3 Summer 513
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Shausha looked around her living quarters with a hand on her chin. Since she had arrived, she wondered about these individual lobes that seemed so isolated. Used to sleeping in piles with her family and friends, the emptiness of what would be a neat little apartment to a Symenestra left her with a melancholy that stuck in her heart like a splinter.
Within the first few days of her arrival, Shausha had flown silently from stalactite to stalactite, peeking into other peoples cocoons, gleaning instruction on how to use the oddly specific tools that her quarters had come furnished with; Where she would have just organized her belongings in piles, the status quo here suggested she store them in chests and drawers. She had even tried to spend nights laying flat on the beds like she had seen the Symenestra do.
Frustration welled up in Shausha. She tore the bedding out of the niche in the wall and threw them in the middle of the room. She went around, unhooking the curtain room separators and threw them in the pile too. Sleeping like that was so... stupid! Gathering the cloth around her, Shausha pushed and pulled them into a nest-like circle.
After a few more minutes of tucking ruffling the folds of the cloth, she belly flopped onto the nest. As the boredom settled in, Shausha became more and more cross. She thought longingly for Xy and the constant social stimulation. She remembered, with a longing smile, the times her and her friends would spend the night brawling over food rights. Grin widening, she remembered how, when rutting season would come around, men that would fight over her.
She sighed, rolling on her belly. Shausha guessed it was about midnight based on how quiet it was. Symenestra were not nocturnal, so she slept through what little activity there was in the daytime and was left awake during the dormant (and very boring) night. I wonder if I ought to sleep in the night, she began, but she realized that would mean less time with her mistress, Akajia. Ughhhh maybe I should just wake in the afternoon and sleep right at dawn. That would mean a very short sleep, but she barely did anything that actually drained her energy.
She stood up and stretched a bit, guessing that she’d try to sleep right at dawn and see how it would go. Shausha bounced a couple times before jumping into the air and flying up to the entrance near the top of the ceiling. Perching on the rounded top of her abode for a moment, she contemplated what to do.
A familiar scent drifted to her nose. Oscar? Her toes lifted from the roof. Persuing the scent, she swooped above and below the city that dripped from the ceiling. Finally, her ears picked up a foreign sound. It was not quite crackling, nor was it ripping. The magical sound came from a building in the near distance. She alit upon the roof of the Public House and peeked into the opening above. Using her past experience in sneaking around the dark, she silently folded herself into the entrance and swooped into a dark corner that Oscar had his back to.
She watched, listened, and smelled closely as he began a strange type of ritual.
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