there is a lion in my living room.
I feed it raw meat so it does not hurt me.
I feed it raw meat so it does not hurt me.
S
he lurks in the shadows like a creature of nightmares. Or so she likes to think, anyways. In truth, Aghavni looks the furthest thing from a creature of nightmare – her eyes are too large, her bones are too thin, her hair is too soft – but her unicorn’s horn is needle sharp and deathly accurate, and she thinks that that, at least, is a start.
August is not with her, and for that the girl is glad – he would only annoy her, steal her razor-sharp focus from right under her so that he can claim the right to greet them instead. Flash the unlucky patron his charming smile and charming eyes, and then smirk at her (still in the shadows, still lurking like a green-eyed ghost) in that infuriating, self-satisfied way.
She is glad he is not with her.
But no one new has entered yet – they are all returning patrons, and need no guide to find their way to the Lounge or Floor or Rooms – and so Aghavni is unneeded and alone and terribly, terribly restless.
Sighing, she digs out a stack of black cards from the folds of her silk scarf and begins to shuffle them. The wings of the white-inked scarab beetles almost look like they are snapping open and shut, open and shut, from the speed she shuffles them at. (Charon thinks she is still not good enough, to Aghavni’s growing agitation, so she practices any moment she is idle. If August is deemed good enough, she’ll be damned if she isn’t.)
She had headed out into the bustling crowds of Denocte earlier that day to slip cards into the pockets of the ones who’d deserved them. Aghavni has a good eye for finding them, the hungry ones, so the task is often left for her to do. She both relishes and despises the task – on one hand she likes finding them, likes reading the greed from glistening eyes and the desire from restless limbs (like hers) – but the job is too menial, too much a task made for a child, and it eats away at her like maggots.
The not-being-good-enough. The not-being-trusted-enough.
Father has not come to the Den for months. He has not seen how much Aghavni has changed, how much she has done, how much she deserves to be trusted –
The girl dismisses her thoughts with a shake, the golden spikes in her mane scratching against her neck. She cannot think that way. She must remain patient – Father has always said that an incompetent ruler’s worst flaw is a lack of patience, and Aghavni is far from incompetent.
So she sees the girl when she enters. Or, she sees the shape of one slipping through the opened doors, a black gloom in the candlelight, because a glamour drapes thickly across her small, sly frame.
Aghavni’s eyes narrow – she is not fooled. (The glamour is more illusion than sorcery anyways, because of its inconsistency – a true glamour sinks its teeth into your body for as long as it has teeth. Her thoughts stray to the Weaver, and a shiver runs down her spine.)
Aghavni doesn’t know who this strange girl is trying to fool.
Swiftly, she slips the deck of cards back inside her scarf and moves like a phantom through the Den’s writhing shadows.
“Hello.” She halts in a spot the sky of enchanted candles fails to illuminate, close enough to see the sandy gold of the girl’s skin, and the curl of her night-black hair. “Welcome to the White Scarab.”
She hopes that the shadows make her smile just a bit more nightmarish.
@Apolonia | "speaks" | notes: I am SO READY for this
