[M] Playing with Fire (Tom)

[Drezda Ecks]

18 Intas 2719 | Mid-Afternoon
Drez's Home

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For a moment, the Hoxian was tempted to tell him to keep the collection of verses. It meant nothing to her after all so why keep it when someone else might derive pleasure from them? However, almost as soon as she considered it, words to that effect shrivelled and died on her tongue, a sinking feeling in her stomach that made her want to shrink into herself. It wasn’t shame or guilt although the visceral response felt similar. There was something squirming within her, a distress that writhed briefly through her monic aura as she shifted herself a little bit. There was no sentimental attachment to that slim volume, she didn’t need it and she honestly didn’t care about Rosmilda’s attachment to it. However, if it was really so unimportant, why had she not gotten rid of it prior to this? She’d had it since before she’d gotten Rosmilda, no one else had touched the poetry before that and while it could be said to be something that had been thoughtlessly set aside and forgotten about, the diplomat also knew that that wasn’t strictly true.

The poetry hadn’t been discarded, not because it had been forgotten about, but rather because Drezda couldn’t bring herself to part with it. She had never discarded any of the correspondence from her mother either, even though it was unusual for her to keep missives from anyone. She wasn’t entirely sure why but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. There might even have been a spike of fear in the mix at the thought of never getting Web of Souls back and it certainly wasn’t due to anxiety about how her mother would respond if she ever found out.

This wasn’t something she wanted to consider too closely, the young woman hardly wanting to investigate these odd feelings so she smothered them instead, slugging some whiskey as well for good measure as if it would douse them. Eventually, it would but she wasn’t going to end up completely locked, not in front of her guest. No end of feelings for her, not tonight, not with Anatole.

The woman swilled the amber liquid around in her glass, peering into it, not sure what she was hoping to divine there. She’d tried her hand at aquamancy before - she’d assisted her mother with a few chan ceremonies - and there was technically water in there so it might be possible, especially as the alcohol was altering her senses. Well, dulling rather than enhancing. And yet, maybe she could get her answers that way, the ones about Anatole...

Her gaze snapped away from the liquid surface, its spell over her broken. The Hoxian didn’t know what she’d been thinking, nothing sensible in any case; scrying certainly wasn’t her forte and there were more reliable methods for gathering information, ones she was actually competent in. More than that, she wasn’t as interested as she had been earlier in finding out about the Incumbent’s condition. It was why she’d brought him here of course but given that he was likely to be hanging around for awhile, she felt disinclined to dig into such matters; they could wait until another day. The conversation that they’d struck up was surprisingly pleasant and considerably more comfortable than their interaction shortly after Anatole’s arrival.

Although ‘pleasant’ might not be the way most people would describe it; they were both inclined to morbidity but it was a weird mutual interest.

"Yes, it isn’t fair to call daily matters mundane, they aren’t always. There can be truly horrible things in the midst of banality and the fact that they’re commonplace… I suppose it makes it worse. The horrible can be so ordinary that people stop looking at it, stop seeing it, if they ever bothered to really look at it in the first place."

Her fingertip produced a humming sound on the rim of the glass, tracing a damp path. ”You’ve been in the Dives, seen the way people live there. How they have to live. Old Rose has similarities but there’s more at play there although I’ve only seen it from a distance, thankfully. You have to be a particular kind of galdor to venture there after all but… humans don’t live that way at home. Hox is far from hospitable but things are simpler there in a lot of ways. I won’t say easier but even though it’s colder there, we can handle it better. Many humans hunt, a number of galdori as well on the fringes so people can afford to deck themselves out in furs. But here…”

The young woman shook her head, making a sucking sound with her teeth. ”Here you’ve got poverty and suffering, decadence and addiction, corruption… They all mingle together and in Vienda… You don’t have to go as far as the Dives to find it, do you?”

Her voice carried a sad lilt, onyx eyes hooded as she glanced at her drink, at the roaring fire and around the room before she let out a short, humourless laugh.

”I think I’ve answered your question. Not about poets in general perhaps but certainly… me. It’s to have everything and yet wallow in misery. To see things that you know aren’t right and yet not lift a finger to do anything as if writing it down will somehow do the same job. A spoiled hypocrite, that’s what makes a poet,” she bit out, laughing again, bitterness and self-deprecation ringing in it.

Oh how much she’d willingly told him! She didn’t know when she’d dropped her walls but he’d gained access to things that he shouldn’t of, things that she could hardly hide away and feign ignorance of their existence. He’d just sidled up when she wasn’t looking and circumvented her carefully cultivated defences, ones that had taken years to cultivate.

She wagged a finger in his direction. ”I think you have a talent for asking dangerous questions - dangerous because I actually clocking well answer them! You weren’t like that before but then… people change. I certainly have. A few months ago, I would have interrogated you, you know. Mercilessly. I wouldn’t have been able to use anything Perceptive because the mona’s effect slides right off you but that would have made me more persistent.”

She cocked her head to the side.

”I wonder which one of us has changed more?”

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