[00:59] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "They're about done. You know I wrote a song about her? About her and me. I'm going to make them let me play it when the Sourballs are done."
[01:01] <dammitwho> Alisa: "For real?"
[01:01] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "I don't fuck around, your unholiness."
[01:04] <dammitwho> Alisa: "That's really something. Are you gonna let her hear it or is it a kind of thing where you can only play it because she isn't here?"
[01:04] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "I need to hear how it sounds in a room she's not in first."
[01:11] <dammitwho> "What's it like?"
[01:18] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "It's a little Lilith Fair."
[01:19] <@VoxPVoxD> "It's about... being unflappable. It's about being relentless. It's about the undying love for the struggle."
[01:19] <@VoxPVoxD> "God."
[01:19] <@VoxPVoxD> "I love her so much."
[01:20] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Damn. Never heard a childe talk like that before." She has, among the Blood Bound. Impolite to say so.
[01:22] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "I know what you're thinking."
[01:23] <@VoxPVoxD> "It isn't."
[01:23] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Hmm?"
[01:23] <@VoxPVoxD> "I'm bound to him."
[01:23] <dammitwho> "Holy shit."
[01:23] <dammitwho> Alisa: "... what a dick."
[01:23] <@VoxPVoxD> "For real."
[01:24] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi claps as the Sourballs finish their encore and Turpentine wheezes her way offstage.
[01:25] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Okay, so I'mma probably get way too personal here, and I don't mean anything by it, but... what was that like? Ol' Nachtsbettler didn't say much about it one way or another. What's it like growing up that way?"
[01:27] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi's silent for a little bit as the band unpacks. "There were good nights and bad nights."
[01:29] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Huh. Isn't that always the way."
[01:30] <@VoxPVoxD> "Some nights he was fine. He's like a little kid, you know? He just does whatever he wants if he thinks he can get away with it. And sometimes what he wants is to push himself down the hallway in the Marina on an office chair with a fire extinguisher. Sometimes he wants to watch every Wrestlemania from 1987 to 1993."
[01:30] <@VoxPVoxD> "Some nights he was what they say he is. What they remember."
[01:32] <dammitwho> Alisa's turned her head away from Kirsi, nervously scratching her jaw. Kirsi's enhanced hearing can pick up the scraping noise like tiny blades over her skin.
[01:33] <@VoxPVoxD> "Some times he wasn't a person at all. Sometimes he's a cosmic principle. An idiom. A timeless and illimitable thing."
[01:33] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi shrugs. "You know how it goes. Some nights you get Macho Man Randy Savage. Some nights you get the Baba Yaga."
[01:36] <dammitwho> Alisa: "No."
[01:36] <@VoxPVoxD> "?"
[01:37] <dammitwho> "He's a terrible thing, and to hear parts of me described as parts of him hurts in a way I guess I deserve. But we're neither of us the Baba Yaga."
[01:39] <dammitwho> Alisa: "You know she makes everyone call her Baba, even the ones older than her? They do it, too."
[01:40] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi looks down.
[01:42] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Ugh. Sorry. This isn't a contest."
[01:43] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "I thought that was just something they said about you."
[01:43] <@VoxPVoxD> "Like how you were a secret Bride of Dracula."
[01:43] <@VoxPVoxD> "I'm sorry."
[01:44] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Well, I never did the Coils or whatever you call 'em. Me and Mara and Annie and Lizzie are great friends, though. So that part's true."
[01:46] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "What are they like?"
[01:47] <dammitwho> Alisa: "They're pretty much how you think. Annie's the scariest."
[01:48] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "Really?"
[01:50] <dammitwho> Alisa: "For sure. She's really nice. Like, genuinely so. Mara gets mad about it sometimes."
[02:00] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "Is that what makes her scary?"
[02:02] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Not just that. Some of it I don't want to go into. But mostly, yeah."
[02:04] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "Is the idea that someone could live as long as she does, and keep her heart, so terrifying?"
[02:04] * Quits: Crion (Ping timeout: 272 seconds)
[02:05] <dammitwho> Alisa winces. "It's not exactly-- like, I make fun of Anna for not having killed anyone. But there's power there, respect. It may not mean much now but you just come back in two hundred years time."
[02:09] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "What else is it about her that scares you?"
[02:09] <@VoxPVoxD> "Come on. Nobody's going to believe me, even if I tell."
[02:09] <dammitwho> Alisa grumbles for a bit.
[02:09] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Ugh. I used this analogy at a fuckin' dinner speech, might as well use it again."
[02:09] <dammitwho> "What's the saddest thing at a college party?"
[02:10] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "The 28 year old."
[02:10] <dammitwho> Alisa: "Bingo."
[02:11] <dammitwho> "I'm five hundred years old, give or take." She waves her beer around to take in the crowd, the brooding Sourballs. "When I was young enough for all this the parties I was going to were celebrating the coronation of the first Tsar of all the Russias."
[02:12] <dammitwho> "Now, I like 'em! I really do. I try not to stick out too much, I try to keep up with the times. It helps that I love new things. I went to sleep for forty years and when I wake up whole new music and movie and tv traditions have been born and died."
[02:12] <dammitwho> "That's great! I love it! But it's not the same thing as belonging here."
[02:15] <dammitwho> Alisa: "But Annie? She could show up and it would be like she's a kid working at a guitar repair place and blowing her paycheck on a bottle and a landlord because fuck college, am I right?"
[02:15] <dammitwho> "Five hundred years and she hasn't aged a day."
[02:16] * Quits: Quaker (Quit: Quaker)
[02:19] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi: "You know what, though?"
[02:19] <@VoxPVoxD> "Good."
[02:19] <@VoxPVoxD> "Cause if there's one thing I can't stand."
[02:19] <@VoxPVoxD> "One thing I hate more than anything."
[02:20] <@VoxPVoxD> "It's someone telling me - telling us, telling themselves - that there's something we can't do."
[02:20] <@VoxPVoxD> "Fuck anyone who says that. Anyone who says that just gave up already."
[02:20] * Quits: mugobbles
[02:21] <@VoxPVoxD> Kirsi stands up. "If you'll excuse me for a minute, I'm playing my song."
[02:22] <@VoxPVoxD> She gets the stage manager's attention. Nobody hears what she says. He looks dubious until she snaps her fingers in front of her face. His eyes meet hers, and he sways in place like a snake as she speaks very slowly.
[02:23] <@VoxPVoxD> Then she sits down at the little piano at the back of the stage, and unfolds something from inside her jacket, smoothing it out on the sheet music stand.
[02:23] <@VoxPVoxD> A few tentative notes to check for tune. A scale to warm her voice up.
[02:23] <@VoxPVoxD> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTbQg-9tjNM