2nd of Winter, 519AV
Lani had not properly looked at herself in her mirror in ages. The long polished metal sheet that threw her own reflection back at her hung on the inner door of her wardrobe. She had been sick and tired for so long, that she had only glanced at herself enough to brush her hair or pick at her face. But today she was off to impress Tasa and the Twilight Tower in hopes of gaining employment. And so she scrutinized her reflection in her mirror, finishing the last few buttons on her shirt. It was when Lani attended to tucking the hem of the silk shirt into her trousers that she realized what felt different... she had gained weight. More accurately she had softened considerably, having not been on top of her training while she was sick. the hem of her pants still fit, although she did not need a belt as she usually did, and the creases behind her knees felt a little tighter than they should. She would have not batted an eye at the change in weight and appearance, Lani was not often one to ruminate on something that she couldn't immediately fix. However, due to the importance of the day, she began to panic."Do I have to buy new clothes?" She groaned to Infinity while sticking a finger in the waistband of her trousers and tugging, to see how much room the fabric had left in it. R'yse would have been happy, the Konti had always been trying to get Lani to put on weight, she just couldn't seem to keep it. Apparently whatever sickness had laid the half-Eypharian up for so many moons had helped with that problem. It didn't help that she was eating so much better in Lhavit than she had in Wind Reach. Here at least, her coins had value.
Of course, she received no reply. The halfbreed had quickly gotten used to talking to the house. She talked to herself while she was alone most of the time anyway, but now all her rhetorical questions to herself had the possibility of being answered, in whatever way the building chose to communicate with her. Only, Infinity didn't often reply to her. To be fair, she also only ever came home to sleep, and even then... only sometimes. They still had quite a bit of ice to break.
"Don't ever become an organic creature, Infinity. There is so much maintenance work to do with these bodies." She grumbled, nudging the door of her wardrobe closed and straightening her collar one more time. She felt like an overstuffed sausage, ready to split at the faintest sign of stress.
The window flew open, startling Spider who squawked irritably at the house that woke him. The rim of the window smacked into the wall. It didn't do any more damage, but Lani could see the dent in the wooden walls where the history of the window banging open showed, drawing her attention to it. Infinity never banged it's own windows like that, although she recognized that she had accidentally opened it too hard many times before. She always apologized, but the Infinity pointing out how her stay in it's room had affected it. Perhaps the house had some self-maintenance to do as well.
"Point proven." Lani nodded to the window, carefully closing and latching it again. Hesitantly she stroked the banged up section of wall. "I'll do better." She promised, but there was no reply. Lani interpreted it as irritation, but wasn't sure. Carefully, with her hand still on the wall, she focused her senses on her auristics. She was starting to get much better with the discipline than the chaotic readings when she was first able to focus her djed in that way. So far her auristics have been only used to sense the immediate emotions of someone or some creature she wanted to focus on. It was latent, but she still needed to waken and use it to get anything out of the tricky little magic. Now it was quicker for her to focus on what she wanted to read from the house, and as she did so, she noticed something else.
Through the movements that her fingertips could read, she could sense the house's emotions. Its true, it seemed slightly irritated, but it also seemed somewhat distracted, as if it was watching something else... or paying attention to someone else within it's many rooms. But as she focused on the various movements of emotions that she could read in the house's aura, she noticed something else. There was a raw chalky, almost paper-like, taste in her mouth, and immediately she spat her tongue out, as if something was on it. Only nothing gave way when she scraped the top of her tongue with her teeth, and just as soon as the strange taste had come, it had left. For a tick she was largely confused as to what the odd sensation was before she realized that the taste was... wood. It was the wood of the wall she was touching.
Weird. She would have to experiment with that.