Owner	Pose
Lucifer	The Devil is no longer contemplating the inside of his eyelids. That was likely a night or few ago. Topics discussed when in the midst of lover's mind has him puzzling around certain aspects of his life in the moment. Now he can't help it. The seed was planted and damn to the depths of the sea - Nathaniel Essex - for opening his mind to such things as hindsight and contemplating choices. Father always had this thing about Free Will. But Free Will wasn't for the Angels. The Angels, in all their glorious hierarchy of powers, were meant to do one thing. Serve their Father. Lucifer failed in that, giving mankind thought and wisdom, the ability to know right from wrong. Good from Evil. To cover themselves for the sake of promiscuity. Yet what if he hadn't done such a thing. What if he didn't slither down and tempt the woman with the apple from the Forbidden Tree. That was a choice right? Or was it destiny? Was it always his purpose and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Then he became the Tempter in the Desert for the one the Jews called Christ. The Christians would learn to call Saviour. He could have not. He could have just watched. Let Jesus wander and fret in the desert with no path, no way of knowing if he was doing the right thing. But he didn't. He played his part. Served his role. And so on and so forth. Always the part to play, always the Devil to play it. To show what happens to those who are wicked in their ways. To rule over Hell and torture souls for eternity. The ones who did not follow Father, who did not accept His offering of salvation. And now? Now he's made another choice. To leave Hell. He didn't have to. He could have remained there, ruling, always ruling. But he didn't. He didn't have to accept the walk along the boardwalk. Didn't have to allow favors in his club. All these things he does or doesn't do are choices, but he could have always chosen otherwise. Where would life be then? Where would he be then? Or Sinister for that matter. Vlad. Cain. Abel. .... Was it all choice or some predetermined path? The devil stands at the end of a jetty of rocks near the cottage almost mimicking the event that played out in Sinister's mind the other night. He smokes on a cigarette, staring out towards the horizon but also with his head tilted juuuust so, to almost seem like he might be staring at Heaven. Free Will His Ass.
Sinister	Well, HE himself is in the details and, my deary dears, there's a reason that they call it 'enlightenment'. This little tableau on the end of the dock is an eye catching one and it should be noted that english scientists of a sinister bent do usually have enough respect for the tickles in their mind, to give adequate space to rhuminate, cogitate and masticate such ideas as these, without poking. But it's been a while, chores are done, a flight to Bridgeport has been achieved, during which visitation to various institutes of his ownership and interests have been monitored and now.... Not so much heard, as felt, the shift of wind and presence behind Lucifer matches up with a deliberate click of fine-turned heels and a couple of paces that bring Sinister up beside the one that casts doubt about his own head. "Penny for your thoughts?" she asks, looking up sidelong as she touches his elbow.
Lucifer	"It's your fault." Lucifer begins, and then he holds up a finger. "Not in a bad way. I don't think. Except I have been thinking...about all of it. Almost like I've suddenly got a case of conscience." He continues and then takes a drag off his cigarette, but it's finished so the butt goes up in hellfire and becomes simply ash to scatter out to sea. "My entire existence, from the first moment. From the Apple to now...what's it all been? Choices or destiny. A path I made, or a path made for me. I can't determine what would have happened if what happened didn't. But I also cannot fathom what might have been if other things happened as well." There's a pause and then he continues. "People didn't have to follow my lead. Christ didn't. So there's proof of that. Eve didn't have to bite the apple. Noah didn't have to build the ark. I didn't have to leave Hell. To walk with you." A caveat entered here. "Though I am glad I did. I will always be such. But now there are other paths, other venues, other ways things could have gone that would make the then and now so completely different." A breath. A sigh. "It...almost hurts..."
Sinister	Sinister tilts her head to the side a little, thinking about that. She then slips hands into a fashionable half-waistcoat beneath her bosom and extracts her little cigarette case. One is put to lips, the tray offered to the spent Lucifer, with the subtle expection of a light proffered after. "Sticky conundrum I've put you in, sweetie. It seems like it could be mental torture," she says in a mild tone, eyebrow elevating just a little bit "...which is a distinct habit of the human condition." But there she leaves that little nugget of tit-for-tat, smiling fond. She crouches down on her heels then, provided her smoke is lit and sits upon them on the dock, looking at the water, the horizon and perhaps the mental metaphor list she has on hand. "Have you ever watched a window during the rain and tried to predict which way a droplet will travel on the glass?" she asks.
Lucifer	Lucifer takes another cigarette and then offers the lighting for such with a flick of fingers. He then takes her lead, sitting down on the edge of the dock, looking out over everything. "I feel as though I shouldn't feel this way. Have this condition. Yet I do. So is it really human...or just a condition..." He offers this as he takes a drag. "There's no way to predict how they'll fall. Some fall in the same paths as others, others take their own paths..." Lucifer offers then pauses. "...though sometimes I do like watching the rain."
Sinister	"Oh, but there is. If you analyze the glass, which remains in perpetuity a liquid state, which I know is a contradiction to the fact it's a solid matter, you can find the imperfections in its surface. Where dust has gathered. Where the silicone structure is mildly thicker, causing a barrier. Where water has already run. Based on that, you can predict the path of least resistance, mathematically. There is no free will, it is all destined to happen based on a list of cause and effect, action and equal and opposite reaction, working upon each other in a state of harmonious force. By design, the raindrop will always go where it is supposed to go, where determination tells it, it will. But we also know that is a logical fallacy, because water itself is polarized, has its own positive and negative charge -- that makes it the universal solvent in actuality, if not in science fiction and just that little spark of happenstance and chaos means despite predication, the path of a raindrop on a pane of glass... is unpredictable. Free will exists." Sinister shrugs, flicks ash, draws a breath into her lungs. "The water droplet is to blame for its own destiny. If it had a mind, it would think 'I chose this path' and it would be right. Pre-destination denies self-determination and therefore by its nature, culpability. If none of us, you included, have any choice at all, we are none of us to blame for doing terrible things /or/ good things. It was all designed for us. We had no choice. So I should not be punished for the murder of my brother. I only did what god told me to do, doesn't stand up in a court of law. And the so-called free willed and most beloved humanity invents that to govern right from wrong, based on the norms and mores and doctrines of tort and civic law. Rule by the masses, determining crime and punishment at least in this life."
Lucifer	"So it's both and neither at the same time while also perpetuating it's own existence for either or and following neither." Lucifer concludes and then shakes his head. After a moment, he lifts his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "This is all making my brain hurt. Like literally hurt. I cannot fathom and yet I can...." A side glance given to her then. "You, my dear, have a beautiful mind. Shame it's wasted on myself...giving you very little in the way of actual intelligent conversation. Or philisophical." He chuckles then, turning just so to try and look behind, to the cottage just past the dock. "Still. Thank you for making me think. It's been...pleasently exhausting."
Sinister	"The divine plan is the pane of glass. You're the water droplet, like the rest of us," Sinister blinks once, rather owlishly and colours a bit, shifting from sitting on her heels to go down on her hip, propping herself in a 'mermaid on a rock' pose, looking at him as the breezes stir from ocean to land, then back at the cottage. "You're welcome, I suppose? I try to be troublesome and unpredictable," given with a smile. She looks back at the cottage, over the shingles of the roof, over the covered lean-to garage that still needs to be emptied of inconveniently piled firewood and back to him. "You have a beautiful mind. It just doesn't work the same way mine does and if it did, things would be very boring."
Lucifer	"You are both and I adore you for it. I love you for everything about you. And I completely agree. Were we like minded, things would be either boring or we'd be arguing every day..." Lucifer offers. Then he seems to contemplate something, finishing his cigarette and like the last, he burns it off in hellfire. Shifting to stand, he takes a few steps back from the edge of the dock and - after licking the tip of his finger - draws it down his clothing letting them burn away with hellfire. Apparently he's had enough thought for the day, for after the blink of an eye, in his naked glory, the Devil runs to the edge of the dock and dives into the sea before him.
Sinister	Sinister tips her head, hair failling in a veil over one eye as she watches him come to a contemplation. Her own cigarette is drawn down to the nub and she extinguishes it with a pinch, but rather than burning it up, she puts it in her palm and absorbs it, only to blink and blink again at sudden skinnydipping Satan. "Well, that's a sight for sore eyes..." she giggles to herself and rolls to a standing, walking to the edge of the dock to look down into the dark water, hands going to her hips. She chuckles, looks down at herself, back at the cottage on its little rock and to the water once again. Tap-tap goes a digit in her hip, looks down at her toes, then with a deep breath melts the limbs together, darkens the flesh, sheds clothing in favour of a kind of black and white wetsuit of flesh and leaps, diving like an arrow into the depths as an orca mermaid.
Lucifer	Now the game is on. No more thoughts or deep contemplations. The Devil wants to have a little fun. Surfacing just in time to watch his lover fair dive into the water like an orca mermaid, he then dips back into the waters below. A bit of a swim to catch up where she broke water and he watches her for a moment. A jewel of the ocean for sure. Shifting closer still, he tilts his head this way and that before sending a single thought to her mind. <<Well hello there, beautiful. You swim these waters often?>>
Sinister	Sinister's body was made to cut through the water like this. The tail powers behind her as she does a seemingly lazy circle, floating onto her back to breeze past with her hair a cloud in the sea. <<Only on Wednesdays, flyboy. You appear to be out of your element...>> she grins, powers closer, floats up then back a few armslengths. A shake of her shoulders and wiggle of the hips sets the white on her skin to glowing with bioluminescence, an alluring pattern that brings light to the darkness. ANother lazy circle and she lets out a few bubbles through her nose. <<Catch me if you can...>> and she's off like a torpedo into the shipping channel, but a bit deeper, so that there's no worry over unexpected propellers.
Lucifer	Lucifer gives a grin at that cheeky answer and then, for a moment, is caught by the dance. The way the white on her skin glows with that bioluminescence. It's enchanting, and the woman who glows is intriguing. <<Maybe a little. Nothing I cannot adapt to, I think...>> He finally answers while she swims close, then away, and makes that lazy circle. At the challenge, a few bubbles come from his nose and mouth as if he's laughing and then watches her take off. He's a moment behind, diving deeper to follow. Along the shipping channel, but not where they'd be more than blips of something unknown on radars and far from danger with the bottoms of the ships themselves. He pushes, to try and catch up.
Sinister	There's an art of course, to the hunt and the chase, when the sport is play and the play is sporting. One must be juuuuust far enough ahead to keep the hunter interested, but not so far ahead that he gives up or uses other clever tricks. She's a ghost in the water, zig-zagging, here catching the path of a shoal of seabream, their little bodies flashing brilliantly with the glow from her. There, she dips beneath some death of iron, rusting out in the brackish waters of the hudson river estuary. Then she floats, seemingly weightless where a cloak of sediment has been stirred up; the outline of the feminine, obscured but not lost, suspended in temptation. <<You will always find me. Always.>>
Lucifer	Lucifer swims ever closer, but also perhaps staying back just a bit. To watch her work. To watch her tease and tempt. Oh vixen of the depths... oh siren song... when she stops, illuminated and weightless with the cloak of sediments he pauses. Stares. <<Just as you will always find me. Always.>> In a moment floating before her, in another, he's behind, arms breaking through the sediment cloak gently - as if the cloak had holes perfect for arms - which wrap around her form. <<My darling love. How perfect you are for me.>>
Sinister	A hand reaches up, her cheek turning to a right angle with the one behind her. Webbed fingers cup his cheek and lazy strength keeps them both suspended; one pump of the tail, working against the pull of the waterways. <<Hold on.>> The instruction given, she settles her grip on the arms around her, leans back against him and looks upward. Powerful muscles pump the water, up and up and UP! Bursting free of the waters, it sloughs from them by the action of wind and momentum, higher and higher and higher, until her legs reform, bio-steel cladding her torso and what had been sediment becomes the living mantle of Sinister, twisting around the Devil to hold him firm and the rest keeping itself unentangled. Liberty island and the statue of freedom and promise that she represents, sparkles. She gazes that way, then with a soft sigh, smiles. <<Taking on the world never felt better.>> The mind smiles, then south and west aways, the arcing tower of Lux beckons. <<Tonight, I want hot tub.>>
Lucifer	So the Devil holds at the request of his lover, feeling the weight and then the burst of momentum against the water. Up and up indeed until they're in the air. He feels that sort of cocoon she builds around him to keep him safe in flight while wingless (and naked) so covered as well. Watching as Lady Liberty comes into view and he smiles. "Oh the hot tub sounds wonderful darling. We shall have such. And then I'll rub all your muscles and perhaps have you rub mine..." He breathes in gently before giving a nod. "This is quite the way to fly..."
Sinister	"I like to spice things up, from time to time. Oh, watch this..." Wasp-like wings spin out, unfold and whirr "....although they end up reminding me of mosquitos." And thus they vanish, retracted back into herself. Sinister grew wings as a blessing, but honestly needs them not at all. It is in the end, all about the optics. Her hands criss-cross over his where he holds around her, taking the opposite elbows in her palms -- and away, to the roof of lux and a promise of hot tub back rubs. It will take a bit, because teleporting isn't an option. "It is why I learned to fly without my mind though. You remember. Sometimes, the mind is just too tired and addled to be trusted. I love it though. Up above it all, it separates you from all the churning charnal house and those clever little things that try and ruin you. You must remember that little vignette that popped up in the mindscape when we were eye-lid contemplating? That was the moment I vividly remembered, where Gambit and his little shapeshifting buddy had come to my clinic and attempted to infiltrate. I suppose it popped up in my memory, because of choices made. The arrogant little frog gave away his buddy to me, as if he had the right to do that, so I'd undo what I did to the Courier when he'd tried to deceive me. I Liquidized his assets. Oh, that was a fun moment though, I also froze his assets and stopped him metamorphing. Ironically, I improved on his talent. Had they not tried to pull one over on me, I wouldn't be the miss I am today."
Lucifer	"Mmn, for some reason they almost reminded me of humming birds." Lucifer comments after a moment and then simply exists against her back as she holds to him. He probably could have teleported them but what's the fun in that? Flying is sometimes better, especially after some time contemplating the meaning of choices and life. Helps clear the brain a bit, gain a sense of freedom again. While they fly, he listens to the story she gives about Gambit and his co-hort. What happened and what came of it. "Ah. Interesting indeed. Are you trying to tell me that I owe that cajun thief a thank you?"
Sinister	"Maybe I am. He would, I think, be entirely confused by you giving him that. Mention me and you'll get a snarl though. Even when you help them out and give them what they need, they resent you. Gambit still owes me," Sinister chuckles, but there's the roof of Lux. THe cloak twists, lifts and turns the naked Lord of Lux (and Hell) over the top of Sinister's head as she comes to a landing by the doors into the penthouse below and she winks at him. "Voila. Home Lucifer, horses thoroughly spared." And hot tubbing after a day of thinking too hard, is a worthwhile passtime. You don't need to do the thinking, you just let what comes naturally, come naturally.