[P] we've smashed to smithereens;

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - “So we are friends, friend? Surely we are no more than mere acquaintances? After all, we haven’t even introduced ourselves.” What is the name behind your mask, golden man? But the game was fun and so she let it go on. All in good time. “Perhaps I was the pocket-picker and not the other way around—you ought to be more careful with the company you keep.”  Her smile was subtle, demure. It certainly was not beyond her nature to nick someone’s goods when no one was looking. After all, if a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to witness, did it really fall? Did it really mean she was stealing if no one knew?  "And what of your fairy tale ending? Did you convince some poor maiden to eat the food after I had gone?" Her smile turned wolfish, feral.  The drink was strong and she wanted more. But was it really the drink she wanted more of, or something—someone else? Pavetta was keen to notice his glance, the way his golden eyes lingered on the sheen burgundy cloth draped across her back, spilling down her sides like wine. Did she seem ridiculous? Was she overdressed? She couldn’t discern his thoughts, the shadowed expression on his face suggested his mind was elsewhere, somewhere far away and far from what she chose to wear.  Pavetta dismissed such frivolous thoughts—she would no longer second guess herself, no longer would she doubt. The strange unicorn in the woods would frown on such childish antics, of what a mere boy thought of a girl. Pavetta straightened; she liked the way the silky cloth felt on her skin, the way the jewelry glittered in the moonlight and the cold kiss it left on her dappled skin. She was who she was and damn what anyone else thought. Her Denocte guide seemed the same as the first time she had met him: jolly and drink, velvet smooth, and yet…he did not belong here. He did not own the shadows here as he did in Denocte. “Your pockets may be empty but mine are not. What does my Denocte guest desire tonight?” a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---

art by the lovely sid

@Acton