Sub Rosa Hotel, The Stacks
"Wondrous morning, mho!" Ksjta crooned softly in Deftung, a slight upward inflection in her voice that conveyed a simple joy as she lingered on the consonants. She was chirpy - by her standards at least - and it was incredibly irritating. The diplomat groaned, a hand coming up to shield her face, even as she turned it into the yielding softness of the pillow. Everything was sharp and inescapable. Skin hot and dewy, bedclothes sticking to her, leaving crisscrossed marks when she peeled the fabric off. Her mouth horribly dry, feeling as if it had been stuffed with cotton balls, tongue moving languidly, almost painfully as she tried to dredge up some moisture. The light stabbed into her eyeballs like needles and yet she found herself driving the heels of her hands into the sockets, dulling it a little instead of intensifying the stinging.
The first sound that came out of her mouth was a croak, which was fortuitous for her because otherwise she might have said something unseemly. She cleared her throat.
"Clock the Circle, umah!" she groaned in Estuan, reluctantly pulling herself into a sitting position, fingers tugged through disordered hair with a wince as they hit knots and tangles. "Why did you wake me?"
"Why? There is hardly any morning left - it is nearer to noon - and I have let you sleep. I thought it time to rouse you so we can begin. I am eager to meet this acolyte. Cxîl sounds fascinating, this Ezre," Ksjta explained, still prating on in Deftung.
The young woman could only squint at her mother, hating her for the way she moved so effortlessly around the room. She practically glided, feet barely lifting and yet there was never a scuffling sound, never a shuffle. And so quiet! She'd always been able to sneak up behind them as children, silent as the grave was meant to be. The legs of the wide-legged pants swished against each other and her steps were whispers, the only sounds aside from the words that dropped from her mouth.
"You let me- Do you have any idea how many times you woke me up in the night? All because you had to write down poetry. Walking past my bed, muttering to yourself, acting as if it was normal. Really, umah!" Drezda snapped out waspishly in Estuan. The evidence of her mother's nighttime compositions had been tidied into a bundle on table by the empty hearth, a far cry from the disarray that had existed hours before when inked pages had been strewn around the room.
Ksjta retrieved a hairbrush and glided towards her daughter, stretching out a hand so her fingers could put the dark locks into some disarray before she brought the bristles to them. She was already impeccable, unfairly so given her unquiet night but there was no clear evidence that such a thing had occurred. Shoulder-length hair had been bundled up, twisted into an artful knot towards the back of her head that left her neck naked, not an ebony strand out of place, a testament to how carefully it had been styled and clipped and tamed. There were two red and black clips that were visible in her hair, one on each side that seemed to help tug it back but they were just there to draw the eye, decorative and purposefully busy; the real work was done by hair clips that matched her hair colour and were skillfully hidden.
White powder had been dusted across her features, carefully blended in and seeming to flow seamlessly to her hairline. There was subtle colour on her cheekbones, delicate tracing of black along her upper eyelids and lips that were the colour of blood. Only the lining of the eyes and the painting of her lips pointed to obvious artifice, the rest quite natural looking. The politician had never been able to do that. Even the eyeliner was subtle, the lips the true bit of ostentation and her mother wore it as if it was a natural part of herself as readily as she wore the ink that ran across her skin in lines that her daughter had never seen the full extent of and whose meanings were largely unknown to her.
She was achingly exotic from head to toe. Glossy midnight hair, Hoxian features, an upper garment that was sure to cause a scandal as it left her shoulders, the top of her back and part of her chest entirely bare, and trousers that were wide enough to look like a skirt until she moved. The poetess made no attempt to conform to the style of Anaxas and had seemed almost offended when Drezda pointed it out. Now she was sure to tut and sigh over her daughter as she tried to make her presentable, as if anyone would notice how she looked. Any Anaxi worth their salt would have their eyes glued to the obvious foreigner; the diplomat might as well have been a native by comparison.
"Please do not take that tone with me, mho," Ksjta sighed, switching to Estuan at last, a low murmur of disappointment in her voice. "Let us see if we cannot make something good of the rest of the day..."
Hair brushed, a quick bath, another brushing of hair and styling and make up and dressing. The whole routine was enough to make the Hoxian want to crawl back into her bed, exhausted by the whole affair. Her mother's hands had moved swiftly, clever fingers teasing Drezda's hair into a simple but fetching style that involved knotting at the back of her head and some twisting involved shining silver pins. The bags beneath her eyes had been all but obliterated although makeup could do nothing for the bloodshotting in her eyes. She had waved off the offer of further cosmetics, certain that the Roalis heat would have them sliding off and disinterested in the need to reset her looks at regular intervals. Beside Ksjta she felt achingly plain, a white skirt flowing to mid-calf and a blue blouse with flounced sleeves completing her simplicity in her own eyes. A slight heel to her shoes gave her an inch or two over her flat-shoed mother but it hardly felt like a victory.
The woman was over twenty years her senior and yet she was utterly upstaged.
Stepping out of the room ahead of the woman, she sighed in exasperation as the Hexxos waved a finger in the air and abandoned all plans of departure to gather some paper, sitting to scribble away with one of those ink-filled pens. Drezda had to resist rolling her eyes as she hovered just outside the open doorway, unwilling to wait for more poetry nonsense.
"Umah, I'm going to go on ahead. I'm sure you can catch up when you... get the..." she trailed off, swallowing spasmodically as she gazed at the figure a little way down the hall from her. Her head had turned to assess the hallway as she prepared for her departure and there he was. Unbelievably. Of all the places they could meet, it seemed so strange that it would occur here, an uncomfortable reunion given how they'd parted last...
It was Tom, the raen who had killed Anatole Vauquelin for his body. Tom who she had called a plowfoot bastard and told to leave her home towards the end of Loshis. Tom who she had been too frightened to meet, even when she'd received her mother's advice by letter. She'd only tried to reach out to him earlier this month when the woman herself arrived from Hox but her letters hadn't reached their recipient, the man away. And yet here he was.
She stood frozen, gazing at him where he stood, clad in a house robe with pajamas peeking out from underneath. His face... well, he looked about as well as she felt, which was like she'd had a date with the erse end of a kenser.
"Tom! I... I didn't expect- I wouldn't have thought- I'm surprised to find you here. Now. I- Good morning. I'm told there isn't much left of it but... it appears to be another lovely Roalis day," she blurted stupidly, falling back on inanities. The diplomat could have kicked herself but she didn't think she had the kind of flexibility needed to give herself a swift, hard kick up the erse.
"I'm surprised," Drezda repeated, her field fluttering nervously.