Chapter Text
There was something bothering them ever since they’d gone off with Rhea that second time. She was pretty sure they weren’t telling her everything. Not in that they were actually trying to keep secrets so much as that they just weren’t used to being completely honest. Or maybe that for once they were the one trying not to think about something. She was going to have to ask outright which just seemed… annoying somehow.
They’d reached a compromise on her hanging out the window by moving the bed under it. Now she still hung an arm or leg out sometimes but at least she wasn’t perched so precariously. They had the desk chair turned so they could prop their feet up on the corner of the bed and were about a quarter of the way through a book they’d borrowed it from the wizard.
They were rereading the same paragraph for the fifth time when she suddenly flopped onto their lap and they had to throw their legs to the ground, drop the book, and catch themselves on the table to keep from falling out of the chair. She was fine, having grabbed the front of their shirt to keep herself upright.
She’d been doing things like this lately; invading their space suddenly when they weren’t paying attention. When they told her they should stick together, they hadn’t meant it literally. Visible across the room maybe. Instead she was often on or leaning on them (never under, they noticed, although they supposed that would take initiative on their own part). It wasn’t that it was a problem, it was just… annoying.
She wasn’t exactly prone to introspection, so digging out her exact motivations was useless. It did regulate her emotional distress, which definitely seemed like a mammalian trait; huddling together for warmth. They were warm blooded themselves, but apparently ceremorphosis either removed or just didn’t recreate that neurochemical system.
That said, they were pretty sure at least some of it was the personal satisfaction of bothering them. They’d tried to act like it didn’t affect them but some combination of posture and whatever permanent emotional bleedover had happened made it obvious to her. Annoying them gave her an intoxicating sense of control.
Her fingers in their tentacles… Well that was also to annoy them but it was a distinct sensory aspect to it too. Her smugly satisfied grin would fall slack with fascination as she curled each tentacle around her hand then slid out along the underside before dropping them.
“You’ve been staring at that page for an hour. What’s bothering you?”
They didn’t have a good answer to that. They could just relate the memories themselves but even with the language translated the context was probably lacking from her perspective. And really it wasn’t just distress about that one event anyway it was a greater sense of existential dread.
This was the only place I could think of that wouldn’t immediately kill us but I’m pretty sure it’s politically unstable enough to kill us anyway and that’s assuming the stress doesn’t kill me first.
She gently tugged on one of the intact shorter ones. “Huh.”
She didn’t say anything else so they reached for the book where it had fallen against the leg of the desk. She snatched it up first.
“You walked us all the way down to that creepy study to borrow a book about eels?”
I also borrowed one on mushrooms and one on botany. What is it you don’t like about him?
She shrugged,“wizards are assholes.”
She leaned on them with the book on her lap and focused intently on a page three or so ahead of the one they’d been on. “Wait, is this not about eels?”
“No, it is, but it’s also a working class treatise against institutionalized academia.” They took the opportunity to run their fingers through her hair. She leaned into it, got a shiver down her spine, realized what she was doing, and shrugged them off in annoyance. Ha.
She side eyed them and dropped the book back on the desk. “If we’re going to die anyway let’s go somewhere.”
They stared at her incredulously.
Like where…!?
She shrugged,“over on the other side of the house the windows look out on some kind of market down the hill.”
Oh we DEFINITELY can’t leave the house.
She grinned widely and tugged on their face again,“C’mon.”
They gave in to the needling and slapped at her hands. She let go but smiled wider. They caught an image from her of their own tentacles curled up into tight spirals. They breathed and forced themselves to relax.
We already draw too much attention here. They’ll probably chase us down the streets with torches and pitchforks.
“Do drow do that? Like do they even use pitchforks?”
I don’t know, and we’re not finding out.
She silently pouted for a minute or two, which they didn’t respond to. They did their best to not look annoyed that she was still sitting on them, and reached for the book again. Suddenly, she stood up and moved for the door.
“–well I’m gonna go find out!”
They froze in surprise for a second before running after her.
They stopped to catch their footing and looked down the slope.
The basin stretched almost a mile across and pushed a slow, hot updraft against her shins as she darted down the hill. Roughly four dozen people walked down the main path every minute, their combined body heat thick with dust, sulfur, and dirt. The crowd was split to three or so slaves for every one drow and the air crackled against their skin with a bone-dry static drag. Stamped metal coins passed through the hands of clerks, bleeding outward into a flat, steady buzz. Hundreds of overlapping voices and iron tools didn’t bounce, they just all vibrated together as a solid wall of low pressure against her eardrums while patrols of a half-dozen guards walked crossing paths through the acoustic static.
It was almost impossible to keep track of both her and the space around them while sharing her senses, but they worried that if they tried to shut her out they’d lose her in the crowd. They worked their way down the hill as quickly as they could without faceplanting into the stone path.
She had stopped near a street musician at the corner of one of the larger streets that entered the plaza. He was playing some kind of pipe and, based on the patterns her ears recognized, he was getting to the end of the current song. When he stopped to catch his breath, she sang a short tune that he apparently recognized because he nodded along to it for a verse or two before joining in. They wondered where she’d found the time to learn drow music (or anyone willing to teach her).
She was dancing now too, which was drawing a mixed reaction. The song was hitting some familiar notes but the dance was almost entirely alien to the crowd. They admired the fluidity of her movement, and her ability to literally float, but the updraft she was using to do it and the force of her landings struck the crowd as clumsy and crass. They also, bizarrely, were offended by not just her appearance but also specifically how happy she looked. This was also starting to attract the notice of what appeared to be armed guards.
She turned to pull them into a spin and they used the momentum to pull her around the corner of the building. Slamming into the wall was just the first of their many regrets, followed by the nauseating disorientation of having felt both sensations of spinning in circles for a few seconds. She, having barely been oriented to the physical moment to begin with, had no such discomfort. On the upside, her stopping to laugh at them stumbling around prevented her from running back out into the open market.
They managed to stumble through pulling her onto a side street behind the building they’d crashed into. She was almost doubled over laughing at them now. They were probably about to be publicly executed in the street and she was the happiest they’d ever seen her. It occurred to them that this might actually make her more pliable. They pulled her into a hug against the wall and threaded their fingers through her hair again and she quieted to a contented giggle. Ridiculous, but it worked.
They stayed that way for what felt like a long time. They didn’t want to risk actively digging through the minds of the crowd or even specifically the guards so they were left passively listening to the emotions and louder thoughts. It took a while for the overall sense of disruption to die back, and they kept waiting well after that for good measure.
They let out a long, rattling sigh. She lightly pushed away from them.
You’ve had your fun, can we go back to the manor now?
She rolled her eyes, but the contended smile didn’t leave her face. She let them drag her back across the market towards the hill. Well, they almost made it, anyway.
A guard on one side of the square spotted them and alerted his partner. One of them yelled at the Xotchtil and the sylph to stop, then started closing the distance. Xotchtil threw a sharp, desperate compulsion towards him, trying to force him to stop, and he did stumble. After the initial intrusion, however, his confusion instantly hardened into pure, offended rage. He drew his weapon. This entire ordeal had also attracted more guards, who did the same.