Like delicate ribbons of gold over a bed of soft silk, thick locks fell against the faelna’s chest as she brushed her fingers through the now dry strands. She avoided Villahr’s gaze as though if it were to land on her it would burn hotter than his touch.
“Like I said,” she reiterated, “I’ve been home!” Karolinna spoke with harsh seriousness and it sounded almost like she were angry with him, though she did not intend for her tone to come off as such. She had no decent answer that Villahr would accept as truth and so the slightly anxious female stuck to her original statement. Acting the fool rarely worked, but it didn’t stop her from trying when she knew all else would fail.
“Don’t lie to me, Karolinna.” Villahr used her full name specifically to upset her. The more her irritation built up, the less control she had. Often things she didn’t necessarily want to reveal got pushed out amongst the slew of indignant comments to follow before she realized it.
“I already told you I went out for a drag.”
“I know you did,” answered Villahr. He watched as Karolinna scrambled about the room in a towel, hardly ever looking up long enough to catch his eye.
It wasn’t far off that going out for a puff was precisely what she had done — on her down days, more fumes emitted Karolinna than from the multitude of smoke-stacks that topped various refinery plants all across the region — but judging by her less than mellowed persona at this moment, Villahr wasn’t buying she’d just inhaled a load of nicotine. Although, in a matter of minutes, her body would burn off any trace of the restoratives that the cancer stick provided her, the almost jovial disposition she took on as a result generally lasted much longer.
Karolinna gave her friend a dirty look as she pulled a pair of shorts and a linen night tunic from her drawers and chucked it at him.
“You don’t trust me?” she asked.
Villahr zagged to the side, the clothing bomb missing him by a few inches and landing in a muddled pile on the disturbed sheets.
“Oh I believe your story, I’m just quite certain you are purposely leaving important pieces of it out. Which leads me to wonder what exactly you’ve been doing tonight that you do not wish for me to know.”
Karolinna’s thoughts strayed back to the dark one she’d met amongst the trees earlier that night. At that moment she couldn't be more thrilled at the fact that Villahr did not share her insightful powers through touch. She was already putty in his hands at the slightest brush of contact, she did not need him to be able to read her very mind whilst she quickly unravelled internally as well.
“Will you just drop it already, Lahr? You’re starting to piss me off!” Villahr’s stubbornness was well known, and the faelna knew he wouldn’t stop until he got the answer he was looking for. It was an annoying trait to have when Karolinna was frequently the one on the receiving end of questions and inquiries, but she could see how it could be beneficial.
Villahr shook his head. Grabbing the garb that the blonde before him had previously used as a makeshift, rather pathetic attempt at a detrimental projectile, he stood up from the bed and walked towards Karolinna. Her arms were vertical at her sides; a fist, tightened and clenched, at the bottom end of each. He grabbed one firm duke and pried it open to ply the material into her grip. After closing her mitt again, Villahr slid his hand enclosed around her, further up her limb.
“Going to stick to our story are we?” he asked.
“Drop. It!”
Villahr raised his hands in what could easily pass as admitting defeat, but Karolinna knew better; that and the look on his face told her otherwise. She watched intently as Villahr’s hand slid into the pocket of his white slacks and came back into view with his small cellular in clutch. He brought the phone up to his ear after gliding his finger over the surface of the screen, the heat emanating from the pad of his digit turning the mobile on without him even needed to put pressure on it.
“So,” he said, holding it to his face after an electronic voice requested he vocalize the contact he wished to correspond with, “If I call Evritt down at PoiZenom right now, he can confirm you weren’t there?”
It was her favourite club. Back in her youth it was like a second home, and if one was ever in need to contact her they knew exactly where to look. As much as the Vici enjoyed partying, the drink, and tipsy women, with her focus as of late on the night and it’s inhabitants, she hadn’t been there in weeks.
Villahr’s thumb hovered dangerously close the the ‘Send’ button and simply speaking the owner’s name into the receiver would start a search through the address book for Evritt’s details. Karolinna saw her way out and took it.
“I wasn’t there long, I kept a low profile, and look,” she put her lie on hold to give a quick twirl, her arms outstretched in indication of the emptiness around them and more importantly the lack of dead mortals on her carpeting. She began to fabricate a lie in her mind so in-depth she could almost see the muscled adonis she would’ve picked out amongst the crowd, hear the thudding music in her eardrums, and feel the thumping of the stranger’s heart, quickened by booze and melodious beats. “And I promise you, he left in the same state I found him in.”
Several seconds passed before Villahr’s stony countenance cracked; if Karolinna’s breathing was of importance to hold consciousness, she would have passed out long ago from holding it. She took in and breathed out a great bout of oxygen, something she did so rarely it was a little ragged and tasted somewhat foul. She returned the smile that her companion now sported across his face. He tucked his phone back in his pocket and the hold on Karolinna’s arm that she hadn’t even noticed had tightened began to loosen again.
Villahr let out a brief laugh before he caught Karolinna’s somewhat relieved expression and stopped. He must have thought it was her fear of being scolded that had her so edgy, which was true, but not at all for such trivial reasoning as sneaking out to grind up against, and outdrink, a bunch of pitiable humans.
“So much for going in the day, Kar. What if Mother had caught you? Do you remember what happened last we tried that? When we were younger?” asked Villahr, taking Karolinna’s hands in his own and giving them a squeeze.
“Tell me again?” She vaguely recalled the moment. So blurred and distorted in her head, she could have easily confused it with another recollection. Although being full-blooded, apart from Villahr who had less than pure Vicio heritage, her memory as of now was sharp and perfectly accurate at the best of times. Karolinna’s childhood however, was not one she had many fond memories of.
Gripping the fabric of her night garments in her hand she allowed herself to be brought to the bed by Villahr’s tender pull. Karolinna sat on the edge with him, placing the no longer folded clothes next to her. She turned her body towards him but kept her face tilted downward and pulled one leg into indian-style, the other she left hanging off the side of the lofty bed. Her cheeks were warming up fast but she could still feel the patches of her flesh that were like ice in comparison to the surrounding area, and surely Villahr would notice the discolouration.
“I distinctly remember you getting me up at some insane hour. It was the dead of night and I had been up late practicing spells, so being woken up ten minutes after my head hit the pillow was highly perturbing.” Villahr gave Karolinna a funny look and placing a hand on her knee he shook it playfully. “You were very alert and full of energy, which must’ve meant you had just .. You know..”
“Come out of stasis?” Karolinna finished her friends sentence. He nodded. She produced an almost growling noise at the thought of that big, casket-like box she spent more time within in comatose than actually living. The age gap between Villahr and herself had gone from two years to over a century practically over night.
Villahr ran his thumb soothingly over the back of Karolinna’s hand as he noted her discomfort. He knew the topic to be a sensitive one for the fare faelna and did well to avoid brining it up when he could. Being locked away in that box stole her youth right out from under her. He had known no one besides Karolinna who had been forced to endure such a dreadful experience, and it was only because he had found her within the deep unconsciousness that he knew about it. He often wondered how long the secret would have been kept had he not been searching for a blow-torch that night to make more infradai.
“So, you came out, and of course I didn’t know it at the time and thought you were just bat-shit crazy for having so much energy at five in the fucking morning. You wanted to sneak down to the kitchen and take some of those sweets Mother always hid in that gemstone jar atop in the cupboard over the stove. I’ll admit that I was torn between being obedient and telling you ‘No’ straight away, or following along with no questions asked because I was still very much alone and frightened in this new place and wanted you to like me. You can guess which I went with.” Villahr laughed.
“Eloquent even as a youngling,” gathered Karolinna, “Excellent!”
“Either that or I was just too vapid to know any better,” replied Villahr. The towel-wrapped faelna gave a sportive smack to the toned bicep that hefted up his sleeve, wrinkling the fabric.
“Go on,” she said.
“Once we had made it to the culneria undetected — which I have no clue how we did so shiftily considering the amount of armoured watchmen in this place — and then located the candied treats, we just about lifted the entire stash. We hid them in our pockets, our socks, the ample space in our cheeks.”
Villahr paused to laugh again and Karolinna smiled at his glee in recalling the memories of prepubescence. She wished she could say all of this was become more and more familiar, but there was still that haze of darkness clouding her mind that no matter how hard she tried, her vision could not penetrate.
“So there we are, mouths full of forbidden goodies, and our mitts all sticky and soiled, and sneaking back to our rooms I remember we almost got caught as at that precise moment, the help unfortunately decided to congregate in the front hall. I showed you some secret passages that I’d discovered while playing and was surprised to find that you had no knowledge of them. We were almost home free, and we would have been, had someone not opened the front door. With the moon visible off in the distance, and all eyes temporarily diverted to the mounds of trash they were carrying outside to the compactor, you bolted, and naturally I made a run for it behind you.”
A picture flashed quick in Karolinna’s mind of a little girl twirling around in circle on the lawn with a much younger Villahr close behind her and then following suit. The memory wasn’t there long, like a slide in projector, and blackness consumed her head once more before another vision, this time of her Father dragging her kicking and screaming back into the house’s bowels, took its place.
“We weren’t there for more than five minutes before we were yanked back inside and Mother was there to reprimand us, but after that we got pretty sick. Oddly enough, I healed up within the hour, but you were coughing up blood for the rest of the night and you turned this royal blue colour. Might have even been beautiful had it not been the the verification of still existing ailments.”
The curve in Villahr’s mouth immediately faltered and compressed to a thin line. As he looked up to his companion, Karolinna turned her face to the side. The clock read quarter past six. Time flew by fast even with her still ever present guilt tugging hard at the hands on the small analog face below the blinking digital text. Soon the moon would be gone and the sun would rise to attention.
“By the morning you were right as rain, except for a few opalescent splotches on your cheeks, kind of …like …” Villahr sentence trailed off and it was that that caught Karolinna’s notice. Her mistake was showing it by the rotation of her head instead of a simple widening of the eyes and a troubled whimper of concern.
“Kind of like you look now actually,” the elna finished. When he reached out his hand to brush hair from her face and to get a better look, Karolinna backed off the bed, nearly tumbling to the ground due to her own misguided steps.
“I just scrubbed a little to hard, that’s all,” she was quick to pipe up, hoping it would wipe away at whatever suspicious puzzle he was piecing together in his head that very moment.
Villahr got up and followed in Karolinna’s footsteps, however much more gracefully, and stopped just in front of her as she had managed to back herself into the shadowed area beneath two curtained windows. He didn’t say a word for a good while, just peered carefully through the darkness at his clearly uneasy compadre. When the white-haired stunner finally did speak, Karolinna felt as if her heart had just dropped into her stomach. But not at all the way it usually did when he neared. This time her off balance state had nothing to do with her closeted adoration.
“You should be more careful, sisienta,” he said, his voice monotone and to Karolinna somewhat incredulous. “Your washing your face, not sanding down a statuette.” He smiled and went for the door. “Oh and by the way…” Karolinna went completely still.
“You’re a terrible liar. Next time you go out, just tell me straight.” Gripping the edge of her towel tight, unaware that her talons had emerged with her nerves, Karolinna was relieved to find Villahr was referring to earlier conversation rather than current discoveries he surely must have made regarding her patched complexion.
“I happen to be an excellent liar. You’re just freakishly perspicacious,” said the female with as much snideness as she could still muster.
“Am I perceptive, or are you just incredibly transparent?” Villahr raised a thick brow. What did he mean by that? Karolinna couldn’t help but to wonder. She shook her head, hoping to slosh any thought that he might have figured something out from her mind, almost expecting to feel the warm trickle of brain fluids running to her ear. Karolinna watched as the door pulled shut behind her friend, and before closing completely she listened to Villahr’s last words carried through the crack with a laugh following shortly after.
“You may want to take another shower. You look like a dirty trollop.”
The door clicked soon after and even if she were of sound mind she wouldn’t have been able to come up with a retort. As Karolinna walked back towards her bed, she could feel the sweat coating her back from neck to tailbone. It felt as if she had been wiped down with a syrupy cloth, proving her shower to be all for naught.
Villahr’s footsteps were getting further and further away, but Karolinna’s whole body was still completely on edge. She could easily totter over at any second, and it was a feeling she despised. It made her feel weak. Villahr was the only one with the power, and sometimes the faelna wondered if it had magical properties behind it as opposed to just some freak talent given to him by the Great Divine at birth.
When she could hear his steps no more, his piercing crystal eyes no longer upon her with intense scrutiny, the radiating warmth of his flesh gone - Karolinna collapsed to the floor, her lengthy legs in a mess beneath her. Pulling her legs together and resting her chin on her knees, Karolinna locked her eyes on the black material of the curtained glass.
As frazzled as she was, and still in a mode of panic, Karolinna’s thoughts all ran the same course. Every brain wave told her the same thing, as if oblivious to the fact that she nearly got caught.
Next time she would have to be more careful.