Felicia only really asked to be polite; in reality, it didn’t matter what Elisabet said to her, whether she smiled and nodded her head gratefully, or squirmed and raised her hands up as if to dodge an attack just like she did now. Raising her own, Felicia took a moment to gently slap Elisabet’s defensive limbs down. “I’m not going to fucking stab you, Elisabet, relax.” From her box, an open plastic packet was reached into with her index and thumb fingers, and a disposable wipe was pulled out. “Do you cleanse?” she asked, quite disinterestedly, as she flapped the tissue with a switch of her wrist, unfolding it. Grabbing Elisabet’s chin with her free hand and holding it sternly, allowing no resistance, Felicia began to swab her room-mate’s face. Her eyes rolled sarcastically as her leg reached out, kicking at her nearby desk chair and causing it to roll closer. “What am I saying? – Oh, sit down on the chair, Elisabet,” her voice lowered as a snicker crept into it, “You probably don’t know what that is. Well! Before and after you put anything on your face, Elisabet, you always make sure that it is completely clean, otherwise it... well. Otherwise it’s just fucking disgusting, to be honest.”
The tissue moved around Elisabet’s face underneath Felicia’s confident control, over her forehead and her nose and her cheeks and chin, and after Felicia ordered her to sit down on the desk chair, she slowly began to lower into a raised kneel. The overall reaction she’d been given to the impromptu make-over hadn’t gone completely over Felicia’s head, and it was quite obvious in the sharp way her eyes bore into the stuttering girl’s face as she removed any excess oils from its surface. Why would someone be so completely negative over not looking dreadful? Felicia analyzed Elisabet openly, though with that unreadable yet calculating stare of hers, as she threw the tissue into her rubbish pin and reached for her make-up box again.
“Are your parents Trabian? You’re so fucking pale,” she noted, facing the gruelling task that was administering an appropriate shade of foundation for Elisabet’s base coat. Luckily, the tube she had was Estharian – and thus, editable – but that didn’t take away from Felicia’s fascination with the difference in their skin-tones. “You need some sun, Elisabet. Some fucking Vitamin D, for crying out loud.” A dollop of pallid oil was spilled skilfully into Felicia’s palm, then picking up one of the unused sponges from her case; she scooped up morsels and began trying to dot them around the corners of Elisabet’s face. “When I was young, I used to cake all this shit on, but now if I wear this shit I actually dilute most of it with moisturizer, so there’s actually fuck all – “
— “Don’t be such a scared looking runt, Elisabet, this is educational.” There’s every chance Felicia was completely off-based and had imagined that she had received a completely different, fear-filled look than she had, but nevertheless, she gave her room-mate a cutting glare. The sponge began, or attempted to begin, to spread the thin lather around Elisabet’s face. “You’re not one of those rape-victim people, are you? That has been scarred from being abused in years past and blankets themselves in ugliness so no one will ever notice them?”
Her imagination began to run away from her. Too many soap operas. For a moment, Felicia abruptly paused and looked Elisabet in the eye, her voice turning into a vicious hiss. “Your parents never fucked with you, did they?” Her eye-level never wavered and was remarkably intense for such a melodramatic turn in conversation.