- 65 Spring 519
A sigh escapes Caspian as he regards his reflection in one of Saticath’s gold-backed mirrors. The kitchen’s grown balmy in the past quarter-bell, Saticath having elected to bake something that appeared half-submerged in fruit liqueur, and to escape the haze and her bustling about, he retreats to the furthest divan by the window, mirror yet in tow. Reclined against the cushions now, he holds the mirror overhead, peering up at himself at various angle and tilt.
“You alright there, doll?” Saticath calls over without looking away from her culinary fuss, flour dusted up to her elbow and a healthy dose of the crimson liqueur splashed across her skirts.
“I just don’t know if they’re even,” Caspian replies, frowning, then forcing himself to relax his expression and frowning all the more over the self-imposed effort. Mirror still held aloft, he scrutinizes his brows, and he’s quite certain it’s no trick of the light that the left rises ever a millimeter higher than the right.
“I told you I’d do it for you in a tick.”
“But it was a long tick, your longest to date, and besides that I don’t think I ought to rack up any more favors out of you.”
The tweezers have gone and lost themselves, and no amount of his groping about the low-slung coffee table beside him, within the divets of the divan cushions beneath him, or rummaging through his own pockets makes them known.
Such a bother that he might have to rise again, as Saticath’s voluptuous furniture has a way of swallowing one whole.
Before he rallies himself to the bare minimum, his hostess having made it clear she’s only got so many sets of hands and all of them spoken for, a young woman in a more disheveled state than what’s already customary to come bursting through Saticath’s door makes her entrance.
And for her problems, Caspian notes with a grumble and pout, Saticath readily drops everything.
There’s a lot of wailing to be had, only the half of it perceivable to Caspian, due largely in part to this apparently being the culmination to a social saga involving the employees of the brothel across the way, and otherwise to the aforementioned wailing, which takes most intelligible syllables down with it.
“-that scurvy bastard!” the girl adds in final punctuation to her grand collection of accusations against parties far from present, flinging herself into Saticath’s arms and sobbing into her already liqueur-soaked shoulder.
In the course of the explanation of her woes, Caspian had at several turns decided he may in fact be overthinking the architectural symmetry of his brows, and alternatively determining that he may actually be underthinking it, with new irregularities presenting themselves depending on the degree of light allotted.
“-make yourself useful,” Saticath’s finishing some indeterminate time later, with Caspian no closer to an accurate evaluation of his facial geometry.
It becomes apparent, from the settling silence in the room and the two women staring in his direction, that the last statement had been to his referral, and quite possibly not necessarily to his benefit.
With a sigh heavier than all the ones that came before, Caspian clasps the mirror down to his chest and regards them sternly. “It that a note of assignment I sense hanging about the air? Sans my own consultation?”
“Its an easy favor, doll. And I assume you’ve nothing better to do.”
“What I’ve got going on here,” he says, gesturing emphatically around the whole of his face, “is a lot more than nothing, and, i hazard to guess, better than what you’ve planned for me to do.”
“Just find out who he’s sleeping with, alright?” Saticath replies. “And bring that swirly stabber.”
Fortunately for him - because the idea of going out of his way to search for, fetch, retrieve, or in general, of moving the barest inch from his current position currently presents itself as an unacceptable one - his Obfuscate dagger lies on the floor directly to his left, in its sheath and attached to his belt, well within arm’s reach.
Through Herculean effort he closes that most minimum of distances, dragging the belt and dagger towards him and on, and looks between his friend and his friend’s friend and tries his best to feign an appropriate and well-earned level of irritation. Anything less might only encourage this sort of behavior out of them, after all. “I had a feeling it was something along those lines.”
WC: 743
“You alright there, doll?” Saticath calls over without looking away from her culinary fuss, flour dusted up to her elbow and a healthy dose of the crimson liqueur splashed across her skirts.
“I just don’t know if they’re even,” Caspian replies, frowning, then forcing himself to relax his expression and frowning all the more over the self-imposed effort. Mirror still held aloft, he scrutinizes his brows, and he’s quite certain it’s no trick of the light that the left rises ever a millimeter higher than the right.
“I told you I’d do it for you in a tick.”
“But it was a long tick, your longest to date, and besides that I don’t think I ought to rack up any more favors out of you.”
The tweezers have gone and lost themselves, and no amount of his groping about the low-slung coffee table beside him, within the divets of the divan cushions beneath him, or rummaging through his own pockets makes them known.
Such a bother that he might have to rise again, as Saticath’s voluptuous furniture has a way of swallowing one whole.
Before he rallies himself to the bare minimum, his hostess having made it clear she’s only got so many sets of hands and all of them spoken for, a young woman in a more disheveled state than what’s already customary to come bursting through Saticath’s door makes her entrance.
And for her problems, Caspian notes with a grumble and pout, Saticath readily drops everything.
There’s a lot of wailing to be had, only the half of it perceivable to Caspian, due largely in part to this apparently being the culmination to a social saga involving the employees of the brothel across the way, and otherwise to the aforementioned wailing, which takes most intelligible syllables down with it.
“-that scurvy bastard!” the girl adds in final punctuation to her grand collection of accusations against parties far from present, flinging herself into Saticath’s arms and sobbing into her already liqueur-soaked shoulder.
In the course of the explanation of her woes, Caspian had at several turns decided he may in fact be overthinking the architectural symmetry of his brows, and alternatively determining that he may actually be underthinking it, with new irregularities presenting themselves depending on the degree of light allotted.
“-make yourself useful,” Saticath’s finishing some indeterminate time later, with Caspian no closer to an accurate evaluation of his facial geometry.
It becomes apparent, from the settling silence in the room and the two women staring in his direction, that the last statement had been to his referral, and quite possibly not necessarily to his benefit.
With a sigh heavier than all the ones that came before, Caspian clasps the mirror down to his chest and regards them sternly. “It that a note of assignment I sense hanging about the air? Sans my own consultation?”
“Its an easy favor, doll. And I assume you’ve nothing better to do.”
“What I’ve got going on here,” he says, gesturing emphatically around the whole of his face, “is a lot more than nothing, and, i hazard to guess, better than what you’ve planned for me to do.”
“Just find out who he’s sleeping with, alright?” Saticath replies. “And bring that swirly stabber.”
Fortunately for him - because the idea of going out of his way to search for, fetch, retrieve, or in general, of moving the barest inch from his current position currently presents itself as an unacceptable one - his Obfuscate dagger lies on the floor directly to his left, in its sheath and attached to his belt, well within arm’s reach.
Through Herculean effort he closes that most minimum of distances, dragging the belt and dagger towards him and on, and looks between his friend and his friend’s friend and tries his best to feign an appropriate and well-earned level of irritation. Anything less might only encourage this sort of behavior out of them, after all. “I had a feeling it was something along those lines.”
WC: 743
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Boxcode credit: Anti!
