48th Autumn 519 AV
"speech"
"others"
"speech"
"others"
Gods. Ennisa dotted the 'i's slowly. She set her pen down and wriggled her fingers thoughtfully. She picked her pen up again, and slashed lines through all the 't's she had missed. Absent-mindedly, she accidentally crossed an 'l'. Not that she noticed. Her attention was too focussed on the hushed conversation between two of her co-workers. She ear-wigged whilst also working. It meant that she did neither of the two things well, but their conversation seemed important, so she continued in this manner as she listened.
"Did you hear the news? The Crone's dead. Dead. That mage-killer is brazen."
"Doesn't it scare you?"
"No, not really. I'm not a mage."
"Aren't you?"
"Nope." Ennisa concentrated as she jotted down the notes of the male foreigner she had spoken to earlier, and her attention drifted from the conversation as she wrote. The man had been a bit of a jerk, but in the end she had been pleased to eventually get him to do everything she needed him to. She scrawled his name with a flick of the wrist - Ssilesen. A weird name for a weirder person. She remembered the man in her mind's eye; a tall, pale-skinned man, a man whose eyes glistened with an inner fire that had initially made her uncomfortable, then profoundly fascinated. It was only his dismally frustrating chatter that had put her off. She zoned back to reality as the blonde girl said something else to catch her attention, and she subtly tilted her head to listen more closely, the last 'n' of his name blotchy with excess ink.
"I heard there's an investigation. Who do you think it is?"
"How the petch would I know? I just hope they find the murderer soon. I don't want there to be more deaths. It's scary. I'm afraid to be out in the dark, even under Leth's light."
Ennisa wrinkled her nose in thought, and finished the sentence she was writing with an overly-elaborate full stop. The conversation drifted to a finish as the two girls carried on their work, but it was time for Ennisa to go home anyway. She snapped the paperwork shut and wended her way over to file it in the correct place. After a short period of searching, she slotted it where it belonged, and shut the door behind her on the way out.
She gradually forgot Ssilesen as she walked. It was the beginning of the dusk rest. True to its name, the sun was settling on the horizon, and the sky was shifting to a beautifully dappled evening of fish scale clouds. It was mild. A truly pleasant evening, not far off a typical summer's evening. Wine would be flowing, stories would be swapped, and music would be playing... If only there wasn't an extremely powerful murderer seemingly wandering the streets of Lhavit, willy-nilly. That little fact lent an odd quietude to the city, an air of unease and nervousness that even the perenially chipper Ennisa couldn't fail to miss.
She walked, deep in thought about everything and nothing in particular, until she reached Surya Plaza. There she found herself a stone bench where a few other people were chatting and resting, and settled herself down to people-watch. She leant her arms back and listened in on the conversation flowing. The conversation inevitably featured the murder of the Crone, but it seemed they had not much else to add except speculation and gossip. Ennisa zoned out.
Instead, she remembered some of the other people she'd spoken to that day in work. Boredom had filled her with a kind of curious imagination, and she landed upon a young woman named Clara who she had briefly spoken to about her search for a new job. Clara was the type of woman that Ennisa and Itzi usually took the piss out of. She was petite, neat, pretty, and overly confident in herself. Her mother was, "A mage and important tradeswoman, don't you know?" They'd travelled from somewhere or other, a journey that had left its marks on the young Clara, who looked more haggard and tired than her age and make-up would suggest.
Clara. Her name had a nice ring, now that Ennisa thought about it. She stood up from the bench and set to wandering about Surya Plaza. Clara. She mouthed the name silently, and tried to picture the way that the young woman had strode into the Cosmos Centre to introduce herself. Ennisa mimicked her style as best she could. She slowed her walk and bounced a little more on the balls of her feet. It felt odd, as if she was an idiot-woman, but no-one seemed to pay her much mind.
Could she be Clara, if she needed to be? Could she be a different person, and what kind of person would her version of Clara be? The pompousness she could keep, and the vague posturing about her 'famous' mother. Clara's chatter was the kind of drivel that was easily ignored. In a strange way, Ennisa figured that was a good way to blend into the crowd - by spouting such boring nonsense that everyone saw her only as a stuck-up young girl without much of a brain in her head.
