This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
So this is a strip club, apparently.
It looks an awful lot like a tacky bar with ads of assorted people in heavy makeup all over its surface. Also, Isabella is getting the impression that witches must not be common patrons, even taking into account their absolute rarity - she'd be an uncommon sight at a pawn shop too but no one would be liable to look at her like so.
Oh well.
dark_light
truthwright
"Nope," he says. "Dad was a black wasp, Mom was a peacock. I think they both settled pretty early."
dark_light
"I never like stinging-bug daemons," says Path. "Spiders are sometimes fine, but never wasps or scorpions or anything like that. They rub me the wrong way."
dark_light
"Yes, I know, but unless Yambe Akka got the wrong address something usually causes that."
dark_light
"Okay," shrugs Isabella.
She watches dancers with detached and vague interest.
Path doesn't whisper in her ear about any of them being cute. Although he does strike up a conversation with one of the cats, whose human is undulating nearby for someone whose butterfly daemon would probably not find a cat's attention pleasant.
"On an unrelated note," Isabella says, "I hope you didn't take Metis seriously when she made that remark about - how did she put it - claiming you at daggerpoint?"
She watches dancers with detached and vague interest.
Path doesn't whisper in her ear about any of them being cute. Although he does strike up a conversation with one of the cats, whose human is undulating nearby for someone whose butterfly daemon would probably not find a cat's attention pleasant.
"On an unrelated note," Isabella says, "I hope you didn't take Metis seriously when she made that remark about - how did she put it - claiming you at daggerpoint?"
truthwright
He grins.
"Why, were you gonna reassure me that that never happens? Having second thoughts?"
"Why, were you gonna reassure me that that never happens? Having second thoughts?"
dark_light
"No, it happens, but not as much in recent years. It used to be that scorning a witch was a pretty reliable way to get yourself killed, it's not like that now in large part because witches can no longer get away with murder, and of course Metis can't think of any reason I'd want to let a guy I'm not related to crash in the attic apart from having decided to marry him."
dark_light
"Seriously? People get actually murdered that way, talk about a great big invalidation of consent," Isabella says. "I count it among my blessings that it's not how my parents got together. It is how my maternal grandparents got together."
truthwright
"Yeah," he says, flashing a smile and standing up, "and I bet nobody's ever tried to fuck you at daggerpoint. I don't feel like being here anymore, let's go."
dark_light
Isabella gets up. "I - wait, has someone done that to you?" she asks, following him out with Path shifting from foot to foot on her shoulder.
dark_light
"Witches don't have a monopoly on threats of violence to get desired things."
Path hoots a high, trilling, almost musical note of concern.
Path hoots a high, trilling, almost musical note of concern.
truthwright
"Point of a dagger, edge of a knife, same difference," he says, with a careless shrug that has the look of performance. Petaal slithers into his coat as he retrieves it.
dark_light
"I know Metis was thinking it but I think I'm the one who first said it aloud. I'm sorry." Isabella shakes her head as though to clear it. "We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, obviously. But I would listen."