[AW] a midsummer night's dream

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - “Like treasure?” A mysterious woman who travelled between universes for something so fickle and materialistic as treasure? It wasn’t right, the black unicorn didn’t seem the treasure hunter type to Pavetta. Treasure hunter or not, that predatory gleam in those silver eyes betrayed that the woman in black and white was a hunter of some kind. What if she was not looking for something but rather someone?  Novus might have need of me.  Pavetta felt chilled but there was no breeze in the air.   From what little she knew of her father, he had been of the same sort: bounty hunter, assassin, monster hunter. Different titles but all held in the same regard: a dangerous individual that was not to be messed with if you knew what was good for you. Pavetta wished to ask more questions; had the burning desire to know more about the unicorn’s strange motives but the topic felt forbidden, as if the cryptic woman had said all she had to say on the matter. Pavetta followed her feral silver gaze to the forest, to the fire that burned bright in the night. Again she wondered, what does she see? Pavetta only saw shadows and light. What was and not what could be. Pavetta dared not breath or move when the black horn lingered on her cheek, a whisper of death on her skin. You could be unstoppable. Inwardly, she faltered, resisting such a tempting offer, falling back into her pattern of uncertainty and doubt. She had no magic, was no one. She was only Pavetta, an Order of the Sorceresses reject, a widower, and recently a Dawn Court reject. Had she reached too far when she voiced her desire to be Emissary, was her ambitious too obvious, too frightening? You are too young, they had told her. Too inexperienced. What did the black woman have to offer her that the Dawn Court could not? “How?” Pavetta asked tentatively. Was she crossing a line? It felt like she couldn’t turn back, as if she had already opened Pandora’s box didn’t have the strength to shut it; eaten the forbidden fruit and condemned mankind. “Most are from the initiation ritual into my husband’s clan.” Of which she was proud. “The rest are from foolishness and mistakes.” Because I am young and inexperienced. Their words lingered, burned into her mind like a brand. "How?" she repeated, this time firmly, surprised by the unrelenting steel in her voice and the hardness she felt forming in her heart.  a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---

@Calliope