Shtahl-ing the Inevitable -M- [GoblinFae]

[Zane]

Atlas nodded his head very humbly at the compliment. He wasn't all to used to receiving praise. At the mention of his shadow spirit, he looked up the fox. "She's smarter than a horse, but more stubborn than most mules. If she gets fed up, she will vanish into the shadows. She knows better than to start a scene in another Ranger's home."

It seemed that Vixen took his statement as a challenge. With the shadow cat's next lick, Vixen had her fill. The fox screeched and twisted under Vesna, gnashing at the cat's tongue and strongly kicking up with her back legs into the cat's stomach. Atlas reacted immediately by jumping up to intervene. This caused the rest of the wine in goblet to splash all over himself, covering a surprising amount of surface area of his shirt and pants while the metal goblet smashed into the floor. "Vixen! Into Shadows." As the command was issued, the marble fox's form solidified into blackness and collapsed into an almost discolorized stain on the bookshelf. Vixen's Shadow crawled along the side of the bookshelf and across the floor until it was hid within Atlas's shadow.

"I'm sorry Rowan" Atlas sighed, "Vixen has... never actually done something like that before. Is Vesna alright?" He asked, just noticing the wine splattered across his shirt and pants, already beginning to soak in and stain.

[GoblinFae]

"Apparently not," Rowan commented dryly as the pair broke out into a fight. She placed her cup down but did not otherwise intervene in the manner that Atlas did. The spilled wine did cause her to sigh though and stand to get a towel. When she returned, Vixen was under control and Atlas was apologizing.

A wordless look sent the relatively unharmed but sulking panther spirit away to no one knew where though Rowan suspected she was well onto her way to see a certain Shadow Master. "You might want to take your shirt off Atlas," she quietly and calmly told him while handing him the small towel. "I don't think you'll be very comfortable in soaked clothes. I can bring you a blanket if you're uncomfortable or cold."

[Zane]

Atlas sighed and followed the half-elf's suggestion wordlessly as the shirt came off wordlessly. However, since the shirt had already absorbed the wine spilled on him, so the ranger set himself to cleaning the wine that had spilled on various other surfaces, a task which was quickly accomplished. While it was true that there was a slight nip in the air, Atlas didn't mind. He sat back down, bare chested.

"Well this could have gone better." He said with a half grin and a shake of his head.

[GoblinFae]

Rowan took the shirt from him and took it to another room to quickly soak. "It still can," she called back to him as she worked on scrubbing out the worst of the stain before pulling it out to hang-dry and returning to the room. Her eyes quickly took in the muscles of his chest and abdomen before meeting his eyes again without shame.

"Now what were we discussing before the girls decided to throw a fit?"

[Zane]

Atlas held his gaze up, instead gazing over Rowan with his peripheral vision. The muscles that rippled in her arms and legs spoke of well restrained violence channeled into graceful action and ease of motion. "We were speaking of our daily lives, our interests." He enunciated the addition, as her eyes rose back to his.

[GoblinFae]

"Were we now?" she repeated, raising a brow slightly before reaching for her cup and finding it empty. The ranger nodded towards their empty cups "Would you care for more? I'm afraid you were left without the opportunity to finish it as you would have liked. We wouldn't want me getting ahead of you, now would we?" Rowan smirked playfully as she glanced at him coyly from the corner of her eye.

[Zane]

Atlas returned her smile, "I would, what I've had of it was pretty damn good. Where did you get it anyway? I know old Dimitri doesn't offer high grade wines, publicly at least." Without realizing, Atlas found that he had sucked in his gut, allowing for more of his muscles to be more prominent. Not that they was much hidden that a sucked in gut could reveal. 

[GoblinFae]

Rowan smiled a secretive smile and shook her head. "If I told you that well...I would have a lot of blood to clean out of my rugs that's for sure," she jested with a wink before once more sauntering off to the kitchen to bring back not only the partially full bottle but a second one as well to refill their cups.

The ranger sat down with a plop, tucking herself in nicely against Atlas' side as she did so. "You drink, good sir," she offered, extending his now filled cup out to him as her other hand gently clutched her own.

[Zane]

Atlas took a long, slow, deep drink from the goblet, draining more than half the glass. The sweet scent of it filled his know while the sharp undercut of fermentation scored his tongue. "There, that should put us closer to even." Beyond that, he said nothing. This was new ground for him. During his later years as a Fledgling, he was too focused on staying ahead of the pack to seek out anything more than friendships. Never before had he been invited, nor half naked, in a woman's home.

[GoblinFae]

"It's a start," she murmured softly from beside him before taking a far more sedate sip of her own drink. With her feet crossed at the ankle and propped up on her small table, Rowan felt completely at peace pressed hip to hip and side to side with Atlas. Gradually her head began to drift to rest against his shoulder even as she mused on the antics of her familiar.

Breathing in deep to signal a return to awareness, Rowan shook her head softly, inadvertently nuzzling in against him. "I never realized how quiet and still it is without Vesna. I have lived too long with her at my side it seems. I've forgotten what it was like to not have her a heartbeat away."

[Zane]

As she leaned into him, his arm wound around her back. His hand finding her hip to be a natural resting place. "I get what you mean, I think the one and only time I have banished Vixen to shadows since she first appeared what when I took the Rites. And then it was required of me." he took another generous sip of the wine before asking, "How long had you been here before Vesna came to you?"

[GoblinFae]

Memories whirled before her eyes as Rowan recalled becoming one of the Vigilant, first entering the Clockwork city, first meeting Alucard, first...She slammed a mental door on the memories that proceeded her life as a ranger, feeling that she was not nearly drunk enough or in the right company to recall the parts of her she had long since buried.

"I drew breath and she was there," she at last cryptically responded, remembering the glowing eyes in the dark that had stared back at her and through her, allowing her to see beyond what her own eyes could pick up but through the eyes of the shade as well. For a brief moment, Rowan peeked once more through Vesna's eyes before angrily slamming another door in her mind at seeing where her little "pet" had scurried off to, or rather whom she had scurried to. The ranger did not wish to be reminded of a certain man and his ability to invade every private aspect of her life with his cruel presence.

"Vesna bent the rules a bit...she does not take kindly to not getting her way."

[Zane]

"I hope that Vixen and I haven't caused her too much unrest. I was actually the last in my year to receive a Shadow. But then again I was in a year of all Pures as an outsider, most already had their Shadow before even entering the training." He brushed off the notion with a dismissive chuckle, word was already making rounds that Atlas was all that remained of that particular group of Rangers. Atlas himself didn't know this. By the end of the next day, he would be quite confused over the frequency of sympathetic nods in his direction.

In the meantime, he helped himself to the last of the wine in his glass, unaware of how his group had suffered the most losses. "To the Outsiders, may they shine bright under heavy scrutiny." He added, raising his empty glass.

[GoblinFae]

Rowan shrugged with disinterest. "She'll live. It's hardly as if she's faced anything different since living with me. I'm not the easiest of people to get along with." She sneered at the mention of Purebloods and shook her head. "There's no such thing as Pure. No matter what they say Atlas, don't believe it for a second. I'm as good a fighter as any man, so-called Pure or otherwise. You're no different."

Taking a moment to calm herself with a sip of her own drink, Rowan at last raised her own cup for her own toast. "To the shadows that frighten away even the scariest of monsters." With a chuckle she drained her own cup and reached to pour them each a third round.

[Zane]

Atlas felt a great warmth to her words, 'Your a much better fighter than most, by half. I know this, I fought you, remember?' Not yet realizing he was drunk, Atlas laughed at his words that he hadn't said aloud, a nice amused chuckle. Having never really drank before, he had no idea that the creeping warmth spreading across him was in fact intoxication. As Rowan refilled his glass for the third time, he hugged her a bit closer, and took a long sip once the goblet was full after raising it in the air to acknowledge her toast.

[GoblinFae]

She raised a brow in obvious amusement at his antics, neither dissuading nor encouraging his advances even as she quietly drained her own cup again. Unlike Atlas, Rowan recognized the blooming warmth spreading throughout her as well as the relaxed sense of calm that came with it.

"And what pray tell is so funny that it has you nearly in stitches?" Rowan smirked softly while looking at him with her head cocked to the side slightly.

[Zane]

The Ranger gave another short chortle, "I just realized something. Real or not, a lot of people subscribe to the pures and outsiders way of thinking. And the outsiders tend to be stronger. I mean, I was one of the strongest in my fledgeling class, you are an extremely competent fighter, better than most. Is it because so-called pures find comfort in their status and slack off, or is it because the outsiders work harder to prove themselves? Or is it a combination of both?" He followed her example and drained his glass and gave her a smile. His head beginning to bob a bit as he became that much more drunk.

[GoblinFae]

"I cannot really say," she admitted while resting her cup on her knee. "I have always felt it was more an individual's strength rather than their birth that defines them. By no means could I say I am as I am because I was trying to prove myself as an outsider. Perhaps a bit as a woman but...there have always been other factors at play at least in my life that have driven me onward. If not to them then at the very least to myself I had to prove that I deserved to be that ray of light in another man's darkness. We are shadows but not of malevolence. We are the vigilant and we are the protectors of the moonless night.

"Or something poetic to that effect," she chuckled before pouring herself yet another glass from the second bottle but refraining from doing the same for her guest. The bottle was then left wedged between the two of them to keep her from having to continuously reach forward for it.

[Zane]

Atlas leaned his head back and closed his eyes, gently bobbing his head in a mutely happy agreement. He had meant to speak up, share some of his history that was somewhat relevant. But with his growing intoxication, the late hour, and his exhaustion from training after the days task, he had fallen asleep without realizing it.

[GoblinFae]

Rowan chuckled once she realized the young man had fallen asleep on her couch but left him to rest whilst she finished her drink at her leisure. As she lost herself to the peacefulness of stillness, she reflected on the honor she had been bestowed and did not deserve. The memory of a certain sword residing in her barracks both frightened and awed her. It was however, something she decided that she would worry about another time as her thoughts were drawn back to her sleeping companion.

With a quiet sigh, the ranger placed their goblets on her table and her feet back on the ground before placing an hand on Atlas' shoulder and nudging him gently. "Come on kiddo, time to get you to bed," she murmured while trying to direct him into enough of a sitting position that should could assist with guiding him to her bed where he could sleep off his alcohol.