Mayfair Manor

[Average Doe]

Volusia only shook her head at them, bantering away in the kitchen. She shook out like a dog, and headed up to her room to put on something fuzzy and dry.
Scrubbing away at her thick brown hair, Volusia sighed and looked out the window, cursing the mailman again. If her package didn't come soon it would be someone's head-- and it wasn't her family she had in mind. Jonas told her that he had sent the package three days ago. It still wasn't within her grasp.
She pulled on a thick green sweater and a pair of heavy black courderoy pants, and plodded downstairs.  

[+.+Your.Dark.Eternal+.+]

Ezekiel smiled. "No, I guess I wouldn't," he said in reply, watching her smooth out her shirt and wondering slightly to himself if perhaps she had OCD. It certainly seemed like it at times. No, make that most of the time, he thought to himself with a small smirk.

Ezekiel was suddenly reminded of the fact that he had been wearing the same clothes for the past two days. He looked down at himself, taking in the disheveled appearance of his deep red button-up shirt and plain black pants. He plucked a piece of lint off one sleeve, then turned to Antha.

"I'll be back in a couple of minutes, but first I really need to go change." He could feel his instinctive want for good hygiene kicking in, and he was starting to feel dirty. With a small wave, he turned and went down the hall through the living room, turning left through the bathroom and finally into his room in the corner of the manor.

Rummaging through the closet, he quickly found a change of clothes--a pair of blue jeans and a black t-shirt--and changed into it. He grabbed a plain black jacket off a hook, pulling it on as he returned to the kitchen.  

[Average Doe]

Volusia entered the kitchen about the same time Eziekel entered, and she gave him only the faintest of recognition. Grabbing the tea kettle off the stove, she filled it with water, and set it on to boil. Next, she hunted through the pantry. "Roobios." she muttered again and again to her self untill the found what she was looking for. A small, rather tired looking cigar box had it's lid teped on and had been fixed several times. Volusi aflipped it open and hunted through the various tea bags, carefully smelling each bag to identify it. After identifying about four or five types, she held one up triumphantly.
By this time, the kettle was whistling cheerily. Volusia got a rag and lifted the steaming kettle from the stove-top with one hand and got a coffee mug woth the other. Placing the round tea bag in the cup, she carefully fliied it most of the way with the piping hot water.

 

[+.+Your.Dark.Eternal+.+]

Ezekiel watched Volusia rustle through the tea bags and prepare her drink with minor interest. He could tell which kind was her favorite by touch, because of the thick residue of triumphant excitement left on the bags when she found what she was looking for, but was still lost as to how she knew the individual types of tea simply through smell.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had yet to speak to her that day, so he said a quick, "Good morning."  

[Average Doe]

Volusia jumped, sincerely startled. "Hullo." She said to him, walking to the refridgerator. The girl proceeded to get cream and sugar then walk back to her tea. Volusia stired the tea in the water,impatient, in an effort to speed up the steeping process. Finally it seemed fit to drink, so she added two heaping spoonfuls of sugar and a splash bit of cream. She stirred again. Volusia asked, tilting her head at a slight angle, "So, how are we?" She gazed at him now, in one hand the spoon, beginning to drip, the other resting on the counter.

 

[+.+Your.Dark.Eternal+.+]

"Good, I suppose," Ezekiel answered, watching the slow drip of tea from the spoon in Volusia's hand. "I just came downstairs a little while ago, so there's not much that could have ruined my day already. How about you?" he returned the question. "I saw you outside in the snow, waiting for something. What was it? You were also cursing the postman when you came inside. Something about 'dodgey'?"

As he spoke, Ezekiel pushed himself up onto the counter to sit, his back leaning against the kitchen wall and his legs dangling over the edge.  

[Average Doe]

Taking up the steaming cup, Volusia smiled a little. She settled back against the counter again and replied calmly, "Just awaiting a small package." She blinked at him and smiled. "I just wish the postman had brought my package here. I blame his lack of package on his inability to function well on the snow." She made a motion to drink her tea and paused. "But I'm doing well this morning." With that she lifted the steaming mug to her lips. Pulling it back suddenly, she whimpered slightly and frowned. The girl placed it firmly on the counter, and thought evil things at it. And suddenly realizing what she had just done, she looked up at Ezekiel and said with an embarassed tone thet the tea was still quite scalding.

 

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha sat silently on the counter, lost in a flurry of nightmarish thoughts. She didn't know what had sparked it; it could have been anything from a simple word or gesture. But one way or another, she was trapped in the abysmal vortex and found it hard to escape. In this state, her cousin's thoughts seemed to stick strangely to her mind until, after the bit of time that she had been sitting there, Antha awoke, if you will, to the sound of glass shattering. It took only a moment for her to catch sight of the splintered glass hanging from the sliding door, the shards scattered across the kitchen tiles as snow piled up on the ones nearest the doors. And Antha only sat, staring, until with a sullen tone she was able to announce that Jacob was in the driveway. "I'll go tell him to fetch a replacement," she said simply as she hopped down from the counter and headed for the door. She didn't even seem to notice that she was walking right over the broken glass, leaving little splotches of blood out on the flagstones of the patio as she crossed it to catch Jacob on his way inside.

 

[+.+Your.Dark.Eternal+.+]

Ezekiel winced slightly as he felt Volusia's frustration with her tea, but he had admittedly felt worse. "It's all right," he said to her apology, "people can't stop themselves from feeling."

His head snapped toward the back door as the sound of glass shattering reached his ears. Antha leapt down off the counter after informing them that Jacob had arrived, then walking across the broken glass. Ezekiel pulled his feet up a bit, unconscious of the gesture, as he wondered how Antha didn't feel the pain of glass shards in her bare feet. If she did feel pain, she was ignoring it with spectacular ease, because Ezekiel himself didn't feel any of pain's usual negative emotional connotations.

"Great," he muttered, "as if the night wasn't going to be cold enough."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha trekked quickly down the driveway, listening to the snow crunch under her feet. "Jacob," she said softly as she grasped the edge of the door to his truck through the window. He looked up in an instant, startled certainly, but was quick to give her a little smile and apologize for being late. "The glass panel to one of the sliding doors in the kitchen shattered. Could you go pick one up?" The boy, after sifting through some blueprints he had stashed away in the storage compartment, said he had the measurements and he'd be back in an hour or so.
"But Miss Mayfair---" He bit down on the very tip of the finger of his glove and pulled his hand out, quickly placing it over Antha's forehead. "As prone to sickness as you are, you should stay inside," he offered somewhat sternly as he pressed his hand to the steering wheel, warding away the heat of her fever from his skin. Antha made no comment, just stepped back and turned to head into the house via the front door. He was right, of course, but she never would have admitted it. Not even as she passed through the archway separating the front hall from the living room when a small series of coughs emerged from her did she admit to anything. She only settled down on the couch before the TV, drawing the blanket she had retrieved from Malakai's room over her legs.

 

[Average Doe]

"Oh, It'll be fine." Volusia's words were slightly slurred due to having burned her tongue well. She watched the little bloody footprints as they made thier way across the porch and into the snow. "Really, you are too sullen this morning," She added to Ezekiel, with a stern little smile on her lips. She thought briefly of joining Antha, but decided against having her feet join Antha's in thier peril.
The girl raised an eyebrow and added, "If it's so dreadful, why don't you do something about it? You're an ablebodied young man," she peered at him, "Fairly strong too, and obviously intellegent. Surely there's something that you could pull out of that foggy brain of yours."

 

[+.+Your.Dark.Eternal+.+]

Ezekiel looked at Volusia, sighing. "Sorry. I guess this is what happens when you spend most of your time alone. I'll cheer up soon enough, though." He watched as Antha wandered back into the living room and sat down before the TV. "So Antha's sick again?" he asked as he heard her cough. "She should be more careful, with how easily she gets ill."

As he spoke, he walked over to the place where the door had been broken, and frowned at the glass. Better get rid of this, he thought. Walking back to the kitchen, Ezekiel retrieved a small waste basket and brought it over next to the spot on the floor beneath the back door. A small piece of glass crunched under his foot, and he stepped back. Only the glass had broken, not the skin on his foot, so he faced the shattered shards of glass once again and focused his energy at them, scooping them together and lifting them into the waste basket he had grabbed.

Picking the basket up again, Ezekiel returned to kitchen and set the garbage can where he had found it before returning to his seat on the counter. "So, does that count as helping?" he asked, smiling slightly at Volusia.  

[Average Doe]

Volusia returned his smile with a bigger one. "Yes, I believe it does."
She walked to the fridge and pulled out the cream. "I think," she said, pouring the cool cream into her tea,"Antha knows what she's doing. Sortof." Volusia put the cap on the container and placed it back on the shelf. Taking her spot and leaning on the counter, the girl sipped happily at her warm, but not too hot, tea. It was rich and sweet, just the way she liked it.
Volusia followed Ezekiel's example and climbed onto the counter, crossing her legs and placing the cup between her heels.

 

[+.+Your.Dark.Eternal+.+]

Ezekiel sighed. "So, what has everyone been up to over the past two days?" he asked, at a loss for conversation. It seemed as though things had reached a lull. As he spoke, Ezekiel picked at the stitching around one of the buttons on his jacket, then turned his eyes back to Volusia. "And what was the package you were waiting for?" He could sense her longing for whatever it was that she awaited the delivery of, and couldn't help his curiousity as to what the object was.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a while Antha sat quietly on the couch, save for the occasional string of coughs that had seemed to come all at once. She was bored out of her mind, reduced to counting how many times she saw the color red flash across the TV screen. It was then that she saw, in big red letters of course, the words Friday the 13th. She cared nothing for the movie being advertised, but the date thrilled her to the point where she lept up from the couch, giggling somewhat to herself, and raced into the kitchen where she let the bang of the swinging door against the wall announce her presence. "I'm throwing a Friday the 13th party," she announced gleefully, zipping across the room and into the pantry until she found the second refrigerator, immediately snatching a carton of milk from it and running back into the kitchen. "And it's going to be right here in Mayfair Manor." She loved opportunities like this; Julien hated such things and surely he would use every card he had to try and stop her. However, since Mayfair Manor was legally in Antha's name, she had the final say.
Oh, what a glorious day it was turning out to be after all.