Dealings... not as cordial as this. So he not only got in trouble with the families, but also came out on the other side with all his limbs ostensibly in place. For all his evasiveness, this man sure knew how to stoke her imagination. Sucking on the corner of her glass and allowing a trickle of cool nectar to bathe her tongue, Evarista squinted at the soldier thoughtfully, while her fantasy cycled through increasingly ridiculous supposals of his escapades.
She continued squinting at him while he leaned in, her eyes following his gloved fingertip as it trailed along his skin. Her stare didn't budge from its mark even as a pretension of politeness while she took the opportunity to study his face, now that he called her attention to it. Normally, human faces were objects of revulsion and something to be avoided, especially up close. But this time, she couldn't bring herself to look away.
The scars she had noticed. Those were nothing new. The light stubble, too. And even his rudely cold glare, her reciprocity notwithstanding. None of those attributes were untypical of the glorified thugs that, as she had to discover, made up most of the Ebonstryfe. However, underneath all the superficial things was something far more sinister and distinctive. It was like viscous shadow imprinted deeply into his skin. No, more like a shadow underneath the skin, trying to force its way through. A heavy, palpably physical darkness trapped within every feature of his being; in his attentive eyes behind the teeth bared in the empty smile; writhing in turmoil, screaming to get out-
The picture suddenly retreated as he leaned back, and Evarista snapped out of her momentary entrancement, only then noticing that a thin stream of wine was pouring onto the table from her carelessly tilted glass. She straightened the vessel on instinct, loath to see the alcohol going anywhere besides where it belonged. While her perpetually blank face showed nothing, her momentary loss of composure was as obvious as the large red stain spreading on the white tablecloth in front of her.
"Yes... you do have... that kind of face," she mumbled, while absent-mindedly watching the sanguine liquid settle into the starched linen.
Spilling things was for her a regular enough occurrence to ignore, so she didn't pause longer before turning her attention back to her companion, while keeping the glass hovering near her lips at a more secure angle. The strange impression on his face has faded, but only partially.
That's when it dawned on her: what she saw wasn't part of his face, but his aura. Well, at least it wasn't a hallucination. She hadn't drunk that much yet.
Evarista seldom cared for human auras, and wasn't quite used to dealing with emotion, thought, history, and other weights that only burden sapient beings. Granted, the average sapient being didn't seem burdened by any of these things to any notable extent, which was the reason she seldom cared. Running into an exception was refreshing, to say the least.
Feeling a sudden influx of energy, she leaned back in her chair and drained the remnants of her wine in one swoop. What was this excitement? The surge of voyeuristic curiosity; a sensation she thought she had buried many years ago, when it seemed like there was nobody left worthy of effort and attention. She thought she "grew up".
Seeing the bottle raised in her direction, Evarista flinched indecisively for a moment. She never had anyone pour her drinks before, discounting servants and their sterile movements. But now, the seemingly mundane gesture became tinted with intimacy. Sitting across from this man and watching him pour the trashy café wine into her glass -- it felt so... social?
"When you put it like that..." She interrupted herself with a deep swig of her refill, and licked her lips unhurriedly before continuing. "Growing up sounds like a bad deal... an unacceptably bad deal."
The pallid girl didn't look at him, but rather to the side somewhere. Her still mostly dull and inexpressive eyes now housed a mischievous spark that wasn't there before. A spark that, by all right and reason, didn't belong there at all.
The sound of a cork popping out of a bottle somewhere close by told her that the waitress had returned with something desirable. Without looking away from some impossibly distant object in the sky, the heiress took another long swig of her own treat. She felt she needed to drink faster, otherwise she'd still be sober by the time the day flew by.
***
Eventually, she did let the day fly by too fast, doing nothing but lounging and drinking, and with a strange insistence filling up her companion's glass over and over. Some people's happiness is inversely proportional to their productivity, and it was easy to see why such people make unhealthy company.
In a not so unusual sight to those acquainted with her, the young aristocrat took her leave of the café after accumulating a shocking display of empty bottles at the table, half-leaning on whomever was tasked with her safety that evening. While she still wasn't particularly generous with words, it was clear that her mood had improved much. Uncannily much, in fact. Was it just the alcohol, or...?
by Evarista on February 25th, 2018, 7:34 pm 
