78th of Vhalar, Arc 720
Diaval was already twenty minutes late. Cierne had arrived at the tavern she worked at just like they had discussed, for it would be their location to hang out for the remainder of the night. But if he was just going to stand her up, what good was coming in the first place?
She ran her index finger gently over the rim of her glass. She had ordered (and finished) it ten minutes ago before quickly succumbing to boredom.
“Would you like a refill, Constance?” Delilah asked. She was on waitress duty tonight and had come over to check on Cierne periodically, always with the same questions. Are you waiting for someone? Would you like another drink? What brings you out tonight? Although not necessarily in that order.
“Sure, why not?”
Delilah smiled before taking her empty glass and retreating back behind the bar. It was while her drink was being refilled that Diaval finally showed, though he wasn’t alone as she had expected.
“Hey!” The Biqaj called, walking toward her table with his friend in tow.
“Umm…” Cierne didn’t know what to say. Who was this person and why was she here? A hint of betrayal crawled down her spine, forcing her to right her poor posture.
“This is Devlyn,” Diaval said, gesturing to the short woman beside him. She couldn’t have been much taller than the bar counter.
They both took a seat at Cierne’s table, giving the Naer a moment to examine the stranger.
She had short brown hair that was styled in the fashion of a pixie cut. Her eyes were a deep emerald green that shined in the dimmest of lighting, they were so bright. Her face was thin and embellished with a smattering of freckles, and her cheeks seemed to be a permanent shade of pink. Cierne felt slightly jealous at just how beautiful she looked, but she tried not to linger on the thought of it. Instead, she turned to face Diaval and gave him an evil glare when Devlyn wasn’t looking.
“Dee, why-“ she began, intending to inquire as to why he had brought some girl to their hangout spot when they were going to… hang out.
He immediately understood what it was she was trying to ask and answered before she had time to finish her question.
“I thought you’d like to meet her and ya know, the more the merrier, right?”
Cierne furrowed her brows and squinted her eyes, but instead of looking angry or frustrated, she instead looking merely confused. Completely and utterly addled.
“Okay, but like-“ she was again trying to explain why tonight was supposed to just be the two of them when Devlyn decided to open her flawless lips and speak.
“Dee has told me so much about you, haven’t you Dee?”
Okay, woah! She called him Dee? That was her nickname for him! Just how long have these two known each other?
As if reading her mind, Diaval elaborated. “We met several trials ago at the local bakery and really hit it off. She comes from a family of Biqajs just like me.”
Cierne was fuming at this point. So they shared a common ancestry, huh? That didn’t make her so special. In fact, Diaval was still her friend, and no one would replace her, especially not this lowly peasant with quintessential skin.
She ground her teeth together but managed to muster a smile. Only Diaval could tell she was faking it considering how long they had been friends.
“How quaint,” she muttered through clenched teeth.
Diaval stepped on her foot from underneath the table and gave her a look that said ‘play nice’. The Naer widened her eyes. Oh, she’d play nice alright.
Just then Delilah returned with her drink along with two others. She set the beverages down on the table and gave everyone a large smile that pinched her cheeks.
“I didn’t know what you guys wanted so I decided to just make you guys what Constance had ordered.” As soon as she said this, she left. To return to the other patrons she was serving, Cierne conjectured.
“Wait, but I thought your name was Cierne?” Devlyn asked with a tilt of her head. She had taken on Cierne’s befuddled expression.
Diaval spoke on Cierne’s behalf. “She has an alias. Only her friends and family call her by her real name.”
No way… Did he just imply that Devlyn was now her friend? Boy, did he have another thing coming if that’s what he thought!
Cierne decided to stir the pot. She really just wanted to know the answer to the the most prominent question in her mind. “So y’all dating or something?” She inquired nonchalantly. She grabbed her drink and took a generous sip before running her finger around the rim again.
Diaval choked on his drink while Devlyn’s face beamed. “I guess you could say that!” She announced enthusiastically, a dubious smile hinting at her plump lips.
Cierne narrowed her eyes at Diaval while he tried to regain his composure.
“Prospective! It’s a prospective relationship. We- well, we’re still getting to know each other,” he explained through one too many stutters.
Devlyn playfully nudged him in the side with her elbow. “Oh, he’s just being modest,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. They had changed to a vibrant shade of purple.
Cierne could feel the steam coming out of her ears, but she tried to keep her cool.
“How quaint,” she said again, but this time she didn’t even try to hide the venom in her words.
Devlyn paid no mind. Her attention was focused on trying to swallow as much of her drink as she could.
Cierne couldn’t help but wonder how old this girl was. Was this her first drink? Or was this her umpteenth one? The way she drank told her that either she was trying to drink as much as she could to finally experience what it was like to be intoxicated (as she had when she first became of age), or she was already an experienced drinker with a high tolerance and was trying to feel a buzz early on in case she would be the only sober one at the end of the night.
The Naer snorted before taking another sip from her beverage. It had a strange tang to it that didn’t sit right on her tongue. Or was that just jealousy?
She wondered what color her tongue looked like. After learning about the mutation she had acquired in relation to her empathy spark, she had found that she could taste others’ emotions and it thus reflected in color on her tongue. So was she jealous or was Devlyn?
Suddenly a thought bloomed at the forefront of her mind. She leant forward in her chair and made a tent with her arms and then her hands. Capturing a quizzical disposition with the language of her body, she focused on Devlyn.
Suddenly her relality shifted. The world before her grew blurry and soon she was wading through the mass of emotions that swam in the female Biqaj’s mind.
Gods, this girl’s thoughts were every where. They weren’t neatly stacked on top of one another, they weren’t stuffed in the corner, tucked away like folders in a filing cabinet; instead, they were hovering here and there and then some. Left and right, they knocked into other emotions, making friends with some, and repelling others.
Cierne grabbed hold of a strand of jealousy and tugged as hard as she could. She loosened her grasp on it before pulling it taught once more, creating a strum like effect that caused the emotion to reverberate around the others. After she had finished doing this, she latched onto the very prominent thread of joy. This girl was feeling way too happy about the current situation.
While Cierne felt a great discomfort with becoming the apparent third wheel as she had predicted upon first seeing Devlyn, she found that Devlyn was experiencing everything but.
Perhaps she was naive, this girl, or perhaps she was so ignorant as to not catch on to the tension that had formed between the three of them.
The Naer struggled to concentrate, having used some of her ether in strumming the previous emotional thread. She decided to knot this thread of joy deep into the swirling mass of feeling within the Biqaj’s mind. She would just have to force this overly jubilant girl down a few steps.
Reeling back into reality was quite disorienting. She almost spilled the glass in front of her as she did. By way of recovering from her mistake, she grabbed the glass and held it loosely to her lips.
“It seems the liquor is already hitting me,” she lied, hoping Devlyn didn’t see through her lame facade.
Devlyn didn’t know how experienced Cierne was with drinking. While she wasn’t resistant to the effects of alcohol, she was still able to down quite a bit before losing her grasp on the world.
Diaval, however, saw right through her fib. He gave her a suspicious look and mouthed, ‘what did you do?’ before turning to Devlyn who, by this time, was squinting her eyes in confusion. She had gone quiet. Or at least, quieter than she had been.
Cierne spoke, hoping to add to the inner turmoil the Biqaj was experiencing. “Dee and I have been friends forever so it’s nice to see that he’s finally gotten out there to spend time with another lady.”
She sneered but tried to hide it behind the mouth of her glass.
Devlyn blinked her eyes rapidly and looked to Diaval.
“You haven’t dated a lot?” The girl asked skeptically. Her words were slurred, the effects of the alcohol already grabbing the reins of her consciousness. She started to playback their recent conversation.
“Wait, were you being modest when you said we had a prospective relationship or were you being serious?”
She turned roughly in her chair to face him straight on. “Do you not think we’re dating?”
Oh, how the tables had turned!
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