Matias’s Wednesday afternoon odd encounter(Matias)

September 18, 2025

Date: 2025-09-17 16:22

(Matias’s Wednesday afternoon odd encounter(Matias):Matias)

[Wed Sep 17 2025]

In the Witch‘s Hut book nook/span>/spanThe moment you step through the squat arched wooden door, flanked by two fogged-glass windows trimmed in moss, the air shifts, warmer, spiced, and thick with the soft perfume of honeyed mushrooms and old paper. The hardwood floor, stained a deep walnut bark brown and creaking just enough to feel alive, is scattered with handwoven rugs in moody black. A small collection of velvet armchairs and mushroom-stem stools gather in cozy clusters around low tables carved from twisted tree roots.

From a shelf near the window, a tinny gramophone hums quietly with a loop of lofi music- slow piano and the occasional rustling wind- its horn painted in soft pink, gleaming subtly in the light of a single flickering lantern. Vines trail from the beams overhead, dotted with minty green bioluminescent fungi that glow just bright enough to read by.

A stack of well-loved books rests on the windowsill, spines cracked, pages leafed. In the corner, nestled in a tangle of dried chamomile and moss, is the rooms sole attendant: a long-eared barn owl. Their feathers are speckled like fallen ash, and they blink slowly as customers pass, as if judging them silently before going back to staring into the fireless hearth.

It is about 60/span>/span15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At High and Sycamore/span>/span(Your target has been selected as the next meal for a vampire.
)

Usually, Teagan finds herself in this part of town at night. During those late hours that she needs space to think… and wants to do it away from her usual haunts and the usual suspects.

However, this is not a usual outing. She’s not even on foot. (Though that is in part due to the rain.) She is seeking out a particular elderly gentleman and doing so during the daytime gives her a touch more… weight in her corner, as it were. At least it does in an emotional sense. She’s always run into him at night, it seems. So a daytime run-in feels perhaps a bit less tilted in his favor. With backpack on, fresh from her meeting at the Inkwell, she dips into the Witch’s Hut and begins idly browsing. She doesn’t just stalk around in search of the man, no no. She just meanders, stopping by the stack of books on the windowsill to start sifting through them. As if she has all the time in the world.

The rain and cloud cover outside cast a dampener on Teagan’s plan in more ways than one. Not only is it physically wet but the cloud cover diminishes the daylight advantage by making it rather gloomy out. The warmth and whimsical invitation of the actually quite arcane Witch’s Hut shoppe is a good place to escape it even if she did not have ulterior motives. There are a few patrons, Aurora Heights being within the 63rd Legions control has perhaps dampened business of late and there had even been a monster running around the outer boroughs for a time.

While Teagan is meandering a tap tap tap of someone with a cane can be heard but it is a well dressed man in a three button suit of heather grey and a shoulder cape of all things in midnight black with a shimmery silvery interior lining. He has european features, perhaps french from the primness and the sharpness of the nose, the small mustache, and the slicked back hair, he is whip thin and pale of complexion. Speaking in a french accent even he says to Teagan, “What a rustic little bookshop, do you work here young lady?” his naturally dark brown eyes verging on black as they take in the redhead Windermere student.

There’s always one. Someone who thinks you work somewhere, even if you obviously don’t. What employee wears a backpack while working? Ridiculous. But Teagan was primed to turn around, to have her ‘gotcha’ moment, even if she didn’t know what she’d say. It’s the accent that makes her falter and she nearly drops the book she’s holding. The woman’s other hand snaps out to stabilize the stack altogether and replace the book in its place.

*Then* Teagan turns to face the man, tilting her head slightly as she takes him in. It’s certainly a whole… *look*, though stranger things here in New Haven. A glance to the cane, perhaps in mild disappointment. But then up, her blue eyes behind those glasses meeting dark brown. “No, I’m afraid not. You’ll have to speak to the owl.”

“Speak with the owl, how quaint.” the Frenchman in a heather grey suit says to Teagan while walking a bit closer and considering the sweater and backpack wearing twenty-something student. “Do you know the owl’s name, perhaps you can introduce us? I am Monsieur Armand du Clairmort.” he says in a french accented voice that sounds like velvet on the ears. He has a certain stillness about him, is he even breathing? His hands both rest atop the golden capped cane in front of himself as if waiting for just that.

“I… actually do not,” Teagan admits of the owl with a brief, apologetic smile. She does lean back slightly on her heels as the man approaches: if to be able to look up at him better if nothing else. She is not tall: he certainly is in comparison to she. “Nice to meet you, ah… Monsieur Clairmort.” Keeping the name simple enough to not mangle it with her American accent. Educated she may be: good at pronouncing other languages accurately she is not (though she tries).

“Teagan Lawson,” she provides in return. There is a gesture past him, in the general direction of the cafe. “I have usually ended up down there when I have come here. I have not made other purchases as of… well, as of yet.”

“And I had presumed you to be a bibliofile and not just looking for an alternative to Starbucks.” Armand du Clairmort says with some obvious disappointment as if lowering his expectations of Teagan and giving her a considerably less polite look with those dark brown eyes of him, the little mustache on his lips twitching in the right corner one of the few movements the man seems to engage in. “In my experience musicians are often more… Well rounded.” he says to the redheaded woman who may have developed curves in her college years but perhaps has not developed a personality by the frenchman’s estimation!

But Teagan manages to wear a smile, even if it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “One can be a bibliofile and not have purchased from a specific shop.” She waves her hand to the windowsill. “This is all that they carry here. It’s… not the most expansive selection, as you can see. And it hasn’t changed since last I was here. Or the time before.” Her brows lift, marginally. “Or do you assume that a little shop as this would have a greater selection than I might find at, say, The Endless Library?”

Even if the name leaves a bad taste in her mouth at the moment. She takes a deep breath, some of the fight gone out of her. “I happen to think I am. But then, I actually know myself.”

“The Endless Library, you must be a student then.” Armand du Clairmort surmirses taking a fluid step closer to Teagan and when did he start pressing into her personal space so confidently? And why is she hearing thunder outside but no flash of lighting. Almost as if the last thirty seconds had been lost to her and replaced with an overwhelming desire to appease this frenchman. Afterall he is clearly from out of town, he may be connected, he may even know Professors at Windermere, or in the factions. After her most recent bad publicity could she afford to offend seemingly posh and influential out of towners? “Tell me Ma Chere Lawson, what books from the Endless Library have piqued your ‘well rounded’ interests?” he asks in that velvety french accent clearly challenging her to impress him. How one goes from mistaking you from working somewhere to putting you on the spot is a bizarre experience but then again this is New Haven and he is so very fucking French.

“I am.” Somehow it is both statement and question, though the question seems less attached to the words than directed to the man himself as he presses into her personal space there in that nook by the window. She is, in effect, trapped. And it’s not like that damn bird will care. It only wants to sell trinkets from its nest. Who ever called this a *book* nook anyway? Are the books even for sale? The nonsense runs through her mind counter to the alarm bells, as if to keep her calm. Or to perhaps help quell them altogether.

“Technically, most of them. It’s Endless. How are there that many books? Surely there are a finite number. There must be a finite number. Does it contain all books that ever were and will be written? If so, presumably, everything lost in Alexandria exists somewhere in there — likely within the well — and that would, I suspect, be what I am most keen on. Finding it is a whole other matter.” Teagan has continued talking even as she has taken another step or two back: trying to regain some semblance of space. Even if her heel does hit the baseboard just in time for another thundering in her ear.

Even as Teagan back pedals into the base board and essentially the wall from Armand du Clairmort the frenchman simply stays in step with her, ever present, encroaching, like a looming gentleman judging a wayward young woman in the most presumptive of ways and yet due to aristocratic privlege is so difficult to fob off. “Lost texts, an academic and not a lover of trashy romance. Artists so often lose practicality for whimsy, chasing muses and fancies.” he says in a kind of unnaturally smooth and velvety voice. “But what books have you -read- from the library Ma Chere Lawson? Anyone can desire the crown jewels, not anyone can have actually held them.” the golden capped dark wooden cane is slide up in a fluid movement and the golden grip tap tap taps against her chest and then underneath her chin trying to force the young woman to meet his gaze once more, his dark brown, all consuming… time dilating gaze with a little twitch of his oh so thin mustache.

“None, yet,” Teagan admits, a hand behind her where the wall dips into the broad window itself. Ensuring she doesn’t just tumble back into it. That wouldn’t do. But she nearly does anyway when that cane taps against her. She leans just a bit, but her backpack keeps her steady as it, too, finds enough wall to be a balance. It does mean her chin is tipped upward. “I, ah, have been quite busy. Lots of assigned reading for class and my own… catalog of books to get through. I don’t read romance. Fantasy and sci-fi, mostly.” A wry twist of lips, “I’m sure those aren’t to your standard either. Let me guess, you prefer… Madame Bovary?” An attempt at jest: something once considered a trashy romance, as it were, in France. But her voice tapers off, becoming uncertain.

“I actually have a fondness for the American author Edgar Allen Poe. There was a reading of his work recently. I believe you were there.” Armand du Clairmort says with all the confidence of someone who will not be questioned for invading this young woman’s personal space nor poking and prodding her with his walking cane. The chilled tip of the golden grip is lifted from her chin and pressed against her cheek to turn her face away as he begins to lean in towards Teagan’s throat protected only by her cinnamon sweater’s high collar and her own survival instinct. “What did you think of the death of Prospero? Was it avoidable, do you think Ma Chere Lawson?” his voice going ever quieter the closer he leans in towards Teagan like a velvet caress to her very thoughts, tingly and seductive. “Or is such submission to death the natural end of all… Mortals.” but when he says the word mortals it really sounds like ‘you’.

“Why not Harlan Ellison? Henry James? Even some of…” Teagan cannot help but have her head turned; there is a strength behind it and it feels like every moment or so she loses a few beats at least and something has changed. Her positioning, his, the shadows on the wall. Where was she? “If one takes the story as an allegory… no. He hid from a plague in a fortress in a time… before modern medicine.”

The alarms still ring and though her thoughts are becoming blurred and difficult to grasp, a hand does come up to the Frenchman’s chest. She places it there firmly to try to stall him. “No…” Almost as if correcting herself or him. Like an afterthought. A ‘No, wait, what I meant was…’ Her brow furrows, her eyes unfocus, refocus. “Wait, what are-”

She meets his eyes again in what may be a very unfortunate move. “…you doing?”

“What am I doing, Ma Chere Lawson?” Armand du Clairmot almost coos in his french whisper like velvet around Teagan’s senses. “I am seeing if you submit to death or flee. It is the way of all mortal things, when their time has come.” he makes it sound so peaceful, inevitable, so assured. He smiles finally that prim mouth with the thin mustache and fangs are shown. His golden capped cane lowers from her face to block off an avenue of retreat to the left, against her shoulder with a superhuman strength… and he begins to lean into Teagan’s space no soothing hypnotism or compulsion. No mitigation of what is to come only the very open predation from this vampiric frenchman on a mere human Windermere student. No matter how special she thinks she may be, is only a mortal morsel for he.

Funny. One of the few times lately she’s gone out unarmed. Not that she knows how to use the sword (not really, at least: she knows the pointy end from the not!), but it felt like it helped, at least. And right now, she’d feel better with it, even if she lacks the space to drawn anything just now. “You make it sound so…” futile? Simple? Pathetic? Flee or death? There is a wince at the pressure of the cane to her left side: it’s not specifically harming her, but one can tell when someone is stronger than they. And to what scale. There is the ‘they’d move if I pushed hard enough,’ the corded muscle that strains a bit. Then there is this man, slight framed as he is, and immovable as rock.

But without the slipping time or slippery thoughts, Teagan does find herself a bit more able to think. To focus. To try, perhaps, to find a way out. She may not see herself as special, even. Or at least not in most lights. And sometimes, of late, she has been fatalistic. Suicidal, however? No. That is not the case. One hand slips into a pocket and thumbs at a phone. Who did she text last? She received one (not that she’s seen it yet) from Hale, but it was either Jakem or Matias that she last *sent* one to. And the latter that she tries to… well, perhaps a flood of gibberish would be enough. Nor does she rely only on this attempt at a call for help. Short as she is (and tall, comparatively, as the vampire is), Teagan tries to slip free of her backpack and duck beneath that blocking arm all at the same time to make her break for it. It’s a lot at once. It’s a panic move from someone who has little to no experience in, well: escaping.

Aurora Heights is on the complete other side of town from the Ivory Quarter and so any help that may arrive will take at least some time to do so. It is probably for the best that Armand du Clairmont enjoys the chase, the hunt, and so when Teagan so ineptly tries to flee there is a cold confident chortle from the frenchman who catches Teagan by the backpack just as he lets it fall from her back. He slides it off to the ground and calls out, “To flee death as Prospero did. You know the ending of course.” his velvety voice now velvet sheathing the daggers of his fangs and Teagan’s lifeblood their goal.

When Teagan flees into the stormy rain and the possible lifeline of her vehicle there is that stalking presence ever at her back palpable, real, the laughter and the slow tap of a cane pressing her… Even if the tap could not be quick enough to keep up it never diminishes never grows more distant only closer closer closer.

There is the pain of leaving the backpack behind, but Teagan will just have to trust she can come back for it later. Better to lose the laptop, her notebook for classes, and a couple other odds and ends than, well: her life. She plunges into the rain without regard for how quickly it soaks through her: weighing down the sweater, chilling her in that autumnal cold that sets in after the sun has begun to set. She fumbles at her pocket for her keys, having to only reach in and mash the button to unlock the driver’s side door. It’s a bit fiddly: damp pockets, heavy damp sweater, the sheer panic in her system. At least she doesn’t have to use the physical key in a lock. But that door handle? Might slip through her hands enough to slow her down. Never mind the process of getting inside, closing and locking the door… It’s all of those precious seconds you never really consider until it comes down to it.

Seconds is all that has passed, maybe a minute at most. How attentive are her three contacts to their phones. One of them, though she does not know it, is not even in New Haven. When Teagan gets to the car, she gets the door open half way but before she can duck into the vehicle it slams shut! The force of the door closing enough enough to rock the vehicle and when Teagan strains or tries to open it again it will not budge held tight by some unseen force. Armand du Clairmont stands in the doorway of the Witch’s Hut looking out at Teagan perhaps not wanting to ruin his heather gray suite. Both of his hands are on his cane in front of him and he stands as if waiting for Teagan to give up, come crawling back, willingly embrace death as Prospero had not. Perhaps that was the braver and more noble end than fleeing further in the rain like a scared animal. So the vampire waits for her to choose again… Flee or submit.

There is more tugging, frantically, at the car door. As if maybe it was the wind? A part of Teagan knows it wasn’t, but damn if she doesn’t try. Those blue eyes look up through glasses slightly askew from her frantic flight into the rain. And even though the rain has blurred things somewhat, she sees him waiting in the doorway. But if he expects her to return: no, no she will not. There’s another futile attempt to get the door open before she backs away from the car. Further from the Witch’s Hut. Putting distance between herself and the Frenchman. Herself and the vampire.

Teagan pulls her phone out entirely now and dials the number of someone she knows she can at least somewhat reliably… well, rely on. Matias. Pulling wet hair out of her face as she continues to back toward the other side of the street, trying to keep the vampire in view, she repeats the prayer of all in such dire straights: “Pick up, pick up, pick up…”

Because even if he is across town, she knows that someone knowing where you are is at least an improvement over her current situation.

Matias’ phone goes right to voicemail as if it is off or he is on another call. The rain has been going for awhile, the street has various puddles that splash as Teagan flees. There is another cold laugh, the tap tap tap of the cane… As she tries to keep the vampiric frenchman is walking in the rain and yet does not get wet. As if a small dome is above him and the droplets hit and roll away. His stride is casual and languid but his movement is unnaturally quick. He is perhaps twenty yards away and remains there even as Teagan runs. The rain hitting the ground causes the mists to rise… Are these fog is it true mist are there monsters besides the vampire chasing her ahead. Is she completely and utterly fucked? Will she call another person? Does she just run and pray, make a wish?

It’s difficult to see through the rain. Or is she crying? Teagan does not cry: rarely does, really. The fact she’s done so a few times the past week is… abnormal. Hopefully not the new normal. She can’t tell anymore. Nor does she have time to think on it. She swears when Matias’ phone goes to voicemail. She sends a GPS pin to him: if worse comes to worse… well, they’ll know where she last was, at least. A text from Thomas, not helpful. Not what she wants to see. Kai would help, but also doesn’t seem to be picking up. It seems to be the same story for what few numbers she does feel a measure of trust in. At least those she can see well enough to hit the call button for.

And so she does run. She taps out, blind, a frantic message to the ethics professor. She’s fairly good at texting blind, but mostly while seated. Like in class. This is while running, in the rain, and panicking. Teagan’s only hope there is that he sees the resulting gibberish for what it is. She tries just the one message after the GPS pin and doesn’t even try to review it before hitting send. ‘witchyt aura heuig vnaoeu hlp’ is roughly what gets through. It could be worse. It could certainly be better. Much better.

Which means all she has left is to run. Maybe praying, though she’s never put much stock in that before.

There it is the blind flight from death the hopeless run with nothing left but to pray for reprieve. Tap tap tap the cane in the rain makes the vampire growing ever closer. The rain driving down soaking through and bleeding the heat from Teagan’s body. No matter how hard her heart pumps, how quick her lungs breath, the warmth of adrenaline and fear are sucked away by the cold rain and the surety of a vampire’s fang. Eventually it has been long enough she is not able to keep it up forever but she is young, is not athletic, and Armand du Clairmot is immortal but not forever patient. While running in the rain her foot is caught not by a hand nor cane but an unseen force catches it as it lifts for the next step and Teagan soaked and freezing falls face first, KERSPLAT! into the rainy puddle of the pavement. The vampire closing in, her body bruised, her foot let go but a pressure bearing her down to keep her helpless. Tap tap tap the cane in the rain draws closer…

There is that tensing deep in the belly that one gets when they know they’re going to hit the ground hard. That inevitability of it all. And when she hits, the wind is knocked out of Teagan and it takes her a moment to recover. Thankfully, her glasses are not knocked off of her, not entirely. Askew, yes, but not knocked away. She does fight in place. She tries to get up, tries to break free. Soaked through, cold, out of breath. She gasps for air with lungs burning from the run and the fall both.

And even then, strangely, she does not quite give up. There is that… well not happy place of hers. It’s not that, certainly not that. It is the place she goes to. The place she *compartmentalizes*. The way she handles these moments where otherwise, she would simply break. She finds something to quote.

Her voice is thin, air still difficult to come by. Body still shaking with cold. “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.” She can hear the vampire’s approach, but cannot see him from the angle she has been held down to the pavement. “Do not go gentle into that good night.” She speaks barely above a whisper, though surely he can hear. Words, at least, among the rain. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Morbid, perhaps. Fitting, maybe, too. For there is anger. And she is refusing to go gentle. She did run, but she did also try to fight.

It is all bad luck that Teagan drew the eye of Armand du Clairmort. It is bad luck that she fell in the rain. That she will die here in this nothing street to a visiting European vampire. Her affilitations not coming to save her. Her friends (if they were her friends) not her either. She had come to confront another who had wronged her, to try and take some semblance of control over her mortal human life only to be reminded time and again how powerless a person can be. How unlucky and as if to seal the fate of her unluck there is a soaked through maine coon sitting in front of her, looking at the approaching vampire who has not a speck of rain on his heather grey suit and then looks down at her with unnatural slate-grey eyes. The cat lifts it paw and puts it on her messy, dirty, strewn red hair and FWIP. The sensation of being shunted, being tumbled, of whirling, endlessly in a sightless void onto to appear on a wooden floor, in a cottage that looks like it belongs in a druids tale. The cat is there, its paw atop her head, and the invisible force which had pinned Teagan is gone. The completely soaked maine coon begins to smoke subtly and then transform into a man kneeling on one knee, his hand atop Teagan’s head and who should it be but Matias who says, “Miss Lawson, do you know how weird it is to receive a phone call when its part of your metaphysical being?”

She would barely have seen that cat as it were. The rain had covered the lenses of her glasses and had filled her eyes (so she might claim) as well. And so much the better to not see her approaching fate. Teagan tried to twitch away from that paw upon her hair, thinking it somewhat else, but there was a weight on her. And then that twisting, turning… only to no longer be in the rain. Instead, soaking wet and dripping on a wooden floor and… Matias?

And maybe he thinks it is in response to his question. Or did he hear her recitation of the final line of that famous poem? Because if so, it might explain why she starts breathlessly laughing with exhaustion.