Post by candace on Feb 21, 2012 20:53:29 GMT -5
lie in circles on the sunlight
shine like diamonds on a dark night
[/right][/size][/color]She sat alone on the patio of the school’s café, lips pursed silently as her teal eyes scanned the tight lines of print that squirmed across the pages like fly tracks. It was late in the afternoon, but she’d only roused herself from an uneasy sleep two hours ago and had only evacuated her dormitory room in the last hour. It was amusing to think that she’d actually glimpsed the sun rising before finally surrendering the night and burrowing under the covers for some much-needed sleep. Despite this, she didn’t look like she’d spent most of the day curled up and had only recently managed to drag herself into the world; the sleeveless ochre dress was free of wrinkles, her customary makeup had been applied with her careful, expert hand, her legs were crossed at the ankle, ladylike, beneath the table. Except for the occasionally yawn and still-drowsy head-shake, she looked like any student trying to catch up on homework before classes resumed on Monday. Lilith’s Café was one of her favorite places on campus, and though the primary reason – the decadent sweets that it always seemed to have in stock – was hardly a secret, she also delighted in its name: what better place for a half-serpent creature to while away the time than in a den of temptation named after a Biblical demon of temptations?
Mostly, though, she was there because of the sweets. Candace yawned widely, forked tongue curling and tasting the air, and looked back down to her book. The elegantly-wrought iron table that she sat at bore the worn book, the notebook that she occasionally scrawled cursive notes into (she liked writing down particularly interesting quotations, but if anyone asked, the easy excuse was that it was an assignment for Human Lit), but also a wide assortment of sweets: bonbons and chocolates drizzled with darker chocolate syrup or carrying molten caramel cores, a trio of ruby strawberries dipped in chocolate that had long since hardened around it like a delectable shell, bite-sized marzipan droplets shaped like turtles and flavored with rosewater, and the main delicacy: two candied lotuses. Or rather, one and a half: the one that had been flecked with caramel was half-eaten, while the one that had been dipped in ambrosia and nectar was only missing a single petal. The lotuses were divine, and not solely because of their taste: to a human they would have been highly addictive, and more than a few mortals in ancient times had wasted their lives pursuing, cultivating, and tasting the seductive flowers. To the yajuu who acted as the café’s customers, they acted only as a mild stimulant, no more addicting or narcotic than a watered-down energy drink but certainly more delicious… and probably not the best thing to eat on an empty stomach.
Probably not the best thing to eat while reading this story, either; she sighed as she glanced from the pages to the assortment of sweets that she’d purchased. It was a macabre story, a fantasy of masquerades and disease, one that wasn’t paired well with sweet foods. Cloying flavors echoed death. She scowled at the morbid thought, and as if to spot this discordant thought, she plucked a petal from the ambrosia-flavored lotus and nibbled at its edge. Delicious. Much more palatable than the tasteless story that she found so enamoring.