"Who are you and what are you doing in my apartment?" Lexa asks, quickly getting over her initial shock. The woman puts something down on the armrest of the loveseat before getting up. She's stockier than Lexa is, with mid-length blonde hair and blue eyes. She is also very beautiful.
"You don't remember? Wow, you were even more drunk than I thought you were," the other replies. Lexa now notices she's wearing a short white dress, simple but patterned. It looks like the Hollywood-portrayed fashion of the 1920s.
"Get out!" Lexa orders, subtly turning her body so that she could turn around and run for the door unhindered if she needs to get out fast. She doesn't remember where her phone is – drunk-Lexa could have left it anywhere in the apartment.
"Hey, you're the one who summoned me! You can't banish me without payment first!" the woman crosses her arms, a frown on her face.
"Summoned?" Lexa looks at the mess again, still holding her cup of coffee in one hand. Now that she looks more closely, the chalk-drawn pentagram has little bowls on each tip of its star, with various substances in them. The rocks she noticed earlier, scattered all around the room, range from pale yellow to an almost-blood red. The implications are clear.
"Are you a demon?" she asks with a sigh. She's too hung-over to deal with entities from another realm. "Because if I summoned a demon while intoxicated, it's Anya's fault. You can go haunt her instead." That startles a laugh out of the blonde-haired entity.
"No, I'm not a demon," she chuckles, uncrossing her arms. "I'm a goddess. And that's not how hauntings work."
"That's… great. Now, tell me how to send you back so we can both go back to what we've been doing." Lexa doesn't have time for this. She has midterms to prepare for, a living room to clean, and a best friend to scold.
"I decide when I go back," the goddess grouses. "Again, you need to pay for summoning me. If you don't, I am contractually allowed to make your life a living hell," she smirks, a hard glint in her eyes.
"Fine," Lexa gives up. She's too hung-over for this. "What do I need to pay you in? Blood? Animal sacrifices? The tears of small children?"
"What? No!" the goddess protests, flustered. Lexa imagines that if the other had feathers, they would be adorably ruffled. "Just crystals! Didn't you read the ancient texts?"
"I assume I have," Lexa answers calmly, taking a sip of her still-warm coffee, "but as you said yourself, I was very drunk." The goddess groans in exasperation. Lexa has to admit she looks very cute when she's annoyed. "Which crystals do you require as payment?"
"Well, these, for a start," she gestures at the rocks around the room, "but they'll only sustain me for a few days."
"Great, so I can ignore you for now," Lexa states, already turning away from the entity.
"You're…" the goddess seems to be lost for words, standing in the middle of Lexa's living room.
"Don't bother me for a few hours!" Lexa calls over her shoulder. She'll have to study in her bedroom until she can figure out where she can put the goddess. "I have midterms to study for."
With that, she closes the door and stops thinking about messes and summonings.
-o-
It's past 5 o'clock when Lexa emerges from her room. The apartment has been quiet, so she thinks the blonde goddess couldn't have messed things up too much while Lexa was occupied. She first ducks into the bathroom, taking the time to collect her thoughts and questions before confronting the being. Her eyes in the mirror are tired and her face is pale. It's Anya's fault Lexa is so hung-over.
Coming out, she heads into the living room. The goddess is in the same seat Lexa first saw her in, reading a book. For a few tense seconds, they look at each other, Lexa standing in the doorway and the other sitting in the far corner of the room. She can't help but notice once again how beautiful the goddess looks. Her wavy blonde hair forms a halo around her face and her blue eyes shine. Her features make her look ethereal, and for a second Lexa doesn't understand how she could have mistaken the being for a simple human intruder.
"So, how was your study session?" the goddess asks, interrupting Lexa's wandering thoughts. She blushes, hoping that it is not apparent to the other how flustered she is. She comes to sit on the couch in front of the blonde.
"I was curious about you," she states, trying to inject some strength back into her voice. "What exactly are you?"
"Straight to the point, I see," the goddess smirks, sitting up from the relaxed position she was in. "My name is Clarke, and I am the Goddess of Love."
Lexa stares at her in silence. To herself, she admits she is at a loss for words. What is the appropriate response to someone saying something like that? On the outside, she keeps her composure. Lexa Woods is always composed.
"Very well," she finally says. "How long will you be staying?"
"A while," Clarke shrugs.
"What do you require as living accommodations?" Lexa eventually asks, when the goddess doesn't say anything further.
"Accommodations?" the other frowns.
"Do you require food other than the crystals? Do you need a place to sleep?"
"I– No, the crystals are enough, and I don't need sleep," Clarke says. "I can just… hang out, I guess?"
"You guess?" Lexa drawls. "You are very uncertain, for a goddess." The one in question seems to take offense to that.
"Hey! Usually, people are all business when they summon me! They don't pass out for hours and then ignore me for a few hours more!"
"Oh? And what is business, then?" Lexa wonders, staying calm.
"Well, usually humans ask me to make their crushes fall in love with them, or teach them some tips and tricks. They also ask me to make them and their loved get back together after a break up."
Lexa tenses. It is now crystal clear why she had summoned this goddess. She had been moping about her break up with Costia. Drunk-Lexa had probably thought it would be a good idea to summon a goddess to 'fix' her relationship with Costia.
"I see," she finally says. "I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding. I… was not in my right mind when I performed the summoning, so I'm afraid there is going to be no business between us.
"As you seem set on staying nonetheless," she continues when she sees Clarke puff up again, "we will have to work something out. I am usually gone on weekdays from eight in the morning to six in the evening, but mostly at home during all other times. I'm sure you, too, have plenty to do, so we shouldn't be in each other's way too much."
"Right," Clarke says.
"Great," she states. "Now, if you don't mind, I need to clean this mess up. I'm expecting a guest later today, and I need the room clear." Lexa was going to have Anya come resolve the mess she was certain was her fault.
"Let me help," the blonde offers. Lexa looks around the room, imagines how long it would take her to clean it up on her own, and agrees.
They spend the next half-hour in silence, washing away the pentagram on the floor and gathering the crystals in a bowl Lexa fetches from the kitchen cupboards. Once they are gathered, Lexa hands the full bowl to the goddess, who murmurs her thanks.
In the bowls, Lexa finds basil, a candle, some water, a lock of her hair, and another one of the crystals. She has no scruples throwing out half of the items, but burns the hair. Anya has nagged enough about the dangers of throwing out items infused with one's personal energy for her to be prudent. The last crystal she adds to Clarke's bowl.
They find her rug shoved haphazardly behind one of the armchairs. Once it is in its proper place and Lexa empties the bowl of chalk-tainted water, the living room is clean. Working with the goddess had been strangely alright. They didn't get in each other's way and the silence was comfortable. Hopefully, coexisting in the same apartment for however long the being would stay would be similarly peaceful.
"Thank you for your help," Lexa says. "I need to attend to a few matters. I ask you to refrain from visiting my bedroom, but you're otherwise welcome to explore."
-o-
That done, Lexa goes on the hunt for her phone. She finds it under her bed, miraculously with some charge in it still. She unlocks it and calls Anya.
"Hey Lexa!" Anya answers on the fifth ring.
"Hello, Anya," Lexa says, voice deceptively calm. Of course, her best friend immediately knows she's in trouble.
"Before you say anything, I thought it would be good for you to get out a little, have some fun. A change of scenery, if you like!"
"Do you consider pentagrams in my living room a 'change of scenery', too?" Lexa asks icily.
"So you did summon something." Anya's tone is now dead serious. Lexa is relieved she's finally dropped the party-girl façade.
"You don't know what I was summoning and you still helped me get the ingredients?" Lexa is even more angry now. Some of Anya's more… bubbleheaded friends might not believe in magic, but Lexa had seen first-hand what Anya and Titus were capable off, in the back room of that shop of theirs.
"You were dead set on it. And I figured it wouldn't be that much trouble. You didn't even have to sacrifice anything for the summoning." There is another voice in the background, whispering something unintelligible. "Give me a second." Anya says something else, but it seems farther away and Lexa can't quite make out what she is saying. "Anyways," she continues, her voice close again. "Couldn't have been anything too powerful, so I figured you were safe."
"Well, apparently I summoned the Goddess of Love," Lexa states matter-of-factly.
"Costia," Anya sighs into her phone. "Of course." Anger flares up again in Lexa's chest.
"We will discuss this more at a later time, Anya. For now, I would like you to come to my place to assess the situation." Anya cannot mistake the agreeable words for the order that they are.
"I'll be there soon, Lexa." With an unintelligible mutter, Anya turns off the call.
Lexa locks her phone and plugs it in to charge it with a sigh. It's going to be a long evening.