Skandra Tyullis (roll_the_bones) wrote in caeleste, @ 2009-08-13 10:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | aeotha easaahae, chosen, elemmírë, leironuoth, skandra tyullis |
satharine the great (leironuoth, aeotha, elemmire)
The room seemed to be alive. Water could be heard, running down the inside of the wall, wet and full in its impatience to meet the ground. There were creaking boards as one drunk couple or another stumbled back to their room to consummate their relationship. Skandra paid it no mind. At least, he tried not to. Thinking of Uathis with them was nonsense. Thinking of putting Uathis back in charge of that organization which had nearly killed Skandra several times over, impossible. But he needed the Ether - secure in his pocket - and he needed the access to this Satharine. There was little he could do about the fat mage except bring him along. Even though he still had this thumb the fool complained enough for ten women, all of them nursing an aching tooth. He complained about the heat. About having to walk. About Skandra's smell. It was almost enough to make Skandra want to cut off his fucking thumb, but there was no reason for it now. That might lose them the fat mage's cooperation. It would be a net loss, but Skandra might sleep better if they did.
Drip, drip.
In that impossible long rectangle of moonlight Aeotha was framed. She took his breath away when he gazed upon her, illuminated that way, other-worldly, as though her body knew that she was promised to moonlight and opened itself to the silver rays of the night star. He watched her with steady eyes, never blinking, unmoved on his surface. He wanted to reach out and touch the curves of her face, of her neck, of her shoulder. Of her hips, and of her legs. He wanted to run his hands over the whole of her body in that moonlight, exploring the altered sensations, drinking in the luminous divinity that had visited his wastrel's life and his wastrel's room. She seemed no easier in his presence, and perhaps decidedly less so because he was staring. Nothing he could do about that. As well tell the sun to stop shining, as tell Aeotha not to be what she was. Beautiful. Alluring without trying. She had learned somehow, instinctively, the art of the priestess. To draw in and intoxicate without truly attempting it.
Elemmírë, on the other hand, was something else entirely. Though the moonlight drenched her as well it seemed not to touch her, to flow around her. She might as well have been sitting in pure darkness for all that he could see of her face. Perhaps a blessing. He could not turn away from her, was not sickened in the same way that Aeotha and Leironuoth were - but she was a vain creature, and he too fascinated. He'd felt what she felt now. That no-longer-delayed sensation of death at one's doorstep, pulling one in, pulling one apart. Skandra knew all too well that sensation. Like the burning embers of a fireplace deposited in your chest. It was not life with which you burned, but death. Keenly aware of it at every moment. Hoping that it would not come too quickly or too unkindly, knowing that it would do both, and powerless to stop it. Which of the two was more beautiful? He could not have said. The mere fact that he thought them both beautiful, and wanted to say so, burned to press his fingers and himself into their flesh, proved that he was as lecherous as ever.
Uathis had said it himself, on the way here.
"Some things never change."
Skandra flexed his arms as he stepped into the chamber, raising them over his head and behind his back, coat hanging limply from his shoulders as he bent backward. Only an instant. Uathis followed behind, and then Leironuoth after, until all three were in the chamber and the door was shut. The old man eyed them warily, but hungrily. Skandra nearly slapped him. No, the time to do violence against Uathis was not now. He still had those invitations under his coat, and if Skandra wanted them but also wanted to slap him, then the slap should be the precursor to a kill. Nothing else was going to get those things from Uathis short of murdering him. It was not the morality of it that concerned him. Only how to cover it up, and he'd better have a plan before he even attempted something like that, at this point. There was a question in Aeotha's eyes. A question that was put to Leironuoth instead of Skandra. She did not trust him. Well, no one would blame her for that, least of all Skandra. As for Elemmírë... he could not have said what she found so interesting.
He could barely tell where she was looking.
"This is Uathis, everyone," Skandra said without preamble. "Uathis, you've heard of Aeotha Easaahae, I'm sure. High Priestess of Astarii."
"An honor," he murmured.
"Uathis is a fat fuck and a murdering bastard," Skandra went on - then wagged his finger at the old mage when he looked to protest. "He objects to that characterization, but it's only a formality, since he knows it isn't a lie."
"You son of a-"
"Uathis and I made a deal. You see, back in the day, he had a criminal organization that I used to butt heads with. But he got taken out, supplanted by a woman named Satharine."
"Not just a woman," Uathis interjected. "She is-"
"Women are all the same, my fat friend," and then he winked in Elemmírë's direction. "Present company excluded. So. I'm going to put him back in the top spot, and in return, he's going to arrange a meeting with someone who fences all manner of stolen goods. It's a decent chance that she has your stone, and is waiting for the right time to move it. Probably to one of Agethlea's more wealthy. Or maybe Trone?"
"I would sell to Trone first," Uathis agreed. "Fewer complications."
How it burned, calling it their stone, as if finding it implied rights of some kind. They would not insist such a thing if someone else "found" their object, but they were more than happy to claim ownership when they found it in some fucking field. There were two beds in the room, and he approached neither, instead staying against the wall - out of the light - and casting himself in the same shadow. Through the window one could see the pleasant box buildings and houses of this section of the city, and in the distance the arch, though he paid it no mind. There were torches outside as well. This room must look dead to the world, from outside. That was fair enough. Those inside were dead to the world, or nearly so, and only half of them realized it. A fine joke as he stuffed the clove into his mouth.
"So," Skandra finally said. "If you want your stone back, this is the way to do it."
He did burn, then. The clove. Though he wanted to burn himself.