What the cat dragged in

[Lalitha Vero]

Lalitha watched him fervently, eyes aglow. Her head was propped easily on his fist, hair askew about her shoulders. The bracelets Uncle Fennix made slipped down her wrist, charms dangling like ice against her skin. Yet for now the cold was forgotten. She shifted easily from performer to audience, and there was a delighted intensity to the way she watched; every blink, every twist of his hands in the shadows. Inspiration was a pleasure to behold and she drank of it as deeply as she had the alcohol, just as profoundly fulfilled. Sámiel’s words wrapped like velvet. Litha was drawn into the world he created: a song of the forgotten, the outcast, the maligned. Or at least so it sounded to her.

She relinquished her tune on the bottle as he claimed it for another sip. By that point she’d almost forgotten she’d even asked him for a secret. It had only been diversionary anyway, a desire to draw him out, to taunt at the perpetual mystery of him. When he said it was something he never spoke aloud though, even to himself, she felt a superstitious chill in her spine which had nothing to do with the cold. It felt like a thing she shouldn’t ask or ever know. Had she been sober maybe she would have heeded that caution, laughed it away, but it only held her spellbound. She suspected a trick, but it was still a game she wanted to play, so of course she said yes.