Who: Corvina Delaney, Horror What: Corvina goes out and sees a little more than she cares to Where: Midway Plaisance, Horror's trailer When: Backdated to the 13th Warnings: None
Corvina let out a sigh at the heat that pressed against her as she shut the trailer door. She hoped that Dorian’s peppermint tea would turn out to be refreshing - but if it wasn’t, at least a visit with Dorian was worth leaving the relative shelter of her trailer. It was far too tempting to stay inside and do nothing but drink iced tea, read, and play with the occasional ice cube…..getting out for more than just practice seemed necessary.
That was what she told herself, anyway, as she moved through air she could practically feel against her skin and under sunlight that made her want to find any way out of it. It wasn’t that Corvina couldn’t tolerate the heat - she’d rarely had the pleasure of keeping out of it most of her life - but it was unpleasant. She’d caught herself thinking of The Room several times purely because of the cool, dark rooms it housed.
She was halfway to her destination when an open door caught her eye. Not so unusual, to see a trailer door open, but she knew who this one belonged to, and with a sigh, Corvina turned to climb the steps up to it. She was not surprised to find the trailer empty, just as she was not surprised to feel that it was much cooler inside than it should be. It was a relief from being outside, and it was tempting to stay - which was just why the door had been standing open. Corvina shook her head and looked things over. The faded, curling pictures on the walls, the curtains falling down to partially hide the bed covered with dark, silky pieces of bedding. The old warped mirror and the collection of boxes and trinkets strewed across the vanity.
The laptop amongst the jumble.
Two weeks before, Corvina had walked in to see her father, and Horror had been sitting at the vanity, staring at the computer screen. Not typing, not doing anything but staring. She had slowly turned from whatever she had been looking at to set eyes on Corvina, and immediately, Corvina had not liked the way Horror had looked at her. Without having to ask, she knew that look was connected to whatever it was Horror had been so preoccupied with, and she knew it couldn’t be anything good. She just didn’t know what it was, exactly.
After that look, that thoughtful look, there had been nothing. No questions, no teasing, no actions taken. To have lived so close to her father all these months and to have had nothing happen was at once both a relief and completely unfathomable. Especially since there was something that had her father thinking. That usually meant trouble, that usually meant a period where Corvina had to watch every dark corner and had to be careful not to do anything that would give her father a way to hook his claws into her - but that was just it. His claws. Since Horror had changed, things had been different. Corvina was left alone. While not having to worry about what her father was going to do at any given moment was a bit of a relief, and something she had deliberately taken advantage of, it was still unnerving. Horror’s sense of humour was not quite the same, and neither were her words or actions.
It was wrong.
Corvina was thinking, not for the first time, and not without an aching confusion, that she missed the way her father used to be. She missed him. It was her father’s laugh and his cold, cruel ways she was thinking of as she stepped in front of the vanity and stared down at the closed laptop. There was something………
When she felt hands suddenly settle on her, Corvina gave no outward sign of the alarm she felt. No gasp, not even a slight jump. It was Horror behind her, Horror who had appeared out of nowhere. It was not surprising.
“Dad. Don’t leave your door open.”
“My door? Why ever not? I trust no one with the wrong intentions would come in here.”
“It isn’t their intentions I’m worried about. Don’t you do enough around here without causing trouble for the people trying to work here?”
Horror smiled. She answered Corvina, kept up her part of the conversation, incongruously cheerful to her daughter’s exasperation. All the while they spoke, she never once looked down at the computer, and Corvina knew she had been caught staring at it. Still, it wasn’t mentioned, and even when Corvina had moved back to the door and was leaving, Horror still calmly and completely ignored it. Her fingertips rested on the vanity, not touching it but almost touching it, and her back was turned just enough that it was perfectly obvious she was deliberately not looking at it. It only served to convince Corvina that there was, in fact, something to it…..and while Corvina knew perfectly well that this was meant to get to her, she couldn’t keep it from getting to her, just a little.
Just as Horror ignored the computer, Corvina refused to turn around and look back at her father after going out the door. She didn’t want to see the smile Horror had sent her off with, or the way she just stood there, still and waiting.