"There's a sharp pinching," said Cress. She tapped an index finger to her temple to indicate the migraine which had taken her to the Bandaid Station at the end of her shift. While she wouldn't have called the healer a friend, Birdie was professional, reasonable and not a complete moron—all things which Cressida both appreciated and required in order to voluntarily speak with a person more than once. Birdie seemed to have a liberal, dirty sense of humor. That helped. By a long shot, this wasn't the first time she'd sought help with psychically related maladies. "It started around nine or ten, and I've been unable to keep warm." Maybe she was just coming down with something, but feeling of icy foreboding kept the hair at her nape at attention and spurred the headache. As the night deepened, so did her discomfort. The reason remained obscure.
So helpful, that. Be a psychic, they said. It'll be fun, they said. What horseshit.
The Oracle sighed. Even her resignation sounded airy and unapproachable as her species. "Don't tell me I'm having an aneurysm, please," she beseeched the golden witch. Headed back to the plantation house along the Midway's central concourse, the turquoise fennec perched on her shoulder editorialized over the softly twinkling sound of her beaded black gown. Roger was the only creature she'd ever met who could make senseless vocalizations sound sarcastic. She adored that about him. Moreover, he was an excellent Seeing Eye buddy.
Capping the 'what can go wrong, will' vibe, crashing thundered in the distance. It was most likely the doing of drunken rousties moving boxes to begin packing Samhain's seasonal decorations in tomorrow's off hours. "That sounds like a storm, but the way this week has been going, it's Godzilla," she commented, dry as a corpse left to the desert sun. In her right hand, a styrofoam coffee cup received a percussive roll of her fingertips, timed as a laugh track drum buzz.
"It's probably nothing, right?" Looking for Birdie's input, she posed her question faced-forward. Unless Roger looked at her company, she wouldn't be able to see the other woman, anyway. A distressing thought occurred as they neared the Mirror Labyrinth, narrowing her moonstone eyes; perhaps the proximity of the potent magics of the Fae had something to do with it. Before she could posit the theory, Roger stamped his paws atop her shoulder, erupting into frenzied chatter. "Hey, easy. Why the song and dance?"
Roger's shared sight showed her the cause. Her stomach bungeed to the vicinity of her knees. Shock kickstarted her pulse. Cress heard her heart in her ears, a furious, abrasive clamor like a wind-up monkey toy with miniature cymbals. "Be strong for me, now," she whispered into the lid of her coffee cup.
"Are you seeing something which seems specifically designed to upset you?" she hissed in a pursed aside, defaulting to the assumption that the Cirque's posh new residents were playing with glamours and having a laugh. Fae were cruel in that way. Truthfully, a prank was preferable to the alternative—that she so missed her friend that her mind had cracked, mutating want into a nightmarish semi-reality. Fear tasted like saltwater at the back of her mouth. "You know, never mind. Don't care. Games are for children."
Balletic grace fused with a surplus of sea urchin spikiness. Without lifting her head, she managed to look down her nose at the spectacle. She watched for seconds longer than she ought, not because the scene appealed to her, but because in her memory, the hard geometry and brutal angles of her Jaime's face had begun to fade in his absence. Realization that she could no longer recall the specific whiskey brown of his eyes or the precise note of his laughter stirred in her the whole body ache of a rotten tooth.
On a heel, she turned to leave. Cress had never been good about being deprived of the last word, however. "It's bad enough that you've invited yourselves for an extended sleepover," she called. "Do your homework, if you're going to try theatre." Glamour only convinced when the projected reality was at all feasible. This ... just hurt. Heartsore, tired and intolerant of nonsense, she brushed unoccupied fingers at the back of Birdie's shoulder to ask that they continue.