WHO: Nina & Perseus WHEN: Friday night WHERE: The stripclub she works at that I named something but now forget WHAT:Establishing WTF she's been up to Running into friends at the office. WARNINGS: delicious delicious sexualisation of a native culture.
The club where Nina danced and stripped for an audience of horny men had learned, after a time, how to market her. She'd gone by a handful of names since starting there - Amber, Michelle, Maria, Catalina, Sofia. But they'd stuck her with just the one name now. Nina had been branded by them as Tlalli, the descendant of Mayan priestesses and queens, who was reported to possess the mythical powers of her mysterious ancestors. It was all a joke, playing on stereotypes and images from a thousand B-grade horror movies with people having paper mache hearts cut from their chests. But sometimes when some of the men watched her they wondered if maybe it was a little bit true. Hey (they'd tell their friends afterwards), it wasn't like they believed she was actually some Aztec princess, but when she caught your eyes when she was dancing on stage, wasn't it just... really hard to look away? Didn't she really have... something those other girls didn't have?
They tried not to think about it. They tried to go back to their wives and girlfriends, but so many of them would come back again to watch Tlalli dance again.
When her bosses had first been kicking around this idea in the back room, making jokes about how they should get her a snake to wear as well, they'd thrown out a few name options at her as they googled for things that both sounded accurate enough but also pronounceable. When they'd suggested 'Quetza' she'd wanted to bite them. She'd told them they could call her whatever the hell they liked, but if they tried to make her go by Quetza she'd quit right there. No way was she sharing even part of a name with the Snake she remained equal parts Annoyed With but also Drawn To.
So Tlalli it was, and she would respond to anyone who called her that. Not with words though, because part of the shtick was that she never spoke. The strong Texas accent that came out would immediately ruin any idea of her being the sexy exotic enchantress they were fantasizing about.
She'd taken belly dancing classes, adding some of that into her routine as she felt it amped up the image. She didn't think anyone really noted (or cared) that belly dancing wasn't what the Mayans or Aztecs or any of them would have been doing (because, quite frankly, no one in the audience cared what flavour of South American Ancient Exotic she was, only that she was Mysterious and Sexy and There).
The outfit she wore most nights (at least when they needed their Princess Tlalli and not just Nina Get Up And Take Your Clothes Off) had been a Halloween costume bought off eBay. It had been modified to make it easy to get out of on stage - always a concern - and the audience adored it. They loved this naked young woman on stage, stripped down to nothing but a feathered headdress, smokey eye makeup, and a tattoo taking up most of her stomach.
One of the other girls was trying to teach her to juggle - she was a clown for children's parties by day - and Nina hoped eventually she was going to pick it up well enough to try juggling knives. That seemed like the sort of thing that might work in her show, but she didn't want to offer the idea to her bosses before she'd managed to do it without impaling herself. For now, that would be a future plan.
Texas seemed a long time ago now. The days when she'd felt only guilt in her life - for the things she desired, for the killing and eating, for the things she used to do with Amidio - felt long distant, and had been replaced with a sense of confidence. She knew who she was. She played roles for men at strip clubs just like she played roles in daily life among everyone who wasn't her brother. Roles were easy to play.
And if she should feel guilty about playing up some sexy idea of her father's people, well... a girl had to make money somehow and her father didn't seem to object
When her long shift was over for the night, Nina scrubbed her face of the heavy stage makeup and changed into her own far more comfortable clothes. Once she had a clean face, a messy ponytail and a hoodie, it was almost impossible for any of the men in the club to recognize her. There was nothing magic about it - she'd just transformed into a normal human being instead of the heightened fantasy under stage lights. Besides, the men still in the club were only looking at the girls who now graced the stage and Nina was able to slip past them, near invisible.
Tired as she was, Nina spotted someone familiar at the bar, and not in the way that she might want to avoid them. "Hey," she said as she approached Peter with a sleepy smile. She didn't know him all that well, but he'd saved her from trouble with a bartender and she'd been grateful for it. And after that they'd gone out for drinks after they'd both been dumped. She'd had to do some editing with the details of her ex-boyfriend and her current life, but it had still been nice to talk to someone outside of all the weirdness that was gods and everything else. "Haven't seen you in here for ages."