Audemus Dawnspark

Stardust

This masquerade is stifling: too many self-important elves palavering about inconsequential topics they somehow manage to still be dreadfully misinformed about, too few servants manning feathered fans to offer a respite from the balmy Eversong evening.

The drudgery invites his mind to wander. His thoughts seem to idly return to the same subject matter — a luxuriously long-legged one — as he goes through the motions in playing this evening’s role: Silvermoon son in denial about his dissolute nobility. There are plenty of interruptions but none as distracting as the hostess of this stale affair who comes over and interjects herself into banal conversation.

She’s tall (not as tall as he would like) and supercilious (not as justified as she imagines) and has eyeliner as sharp as the teeth that had trapped his lips and imagination both. Her gown’s bodice is covered in passementeries that are intricate but a poor substitute for the shimmering arcanic runes he’d like to trace with his fingers, and the sheer high-lace collar that is supposed to offer a tantalizing hint of the assets held beneath is overshadowed by the bedazzling crystal and sapphire bib around her neck. There’s even a network of lazuline gems in her elaborately coiffed powder wig, two seasons out of date and that’s chalk colored instead of opal.

She’s absolutely insufferable. Perfect.

It only takes a few sweet blandishments to secure an invitation to her quarters.

He imagines she thinks herself a swan among ducks in her light silks and heirloom gems, but she squawks rather like a plucked chicken when he grows tired of her tedious attempts at being seductively aloof and expedites the process. She manages to be much more tolerable at an angle where he’s not trapped between her swampy thighs and thankfully is much quieter on her knees, anyway.

When he pushes her face into the shabby velvets of her bedspread, she gets a bit cross and a bit wet, makes noises about taking off her hairpiece first but he insists. Insists in a way that’s not a request, and takes her from behind as he focuses on the spill of artificial white tresses over the lines of her milky shoulders. Her sapphire jeweled hair pins glint in the low candlelight; a twinkling constellation of stars in negative, pretty little things that he intends on taking later, too.