Dracosa Prescott, Modern Day

The game has been 'Head Down'. Dracosa doesn't want the issues with Ami and has been fighting to hold onto the peace she found between them, given by the sickness.

"What do you think about opening our club?" She scribbles in a journal, a bit absent-mindedly.

"It could be good business. We would have the entertainment side locked down already." Ami bites back a smile. "However, would you be up for the logistics? Also, would we sell food or focus on drinks? What else would set us apart?"

So much to think about...

The dreams, more like memories, of the illness haven't been shaken. She felt an intense longing, as though there was something to remember. She continues feeling misplaced as though she's somewhere she doesn't belong, someone she doesn't belong.

Then, the intense longing for Robert. There is just this name and no face, scattered memories of a kiss and a voice, but no more. Dracosa had hoped she would have the intense dream again, but it didn't come back. She's lost track of the conversation as it's become short sentences and monosyllables.

"Penny for your thought?" Ami gently nudges her as they lounge on the bed during the calming, lazy afternoon.

The windows are open, and a gentle breeze flows through the space. It is comfortable, but Dracosa struggles with a feeling of being captive. She hasn't gone out much without Ami, since the cafe incident, to keep things favorable with her.

I wish I hadn't taken off. I miss the club.

"There isn't much to tell. I'm just thinking about the dreams I had." Dracosa takes down her glasses, setting them over the pages of the journal she'd been writing in.

Ami gently huffs the air and pushes her sandy hair backward. "I guess sometimes dreaming isn't worth the trouble they bring. I'm sorry you're still on about this."

Dracosa does not make a face or roll her eyes. There is something about the way that Ami chooses to speak, sometimes, that causes Dracosa to feel dismissed and small.

"You know, you know a lot about my childhood, but I don't know much about yours." Her attention is now on Ami as the fact becomes clear.

Maybe if I knew more, I would know how to love you.

Ami's smile falters for only a moment before back in place with false humor. "There isn't much to tell. I grew up with money and all the problems and conveniences that come with it."

"You know that's not what I mean. I'm talking about the details. Like why you are the way you are and the things you think. I want to know about your mother and your father..."

Ami clears her throat, cutting her off. "I don't have much to tell. They were...older. Having older parents can make you feel isolated as you're navigating a world they refuse to be a part of. My parents...they were unhappy.

I don't know if they were happier at some point. With them being...older, they also had me later. I don't know much about how things were, but the spite between them, I guess, may have always been there."

"Did they fight a lot?" Dracosa tilts her head as she takes in Ami's reserve. The way an icy reserve washes over her almost chills the air around them.

"Maybe they did at one time; a time where they cared for one another enough for something so passionate to take place. I was something...leftover. Maybe my mother once had hope my father would love her, at least stay, and maybe he hoped she would have enough of him to let him leave, but what I do know is whatever the reason they 'had me', it never was what they wanted."

"That's incredibly...sad." Dracosa swallows the bad feelings and guilt that she had asked for.

Ami laughs a bit bitterly. "You're so very sentimental. For it to be sad, then something would have to be lost, and there was nothing much ever given to me by them. They were both pretty much gone. Even when one was in attendance, mainly my mother, it was as though I lived with a ghost. I rarely saw her, and she rarely saw me.

If we want to talk about sadness...

While my father was consistent with his indifference, my mother did give minor glimpses into what it could be like to be...visible.

When she had minor romances, if they could be called such, it became an option to be seen with me. I did once cherish those times until I realized the woman didn't have a loving bone in her body, only lust and conquering. When she realized I would never be conquered by he manipulations, she discarded me."

Ami looks off in the distance, and what she sees, Dracosa has no clue, but the pain is there even if unseen.

"Am I like her? Like them?" Is all she knows to say, and not because she wants to, but it's burning in her gut that she may realize the issue between them is an issue that was never their own.

Ami chuckles like a tuft of hot air and stares at her as though she sees through her. "No, no, you're not the one who may be like her."

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"Please, just a few hours? We have some pretty important people coming, and they are requesting you. If you could do three songs, we would be grateful and pay accordingly." Bill, the nightclub owner, desperately communicates.

Dracosa taps her uncovered toes against the plush carpet, her hip against the ornate table, and the phone's receiver to her ear. She makes eye contact with Ami, who shrugs.

"I can make it, but Bill, it will cost. I am supposed to be on vacation." She allows a 'tsking' sound to enter her tone.

"I understand, you're an amazing performer, Dracosa. I hope you truly know how amazing you are. I am grateful to work with you and to know you. You will be compensated well, they are fans of your work and want to see you perform live."

"Well, I can't let down devoted fans."

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"It'll always be that way..." Dracosa sings deeply and passionately into the mic.

The song wraps around her in a familiar, blanketing feeling. It's one of her favorites and displays her lower octaves. Even though it's a sad and dragging song, people love her rendition of it that comes off resolved, sultry, and powerfully feminine.

She always wears a red dress when singing it, not to be sexy, but to honor her pain and remember where she has come from. If Dracosa could shed her pain, she would. It's just not so simple.

She feels the eyes before she sees them, and when she looks out into the audience...Leo.

Dracosa wondered what her reaction would be to seeing the guy, but it's less than she thought it would be. He wears the same dark shades, and yet, the same as last time, she knows his eyes are on her.

The conversation about his having seen her often but not noticing him hit her and she bows to the claps of the audience, only briefly having lost her train of thought.

"This one..." She speaks into the mic, sitting on the stool, and the lights dim. "It's something new I've been playing around with."

Her voice is a little unsure, and she clears it in the hopes of tapping back into her on-stage persona, and her eyes look for Ami, and she's there, at a table two spaces in front of the one Leo sits at. Dracosa wonders if Ami knows he's here.

Ami nods and gives a gentle smile of encouragement, and so Dracosa breathes deeply. She closes her eyes and she smells lilac, roses, and something she can't put her fingers on, but it's dense and comforting. She sees a shadowy figure, swirling whisky in a luxury crystal cup. He's looking at he, and her heart races because something in her gut knows that whoever this guy is, he will kiss her.

Delphine...you have to really think about what you're asking...

I'm asking for you to express your love for me...

"There is more to love than the fairy tales they sell us and the longing..." Her breath gently blows into the mic, giving an intimate feel that darkly draws the audience in. "The longing is more than what we understand to be sex. It's something spiritual and something that goes past space and time. Anyway...this is what I've been working on..."

In chilling spaces, we two meet,

Once body to body, now singular,

Living with a feeling that I'm incomplete,

Cause where I am, isn't where you are...

My name now...

Simply not the one you used to call...

I remember you then, but fare thee well,

I hope to somehow catch your face in the wishing well.

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"One moment," Dracosa takes the glittery earring off to open the door for Ami.

Opening the door, Dracosa finds herself closing up the fluffy leopard robe to cover her exposed collarbones.

Leo's eyebrows raised. "Are you disposed...?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dracosa picks up a glass of brown aged alcohol, sipping it and motioning for Leo to enter. She let out a breath from the gulp and sting. "I know you aren't here for my autograph."

"That song was...haunting." He stares and removes his glasses.

There is a pause where they don't have the words to express the way eye contact affects them.

She clears her throat and sits in a pink fluffy chair, covering her knee with the length of the robe. Leo's eyes gently follow the curve of her dark red toes, to her thin ankles, and her generous and shapely calves before the fabric covers her knee and thigh.

"I got sick a bit ago, and the dreams I had, they linger." Dracosa swirls the glass, looking nowhere in particular. "I can't even recount the details of the dreams, but the feelings are kind of always right there behind every thought and feeling. So, I've been making material."

Leo absentmindedly rubs his bottom lip with the edge of his index finger, in thought, and taking in what she says. "I found the song haunting because I have always felt something missing, something that I couldn't explain."

Dracosa raises an eyebrow. "Someone, maybe even pieces of yourself?"

Leo chuckles in a dark, dense way. "Yeah, exactly like that, and when I close my eyes, I can feel her, and feel myself. I just never catch the faces, and it's something I don't even know how to talk about because no one around me gets it...they'll simply laugh."

Dracosa now giggles with a chesty murmur. "Boy, what are you, twenty, twenty-one?"

Leo smiles, revealing those naturally aligned and creamy off-white natural smiles. "I am twenty-eight, but my soul...how do we measure a soul?"

Dracosa purses her lips. "We don't, we simply focus on what we may."