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Marius is leafing through the newspaper carefully, at endearingly mortal speed, relaxed with one ankle crossed across his other leg as they sit outside the Bourbon Street cafe, watching the mortals go by. A pleasant evening so far - they had been for a hunt together before meandering to this spot. He stops on a certain page and makes his displeasure known in a barely audible, low sound in his throat.
"How shameful..." his nostrils flare in true emotion, Pandora knows he's really upset.
"What?" she asks airily, almost jealous at his passion for mortal affairs.
"A number of artifacts were stolen from the Princeton Museum collection," his tone is mournful, suffering. Pandora grabs at the paper and scans the article, before folding it and placing it back on the table face down.
"Well, these things don't truly belong to them anyway, did they not steal them from the ground?" she argues. Marius snorts derisively.
"Ye gods Lydia, do you know that you are an insufferable contrarian?" he moans, eyes set on the heavens.
"These things come and go, what concern is it of yours? All of us have trunks full of items that mortals would like to put on display with funny little plaques in front of them, should we surrender all of our property to them and let them make their wild guesses about their meaning?" she isn't going to back down on this. Marius rises from the table and places some paper currency on it.
"I am going to seek sensible company, if I can find it in this blasted swampland," he announces as he turns on his heel and walks away.
***
Later that evening Pandora examines her jewellery box in the room she keeps in their coven house in New Orleans. She thought about sleeping elsewhere tonight. She could get a hotel anywhere, could take to the sky and fly from the sun until the West becomes the East again. She has a number of properties in her own name she could go to: a penthouse in New York, a place overlooking the Cocora Valley in Colombia... she had never owned property of her own until this modern era, it was Armand of all people who had set her up with the mortal agent who now manages such things for her. She had never bothered with paperwork and such before - after parting from Arjun she had become somewhat of a vagabond in the modern era, staying always in beautiful places, and often with gracious immortal hosts, but never anywhere belonging to her. She wondered why he was so kind to her, when she had been such a poor guest on his Night Island, leaving her quarters rarely, taking little interest in the others.
What brought her back to this coven tonight? Why had she come back to Marius this time? She longed for so many decades for a reunion, imagined how it could be if he came looking for her after Dresden, the scenario seeming more and more fantastic as the years passed with no sign of him. In the end their reunion had been one of mourning as Akasha brought them together for the final time only to perish in front of them, in her hubris. She left Marius in Armand's fantastic shrine to modern commerce as soon as she could collect the will to do so, finding they could offer one another little comfort. Damned David, had made her nostalgic again for what they had millennia ago and might never again have. Division, yes, but passion too, joy. That's what their broken reunion on Night Island had lacked: passion.
Perhaps it is her time to sleep, as her Arjun does. But she fears it, perhaps having contemplated over too many nights the dreadfully still Parents.
She sifts through the shiny baubles in the box: many glittering things gifted by Marius, a couple of flashy platinum keepsakes given by Santino, things taken from from victims, she thumbs a cheap steel ankh. A jeweled brooch David gave her to commemorate the publication of her memoir (a bee). So many trinkets have passed through her hands over the years, she could have filled a trunk with all Arjun had gifted her, some are here, some likely sit neglected in long-abandoned properties... she's no good at keeping track of these things. She picks out an ancient, worn sapphire ring, set in gold, with entwined hands carved on it. This one given by Marius, a long time ago. She had thrown it into long grass, shortly after he left her in Antioch. At the time she was in a fury, and sure he would be back soon to listen to her wrath. When she saw it in the Princeton museum (in an exhibition of artifacts from Antioch which she was drawn to in perhaps ill-advised, morbid curiosity), the grief of that time tore through her with a fresh fury. What did it mean to have it back now?