Mae Bellwether is not a happy girl. Well, she is, but only in the sense that she looks like she's smiling most of the time.
The simple fact of the matter is, she's got more problems than just studying for the city wide American History review in a few weeks. Which she probably doesn't need to do anyways.
Oh, no, if her only issue was school, Mae Bellwether would be leaping with joy all over the place, and probably wouldn't wear Wellingtons so very much.
But the simple fact of the matter is that, at least on a weekly basis, she gets almost inevitably sucked into another world and plopped right down in the middle of a serial killer cult, which, I hope you realize, is not really very standard for a seventeen year old. You see, this is Mae's 'outside of school' hobby. Keeping the serial killers busy, that is, so that they quit cementing bones into their walls.
And that was all well and good, you know. At least for a while.
But then the serial killers grew fond of poor little Mae Bellwether, and, well, now she's pretty much been told that not only does she have to keep them from killing people, but she's got to keep them from even wanting to kill people, which is pretty depressing when you look at all the factors.
So that's where we are now. Well, plot-wise, anyway, and I suppose that you're really rather confused, because mostly-third-person-with-a-little-bit-of-second-and-first-narration-present-tense isn't really seen all that often, however, I do believe you'll have to get over that rather quickly if plan to continue reading, as this is about to get rather pretentious.
But in a non-plot-specific way, and if we're looking it geographically as opposed to chronologically, we are in fact in a coffeehouse/nightclub that doesn't serve any alcohol, and tends to make a habit of hiring people very-rarely-to-never, and when it does hire people, outsiders have absolutely no idea why (most often, the majority of the insiders don't know why they or anyone else was hired, either). This coffeehouse/nightclub/stage performance/whatever, in case you were curious, happens to be in Soho. Which is in New York. However, I dearly hope you did know that last bit.
Mae works here. She was hired when she was fifteen (again, may I bring you to the fact that no alcohol is on the premises, so really, it's perfectly legal, if a bit confusing), by her friend Wes, who has a stupid name, but that is because his real name is Wesley, and you can't be called Wesley in Soho, which is a trendy place full of hipsters and other kinds of idiots. Mae's real first name is Mary Alice, and her middle name is Edwards (after her mother's maiden name), and again, no one can be called Mary Alice in Soho, or even Mary, lest anyone think of the virgin and her immaculate conception and feel guilty. And so, Mary Alice is called Mae and her friend Wesley is called Wes, and while Wes is a rather good friend of Mae's, he doesn't really know anything at all about the whole realms-Poppy-Warriors thing, which only really started a few months ago at the most.
This is why Mae Bellwether is not a happy girl. And that social studies test coming up soon, still.
Mae, who is currently on her break, is taking time to slurp down some nice spiced ice tea backstage and worrying about how the lights on the center downstage portion of the platform were flickering a few seconds ago. She is also pondering, as she always does on Tuesdays (Tuesdays are when she visits the Poppy Warriors and leads them on a planned goose chase so that after an hour or two they lose her, and lose the bet and have to let her go. Mae liked that it was Tuesdays, which are generally boring days anyway), where exactly the door she had found four or five months ago actually came from, and just why and where she'd received orders to cure all the Poppy Warriors of their homicidal tendencies.
She very-rarely-to-never wonders just how it is that she evades the Poppy Warriors, because they seem to be much faster than she, and older and more experienced than she, and probably smarter than she though she doubted any of them had taken an IQ tests lately. She supposed it was because she was good at jumping and shouting sly remarks at the same time, which Azreal felt obliged to reply to.
Ah. Azreal. Therein lies the problem, for Azreal had just two weeks previous done something completely uncharacteristic, and it was rather frighteningly uncharacteristic at that.
Mae was chased down to a room, surrounded by passageways. This was not her first time in this room, and it would not be her last. She felt her heart,
Thump. Thump. Thump thump. Thump. Thump thump thump.
increase in beats, wondering wildly if Azreal would make truthful on his promise to catch her and kill her and butcher her like an animal, one of these days. She could not see any of the Warriors yet, no telltale bands of red flowers, no living Harlequin masks, not yet, for they enjoyed playing with her. She was prey. Sophisticated prey, but prey nevertheless, the way a hunter can admire the grace of a doe before guiltlessly embedding lead in its chest and tampering with its fragile life.
She knew they were watching. They were always watching. They'd watch her run down each and every hallway, come to dead ends with dead bodies, and when she finally came to the exit one of them would be waiting for her, and he'd be laughing, hard. Laughing at the silly, sophisticated prey that finally got caught in their trap after avoiding them for so long. They'd play with her first, too. This she knew.
This is what happened, though:
The third hallway she came out of, and froze right at the threshold, at least taking pleasure in that down here, the smell of bodies had faded, because she had stalled their inevitable progress for a few months, stopped the killing for a few months, and maybe God would forgive her for playing this sick game because of the lives she'd saved. All of the Warriors, the bulky ones and the lean ones, each heavily muscled, they stood scattered about the cave – she knew it as a cave – each with a similar glint in his eye. Not one of malice, or death or torture, but this: curiosity. And it was a moment before Mae saw why. Azreal, he who knew her and would always know her as not simply poppet but his poppet, he was guarding the entrance to the real exit, down far at the end, in front of the door.
She strode down confidently, perfectly determined to meet her death with sarcasm and to at least make a rude face before she went, clenching and unclenching her fists.
She waited for him to speak first.
However, no words were exchanged; instead, he tilted her chin upwards to better look her in the eyes, and she did not resist because she knew he was too strong and he might break her jaw if he felt the need.
He smiled, a surreptitious thing, kohl-outlined eyes still perfect. He did not have enough of a personality yet to be more than a face, though even Mae, who on most levels despised him, could not help but be fascinated by the lack of flaw in it. Not beautiful or handsome, but…lacking in detail seemed right. His face belied nothing.
He drew one fingernail up the line of her jaw, cutting the skin just barely enough to leave a thin line of blood in its wake. It didn't hurt, or at least, Mae did not cry out. She continued to watch him with morbid fascination.
The smile, for once, disappeared, and to the shock of only Mae and Azreal who were present. He looked utterly serious, contemplative, and – this is the important bit – conflicted.
And,
Uncharacteristically,
Azreal, king of the Poppy Warriors who cares for nothing besides the thrill of pain and suffering, who has adopted his name from a thousand Azreals that came before him, who has no soul, stepped aside, wiping his bloody finger on his pants, and allowed Mae to pass through the exit unharmed except for the cut on her jaw bone.
Mae still has a thin, beautiful silver scar from this event. It is the only physical mark she bears from the Poppy Warriors.
It will not be the last.
A/N: I'd like to know if anyone honestly thinks I ought to continue. Who knows, it'll probably end up being a one-shot. I just couldn't get the 'living Harlequin mask' and 'diamond kohl' references out of my head. Oh, er, hello, by the way.