a proper education and not spend her young fingers working lace, her mother would stop aging so quickly, and poor Isabel could regain that feeling of social importance that she had lost. On the other hand, how much store was she to put in her own happiness? Had her sacrifice been great enough yet? Could she cease her self-torment, end the destruction of her self respect? It was a problem.
      Looking up, Adela realized that her feet had taken her to the mill pond, a lovely place in summer, but poetic in it’s starkness in winter. Veering from the road, she took the well-worn path around, the ground soft from some recent rain. An exhausted breath escaped from her lips and she sat heavily in the dead grasses hiding the water’s edge. Her hair had fallen a mile or so back and hung at a cumbersome knot at the back of her head. Pulling the last pins from it, she shook it out, letting the wild waves rustle across her back as she stared grimly out over the water. Marriage, it was the baneful necessity of her sex. She had no rights with it, but she starved without it. There was no way to win this cruel trick. Not even thinking, she peeled off her coat, letting it fall, cradled by the stiff grasses, and set to work at undoing her shoes. A breeze caught the thin fabric of her blouse, but the chill exhilarated her. First one boot, then the other, then one stocking, then the other, the methodical stripping of her foot wear seemed to occupy all of her available thought process, and once she was free, she wriggled her toes in the open air. There was no conceivable reason that she stood in one fluid movement, ignoring the dried blades that clung to her skirts, almost as though they were pleading the reevaluation of her next move, and stepped into the frigid mill pond. She only balked slightly at the shock her body received, but she continued to walk, carefully, easily, her toes gripping the chill silt at the bottom, until she could feel herself being lifted from it. She gave into the slight current, leaning back as that icy stream carried her towards the center.
     The cool water felt so good over her skin as she floated, like some collegiate Ophelia, her loosened hair drifting around her head. The weak sunlight filtered through the willows that leaned over the water to meet her, their leafless tendrils tangling through her fingers and brushing across her face. The cold had turned to numb, and for the first time in a long time, she let that numbness consume her. Closing her eyes, she submersed herself, giving in to the cold silence of the water, the smallest of bubbles escaping her lips. The incentive to stay there, suspended and weightless in that darkness was too great. It teased at her mind like the weeds twisting around her fingers, like sirens calling her deeper, deeper, and she considered giving into it. It would be so easy to drift into those coaxing weeds, give herself over to that inky sleep. No more pain, not more frustration. But what of her family? What would become of little Clara if she were not there to provide what little bread and meat that she could? And with that thought, she lost the last of her oxygen, breaking through the mirror surface of the water with a gasp and blinking in the light.
    Adela realized suddenly, how far she had drifted from her shoes and coat at the same time that the first chill hit her. She also realized that her antics were no longer unnoticed. Jorges Dupree, the miller’s son, stood on the shore, half out of his shepherds coat and in his stocking feet. His dog, ran along the shore, barking in anxious yelps and whines as he tried to will himself into the water without his master’s permission. Instantly annoyed, she worked her arms in a breast stroke and made her way to the silty bottom once more. Standing, she gathered up her sodden skirts, water streaming from the hems and the bottom of her hair, and leveled her gaze on the blushing young man. The dog broke passed the water line with yelps and splashing that sent a formerly undisturbed flock of geese into hysteric flight. “Good afternoon, Monsieur,” she uttered with the gravest semblance of civility that she possessed and strode jerkily past him, as though there was nothing at all unusual about finding a young woman dripping wet, hair all askance, walking through the marsh land in her bare feet. Another cool breeze hit her and she shivered violently, hoping that she was far enough away from the young man that he would not notice.
     She flopped back down onto the turf in embarrassment and tried to ignore that the young man was still watching her. He shrugged his jacket on, not looking away until he turned his attention to his own boots. Adela wrung her hair, annoyed when he began staring at her again, silently, until she began to feel uneasy and indecent. Her chin jutted out defiantly and she gritted her teeth, as much out of frustration as to keep them from chattering. “And what brings you out to the mill pond, Monsieur?” she asked brusquely as she pulled on her first stocking. As soon as she asked, she wished that she hadn’t. It was his father’s mill after all, wasn’t it she who was trespassing? The man didn’t answer, however. When she looked over, he was studying a clump of marsh grass uncomfortably, probing it with his walking stick. Ah yes, she was showing almost to her knees, and she was no longer in Paris. That sort of behavior made young men blush out here. She chewed on the inside of her lip, replacing her boots with dexterity and shrugging her coat gratefully over her thin shoulders. Cold, she couldn’t think of anything interesting to say, so she rose from the grass, her joints still stiff from the chill and wrapped her scarf around her neck. Nodding her head, she started off at a brisk walk across the fields. If she was lucky, she’d catch pneumonia and end the continuous humiliations that she so willingly heaped upon herself.

Welcome to Random Adela Scribbles

2007-01-13T09:18:58Z

Because Adela exists just as much outside Quartier de Theatre, I decided to share what goes on inside the dark cavern that is my addled brain. Bring a torch and if you find your self becoming alarmed, it is to be expected. Mad props to Ania for her help and unbelievable patience with me... I failed this part of Information Technology class in high school.

Getting Out of Paris

2007-01-13T09:15:38Z

Name: Adela Scribbles (pt. 1)

Rating: uh... everyone, I guess

Summary: Due to her own personal angst, Adela has decided that it would be best if she leave Paris for a while. Honestly, it is just as much so she doesn't kill someone as it is for her own mental health. So, it's short, it's not a diary entry, it won't be regular, and will probably be more of later day occurrences then regular day by day accounts, but here you have it: A Sort of Adela AU

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Adela woke to the cool glass against her forehead, almost forgetting where she was and disoriented by the rumbling and the noise, the rocking of the train, and the closeness of the people in the cheap seats, all of them as ill-looking and unwashed as she. She almost wished that she could fall asleep again, tune it out again, tune out the buzzing in her ears. In a few short months, she would be a convict if she did something like this, but she had to get out of Paris, away from everything that the city represented. Already she could feel Jasper's hold on her slipping away. He would be angry when he found out that she was gone, but he would have just insisted that he go along to protect her from the "wild lower classes" who rode the train, meet her mother, and although he wouldn't have said it, make sure that Dragos would not be waiting for her n Versailles. Poor Dragos, she hoped that Jasper would not give him too much trouble, but then again, it was just as much because of him that she was leaving.

Turning her head to the side, she surveyed her fellow passengers, her lips thin and pale as nausea crept up on her. She hated traveling by train. It moved to fast and rocked too much. There was too much uncertainty when you were there boxed it with the grimy windows and thick, sooty smoke on either side. For all she knew, they were moments away from careening off the tracks. It was stopping that always brought her back into perspective, but as long as the great beast was moving, there was no way to tell what was happening. She studied the passengers that she could see without turning her head too far. They all appeared to be no different then the destitute that she had left in the theatre quarter. The thread of hope seemed to be stronger here than where she had left; those few leaving to pursue something better. She could feel the despair as well though; the greater number leaving for something worse. Adela wondered where she fit within them. The man next to her might have been dead, as thin and drawn as he was, ramrod straight. He hardly seemed to sway with each pitch of the car, but every so often he let out a wheeze that might have been a snore or a whimper. She rolled her eyes back to the grimy window, sighing in pained frustration. Tugging on her fingers, she tried counting until she dozed off again. She would rather not be awake when the man beside her decided to be sick.