NEFERTARI
We've Become Disillusioned
So We Run Towards Anything Glimmering
Now this was much better- the lights, the music, the dancing, the allure of strangers pulling each other into tender embraces, cloaked in shadow and mystique. One never asked too many questions when there was a masquerade ball on. While it had been some time since the mare had attended any high society gathering, she couldn’t resist the pull of festivities. More and more the clairvoyant found herself spending less and less time in her chosen home of Solterra and instead roaming the other lands. To be fair, they had been far more bustling as of late anyhow. Nefertari found that if she kept herself moving during the day, she might be less restless when the moon rose. Might.
She drank in the delightful smells of the denizens around her, their peculiar garb as they each tried to disguise their identities for fun and for mischief. For herself she had cloaked her figure in a breezy purple silk woven with golden thread that shimmered as she walked. She’d commissioned a veil to drape across the curve of her nose in a similar style to one particularly gorgeous mare that she was privately hoping to meet once more. The accents of the piece were gold chains and pearls, amethysts hanging from behind her audits to dangle and catch the eye of those who would cast their gaze across her. She did little to truly mask her appearance, but it had been enough to qualify as ‘masquerade’ in theme, and there had been no complaints as of yet.
The mare wound her way through the throngs of other attendees at the center of the citadel, dusky twilight swirling across the dance floor in search of pleasant chatter and a damn good drink. One could hardly participate in these kinds of festivities sober after all. The Spring Festival in Delumine had been peculiar in that way- when she had offered her services as a fortune teller she had much needed her senses clear. Here, where she was nothing more than a guest in Terrastella, she was free to enjoy the evening as she liked.
Which meant the woman was in search of a delectable whiskey to whet her pallet and loosen her bones so that she might commingle with the opposite side of life for a little while. She had been smuggling herself away in Solterra, but with Leviathan all but a completely absent figure and the Vogelstein family presence waning within the court of the Sun, things had been rather dull. Sure, there was the perfume baron and his kin that often liked to indulge in social niceties, but more often than not these days it was a ruse to sell of his youngest daughter, a bastard, though he never said as much outright. Nefertari would never say it to the girl’s face, but she pitied her. Wondered if perhaps that would have been her own life had she chosen to stay in Denocte and be used as a pawn by her own family. The mare shuddered at the thought.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Swahili was somewhere among the throng- this did seem like the kind of event where her father might try to push her onto suitors with high value in his realm of business. Perhaps if she ran into the young woman tonight she might give her a bit of advice, but only if Caligo wished it. She would not spend her evening searching for a mirage.
Now where was the bar?
art by pacificdash character by scapeh table by sunny
