When Safiya spoke to the mona, she always tried a bit of deference, as if speaking to an older sibling or a surrogate parent. In her tribe, she'd never known a true parental structure, seeing all of the elders as some form of family or the other. But, the mona was different. She felt the vestiges of it in her glamour, the to and fro of its movement along her body as she sought to treat herself as she had for others so many times before. However, there was a hiss in the air, as if an elder brother had come forth and struck her across the face. She felt the pain seep into her skull, a pounding headache forming as a distinctly uncomfortable sour lemon taste rolled against her tongue.
The pounding grew fiercer and as she pressed into the nearest wall, it grew fiercer and fiercer until she fell to the ground, clutching her temples and rubbing vigorously in her efforts at regaining a foothold in her own brain. The taste in her mouth slowly grew bitter and terrible, the sharp rattling in her skull diminishing just enough to be uncomfortable. The happiness seemed to wilt from Safiya's soul and her coffee eyes dimmed with the impending negativity that a failed spell whirled around her. She felt the mona draw back and away from her, a hiss that hurt more than the ire it drew from her senses. It was a painful feeling, not just in her head, but in her chest as she found displeasure in the air around her.
What did I do? she wondered, a somberness that was all too foreign to the happy-go-lucky Safiya and it pulled her mind away from the desire to do anything else but reach into the satchel at her side. Inside of it was the reason she'd gotten into her fight in the first place. A dozen nuggets of cannabis were neatly stacked and ordered in a paper bag, the pungent aroma at last drawing a hint of a smile from Safiya's lips. She'd been displeased with her purchase upon further inspection, and was more than willing to take her complaints to fists if it meant that the wretched dealer wouldn't try to shunt her again.
Fool me once, shame on you. Because you're getting your ass kicked, she thought, the chuckle at last escaping her lips. She hadn't exactly... won... their little squabble, but she'd also given him a black eye and it was left at that when their altercation was broken up in the middle of the tavern they'd been conducting their business in. In the end, a pleasant batting of the eyelashes towards the wannabe bouncer and her business complaints were sorted out and she was on her way.
It'd been two nights since then and Safiya was still reeling from the beating taken, made all the worse by her failed attempts to treat it. So, she began to crush up the cannabis between her fingertips, nimbly working one of the nugs and holding the coarsely ground powder in her left hand as the right dipped right back into her satchel. There, she produced her 'golden goose', her pride and joy. An ornately wrought glass pipe, woven in glass that she suspected had candle wax (it wasn't) or something woven into the artistry. Safiya couldn't know how the colour dyed into the clear material, but the six inch long pipe felt heavy and precious in her palm as she turned it upward.
The bowl was stained black from use, though she'd cleaned the stem with water and the gentle coaxing of the mona just several days earlier, and she could see every design that some golly bumpkin took the time to weave their magic into. Maybe Safiya was jealous of what galdori magic was capable of, but their relationship with the mona, at least from what she heard, needed some sort of godly knowledge of science that she'd never have. Instead, she allowed herself to be satisfied with her witchy spellcraft. As Safiya mused upon the nature of her very-justly acquired pipe, she decided to pull at the mona yet again.
She chanced her chats, taking the calculated risk that what just happened could very well happen again, but in truth caring very little. She didn't own a lighter, and this little spell more than most she used a great deal. The bowl ignited with her beseeching, gentle coaxing holding the sparks until smoke began to rise. She quickly pushed the pipe against her lips, slow pulls intent on smoldering the formed flame until a plume of smoke pulled directly into her lungs.
All anger, all dissatisfaction and the pounding of her head seemed to dissipate at once as she tipped her head back and unleashed the plume of smoke from her lungs in a showy display. It wafted outwards and into the air before gentle laughter coaxed from the witch's lips. Safiya was in the public eye, if a bit separated from the hustle and bustle of Old Rose life. She pulled herself off from the wall to sit cross-legged on the ground as she took a second and third hit from her pipe.