There had been a time, once upon, when Kassandra had been extremely happy. Days flitted by in a vapid stream of colors and exploration, new sights, scents, tastes, and, above all, people. Having been confined to a tower since shortly after birth and unwillingly trapped in a horrible mythos woven around her by the powers that were led to much missed opportunity and social deterioration. Freedom was once fresh and sweet, the world wide and big, and everything just as swell as could be.
Then she met a god.
Caligo had looked down at her with eyes simultaneously devoid of everything and full, full of the Nothing. Heart full of worship and hope, Kas had asked a simple question: why? Why had the Goddess chosen her to be the vessel for such terrible sights, such horrendous prophecy, the bitter, vile truth of destruction? Why send the nightmares which haunt her nights and wrack her body with shivers and fill her throat with bile? Why instil such self-loathing based in confusion and the unwitting sense of being born a harbinger of doom?
And Caligo had taken scant time to answer: IDK, you tell me.
Kas tried not to be bitter. It wasn’t working. She was steadily moving through the stages of grief from whatever the first devastating steps were to more of a residual, smouldering rancor, something fetid taking root in her heart and leeching the life out of her, like a halitosis of the soul. Stewing and bubbling, a veritable witch’s cauldron of utter disappointment.
A party was usually a good time to break out of such a stagnation, shattering the tarnished and dusty glass of a cynical mind. Kas was trying to keep an open one. She was trying lots of things recently, including some strange concoction which tasted like sour apples and buzzed through her with both the lumpish weight of alcohol and something more electric. It wouldn’t do to drink oneself into a stupor, after all, given the nature of the festivities.
The music was a droll tambourin in the background. The dancing was strained and staggering. People were drunk and tired, but also wired. It reminded Kass of marionettes on strings.
She was standing a bit off from the swathe, next to a drink stall, while Oculos hovered nearby hoping to snipe treats which ventured too far to the edge of merchant carts. She was stuck somewhere between working up the courage to dance and flat-out refusing to have any part of this celebration at all.
Still, she was in a better mood than she had been in a long time, all things considered.
tagged @Gareth
notes a thousand years late. big ups to RALLI for letting me use their tables to help learn how to do the fun floaty background thingy.
party dress
