Susannah Alexandra Hattington-Hallmeyer (vintage_fraud) wrote in halcyon_halls, @ 2008-08-26 09:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | ezra, sasha |
Week Sixteen: Thursday
Who: Sasha and Ezra (and Dreizen, but that’s a given)
What: Guidance
When: Thursday, late afternoon
Where: Ezra’s office
There was something tartly sardonic about meeting her “guide” on the alleged Day of Bad Omens. If Sasha had been superstitious, she’d worry about luck and timing. If she had been high-strung, she’d worry about impressions and partiality. If she’d been of a hesitant nature, she’d worry just because.
Instead, Sasha was as her life had made her; pretty heels clicked down the hallway, the girl inside them curious and impatient only. Maybe more than a little wary, too, but she blamed that on the rain. The mendacious, tempting, ill rain and its whispers, its sway—Sasha was always cautious when it rained. The potential for trouble was too great to feel otherwise. There was one other reason to feel nervous, less malicious than the rain’s pressure.
When did I last see—Good Lord, talk—with another djinn? The species was suspiciously scarce during her childhood. Oh, there had been Mama and Sherry, of course, but they were hardly fair examples. Alleluia was inscrutable and wild, impossible to typecast or learn from; everything Sasha learned from her proved to be a mirage. Sherry was similarly unattainable. Their link aside, her sister’s power diverged from Sasha’s own early on. Sherry had taken better to their father’s legacy. She loved the rain.
Josiah didn’t encourage Sasha meeting those of her kind, his reasoning being that they were not her kind. Her godfather never forbade contact outright (he never forbade anything outright), but he was intractably harsh of any candidates in range. She remembered one such rare specimen, an ironically kindly ifrit with an inexplicably Parisian accent. He was an engraver often employed by Josiah. Sasha had met him entirely by accident. She was supposed to be in Naples that week, but had gotten bored and wheedled Kostya into returning home early. While her chaperone was dutifully reporting to the master of the house, she’d wandered into the library and found a strange, amber-eyed man playing chess solo. Sasha sat on the opposite side of the board without hesitation. They played, they talked. He told her there were 72 consecutive Queen moves in 1882’s Mason-Mackenzie match; she told him the folding chessboard was invented by a priest afraid of having his guilty pastime discovered by the Church. He’d offered to have her read his memories. Curious, Sasha went to fetch tea. When she returned, Josiah was in the room. Alone.
The expression on her godfather’s face was nothing she knew.
She saw the ifrit one other time, at a party in a LA celebrating some Hollywood sorcerer’s dull success. But he paled when she raised her hand in greeting and all but ran out of the room. Sasha didn’t bother guessing what Josiah had threatened with; that the threat was made was enough reason to accept the matter. Josiah knew best, after all.
…yeah, so said the unicorn on the dark side of the moon. Her painted mouth momentarily tightened, then smoothed back into affability. She passed a window and paused to inspect the reflection, ignoring the rain beyond. Calm and critical, Sasha studied the girl on the glass. Her colors were muted by the storm, showing only that the hair was dark, the skin was light, but the general outline was lucid. Short dress, high collar, a pleasant expression opaque as the opal wreath around her wrist. A tote on her arm, a dog at her heels. A nice girl, almost certainly. Trustworthy. Satisfied with her craftsmanship, Sasha turned away and found the door she needed.
She knocked in a way that didn’t match her expression while she did it.
“Professor Rishi?”