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Eithne Sullivan     It's summer in Belfast, so sunset comes late. It's nearly 10PM by the time all the light's gone from the sky! It's really a good thing, Eithne thinks, that she doesn't have summer school or work in the morning.

    Her apartment is in a rather ratty part of town, a sixth floor walkup in a building that's seen better days but remains respectable all the same. The hallway rugs are worn but cleanly vacuumed, and the windows let in the lights of the city. She lives in unit 607, a brown door in a hall full of them, with a welcome mat carefully laid out in front of it.

    Inside, Eithne takes the kettle off of the burner and makes sure there are two clean mugs laid out. She hasn't had company in a while, and the place has been given one last tidying up.
John Rizzo The relative quiet of Eithne's apartment is broken by three weighty thuds against her door. A heavy-handed individual has come to visit, it seems. Whether Eithne is the peephole sort, or the open-the-door-first sort, what awaits her is a tall, haggard man with vibrant and distinctly Irish red hair, which is decidedly the most lively thing about him. His piercing gray eyes seem at once intense and tired, his clothes in need of a good pressing. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up, a black tie hanging loosely around his neck. Suspenders hold his black pants up and keep his unassuming, well-traveled loafers from doing much damage to the hems.

     "It's John," he says simply.
Eithne Sullivan     Eithne's door replies, "KRAAAA".

    A few moments later, a muffled voice says 'shoo!' behind it. The girl that opens the door is pale-skinned and bright-eyed, with wavy-curly hair that shines black like a crow's feather. "John! Come on in," Eithne beams, opening the door wider to let him inside.

    The apartment beyond is clean and smells a little bit like Pine-Sol and that oil-based soap that old people use on wooden furniture. The light isn't terribly bright, but it's a nice golden glow that comes from a floor lamp in one corner. The infamous apron-eating couch sits against the far wall with a coffee table in front of it.

    The only unusual thing about the place is the perch set next to a window, and the crow currently doing the perching. "I'm glad yeh could make it. Was there any trouble findin' the place?"
John Rizzo "Thanks, kid." He follows inside and takes a look around, giving a momentary glance to the couch. The op moves over to touch it, as if to make sure what he saw in his visions was really there. Eithne's question distracts him from his indulgence. "Nope. All eggs in the coffee." He takes a seat on the aforementioned couch, one arm resting upon the armrest.

     "Nice place," he says. "Reminds me of when I was a kid." The vampire rests his other hand on his knee, taking one more look around the place. "College?" he asks.
Eithne Sullivan     It's very real, and very couch-like. The sofa is the kind of gold velour that feels silky when stroked in the right direction, tufted with buttons and very seventies. The floor is dark wood, with a few braided rugs scattered around that look newly made. The few photos on the walls are mostly of Eithne herself at various ages, sometimes next to a man with a ruddy face and sandy blond hair; he looks a little bit like her around the eyes and nose.

    "Eggs in the..." She looks at him, and then at the laptop hibernating on the kitchen table. "I suppose it'd be rude to look that up while yer right here, wouldn't it?" she laughs, and closes the door behind him. She's wearing a pleated skirt and a plain white t-shirt over slouchy black socks and has a silvery bracelet on one wrist - dressed down for a night in, probably. "Hold on, the tea's almost ready..." She disappears into the kitchen for a few minutes. "Mm, no - high school," she tells him when she comes back with a tray.

    There are two mugs sitting on it, and one of them contains tea. The other is full of fresh, warm blood. "So! I believe I owe yeh ten dollars as well, right?" she chirps, and reaches for her skirt pocket.
John Rizzo Rizzo looks down at the teacup and... frowns, actually. "Sure," he says. "But I hope this isn't yours." He pauses. "Or some other person's. I only drink from animals. Too many complications, otherwise." He sniffs at the blood--usually animal blood smells so much more... not foul, not exactly. But unappealing, certainly. He heigntens his sense of smell to attempt to detect that unappealing aroma, the aroma that seems intentionally designed to push desperate vampires to spring for human blood. Is it there? Or is something more insidious, something more sweetly beckoning, more fragrant there? Something more... darkly exciting?
Eithne Sullivan     "It is, actually," Eithne nods, and retrieves a tenner from her pocket. There's a light pink mark on her wrist that's already fading. "I didn't know if it would be rude to offer, but I don't like not havin' /anything/ to offer a guest. Please don't feel like should /have/ to!"

    It's human, all right - at least, mostly. There's something... other in it, just a hint beneath the tang of fresh vitae. Something dark, something old. "But yeh said normal food an' drink make yeh sick, so..." Eithne shrugs, and settles on the other end of the sofa with her teacup. She puts the money down on the sofa between herself and the detective, smiling still.

    The raven on the perch caws and flutters over to walk along the length of the coffee table, talons clicking on the wood. "Is there somethin' I can get next time I have a vampire over? The butcher where I buy Sheela's food doesn't ask a lot of questions..."
John Rizzo "I shoulda said something," he says. "Don't worry about it, kid."

     Rizzo slides the cup forward upon detecting that aroma--it smells not only like human vitae, but the oldness is too familiar to him for comfort. "I'll drink anything that can't have a conversation with me. Cow, dog, horse, rat. Sometimes even worse than that," he admits. "But I wouldn't ask you to go out of your way just to make it easier for me. This is supposed to be a punishment." He runs a hand through his hair. "Besides, you'd lose your appetite." He nods towards the raven.

     "Surprised Sheela hasn't sized me up a wrong gee. Most animals don't get that close to me."
Eithne Sullivan     "Well, that's good to know," she nods, taking a sip from her own teacup. "Sheela's a strange bird," Eithne frowns thoughtfully, looking at her pet. "He was a present from Ma, and he's still a baby, so maybe he'll grow out of it?"

    "Kraaaa." Sheela looks John over, focusing his beady eyes on the detective one at a time.... before hopping down onto the floor to investigate his shoe.

    Eithne sets her teacup down on the table. "What do yeh mean by punishment, though? I thought it was more like..." she trails off, trying to find the right way to say 'victims of tragic circumstance' without sounding like a jerk. "Like there wasn't rhyme or reason?"
John Rizzo "You could see it that way," he nods. "Lots of Kindred do. That's the grift, though. The Adversary wants you to think it's not your fault. That way, it's harder to hold yourself accountable and easier to sin. The Embrace is punishment, though. No matter what some Cammie nance would tell you."

     "Being this way is working on the Almighty's chain gang. You do good, you walk. You get yourself turned around, though... then you get lost in the details, let those rocks keep piling up, and you get buried in your own sin. Buried so deep you forget what things looked like above ground."

     "I did something bad to earn this, kid. So now I use... it... to do His work. But that's enough of the dime rag confessional. Didn't you want history from the horse's mouth?"
Eithne Sullivan     How must it feel to be like that? Eithne tries to imagine such a thing - living and dying by sunsets and sunrises, with nothing but the nights stretching out in front of her. It's not a particularly nice thought...

    "It sounds like it's a bit deeper than I thought... Though I didn't really expect any novels to really get the whole thing right." She's taking him completely seriously! "I hope yeh'll manage to stay on the straight and narrow," she tells him, and it's completely sincere. "If there's anythin' I can do to help with it, think of lettin' me know."

    Ah - she'd almost forgotten about that! It's exciting to have a possible friend who is a psychic vampire detective. ...Or a possible friend at all, really! "Oh, that's right - I'm supposed to do a report on any twentieth century decade I like, but I havent picked one yet. Which was yer favorite? I could just write about that!"
John Rizzo "My favorite..." He smiles wanly. Whatever else this man must have encountered in his life, he's had at least a few good ones. Eithne in this moment can see the old man he really is, rather than the dishonest portrait of relative youth his body paints. "That's a tough choice," he says. "And before we start, I gotta ask you change names to protect the guilty. Savvy?" He waits for her understanding, then continues. "Let's get to the facts, first. Things were never sunshine and roses. In life, you get pockets of that, over a backdrop of slums and storm clouds. See, there was never a time when somebody wasn't trying to bunco someone else. That's people for you," he says with a chuckle.

     "So it's not really a question of the decade itself, but a question of how good it did as a backdrop. The heart of history is people. People can be rotten. But they can also surprise you. And I never had more pleasant surprises than I did walking the beat in Chicago, in the fifties..." His prelude begins, and throughout the evening Rizzo paints that backdrop of what life was like, giving detail with stories about neighborhood characters and humanity's tendency for pleasant surprises amidst dreary surroundings. It'll make for a good paper!