The room still smelled of pipe tobacco, the pillows as much stained with the heady scent as the air with a mix of liquors. Arranged across the floor with a low table set as focal point, the pillows were of impeccable silk well-preserved from their respective decades. Eion knew too little of antique furniture or tailored goods to make a guess at the room's immortalized time, but he imagined that it dated back to, at the very least, the 20s with Stroud's tastes. Rich, impeccable embroidery, hand-crafted rugs preserved far better than their owner, and smoking paraphernalia embedded an artisanal, open atmosphere for any brought into it.
And the social lubricant was no detractor in this matter. A bottle of Glenlivet sat on the low oak table next to a tea pot with cozy. One glass sat across from one mug, with accoutrements like sugar and milk and lemon set off to the side. Eion sat in a nest of three pillows, striking for his absence of color in the saturated room, as he wore a white tunic. His anachronism of an iPhone retained most of his attention where it sat next to his mug, flashing message after message as he whittled the scanty minute away.
He quite liked punctuality, he found, since learning the limitations past his youma form. A few stray wefts spilled over thin knuckles where he braced his palm against his forehead. One reached for the bright screen where he received confirmation of Tobias's acceptance to meet with him. He wondered, then, what late afternoon meant for Idrialite's schedule. As youma, Eion was privileged enough to skip working.
That mattered little. Either Tobias would show in moments or he would be late, and Eion seldom met anyone in the Negaverse who tolerated being late. A message from Aelius popped up that he promptly dismissed with a smirk; team-building activities came with their own convenient excuses for putting off insufferable subordinates. Would Idrialite prove to be the same, with all his dry wit and dry scotch? He would learn soon.
noir songbird
