Entoma didn't send Bertra away after that, nor did Bertra rise to her feet, "I… I haven't ever spoken of what he did to me, not since he was sentenced." Bertra's voice was soft, trembling, and her lip trembled with it. "Even after everything happened, even after he was sentenced and thrown to the mines, I sometimes blamed myself for it. I wondered if I should have said something different, done something different, and I don't think, up until the end, that he ever really thought what he was doing was wrong. I don't think he ever really thought he was-" She stopped speaking when Entoma put a hand on her shoulder.
The small bug-like fingers would have seemed impatient to anyone else, but to Bertra, who knew the maid-demon well, it was the equivalent of comforting her.
"You don't have to say it." Entoma replied.
Bertra raised her head to look up through the darkness at her friend, "I came in here to help and comfort you, how did it turn about the other way?" She sniffled and wiped her nose.
The arachnoid heteromorph gave a simple shrug, "I picked up on your distress, it's my predatory instincts at work, as Lord Demiurge might say."
Bertra had to laugh, and choked on it a little bit, "Miss dangerous predator Entoma, who uses her killer people eating insects to identify a friend in distress and alleviate it."
"The one and only, just as I was made to be." Entoma said, and not without pride in her sharp nod as her own anxiety faded away with the settling in of understanding for Inta's actions.
"I… I know I never ask this but… do you still do it?" Bertra asked with seriousness etched on her face.
"Do… what? Eat people?" Entoma asked and focused all her scarlett eyes on Bertra's face to look for any hint of fear or disgust.
"Yes." Bertra pressed.
"Sometimes. People who prey on the Sorcerous Empire's citizens. The occasional unlawful necromancer, captured war criminal, or other. I don't eat as many as I used to, but sometimes Lord Demiurge offers me one he's finished with. And sometimes I snack on the dead when they're offered. Why?" Entoma asked, and rested the palm of her smooth insect armored palm on Bertra's shoulder. "I'd never eat 'you', you know that."
"No, I know that, and I was just curious. Since you enjoy other foods, even I would notice if your mouth watered whenever you looked my way. But it isn't something I've asked since the war ended, and you can be so innocent that I worry about you." Bertra said with a smirk and reached up to tap at the tip of her little nose which sat just between and below her two largest bright amethyst eyes.
"No protests that people aren't food?" Entoma asked.
"My view has changed… evolved if you will. No matter how we live, eventually worms will eat us. If found in the wild, wolves would eat us, so would maggots or other things, and none of them are evil. How can I judge an intelligent being for just doing what it was made to do? If you were a rampaging threat, that would be one thing. But you're less dangerous, not more, because you have rules." Bertra explained, then shifted the subject.
"What will you say to him tomorrow?" Bertra asked.
Entoma didn't ask what Bertra was talking about, and her freshly restored confidence melted away like the light of day with the setting of the sun. "I don't know… I didn't insult him but… I definitely misunderstood. I probably even offended him."
"Can I suggest something?" Bertra asked, her own discomfort slowly slipping away, she rose to her feet and put her hands on the shoulders of her friend.
"Please." Entoma invited, the little insect appendages around her face twitched optimistically.
"Just be honest. Tell him you didn't know how vampires saw that kind of action and you thought his reaction was about you rather than him. Maybe a small apology for sort of throwing him out, and that should take care of it. If he's really the kind of man you think he is, a small misunderstanding, however embarrassing, is just that, a small misunderstanding." Bertra said, then raised her pointer finger up in a suggestive motion. "Or?"
"Or?" Entoma asked, and her friend had a little smirk on her face.
"Or," Bertra said, a smile growing in spite of her efforts to contain it, "you moon over him like a lovesick school girl and bemoan how you screwed up and never really fix anything while you wait for him to come to his senses and apologize to you in confusion and solve the problem with his penis."
"Bertra… have you been reading trashy romance novels?" Entoma asked.
The elf woman gave a defensive huff, "I have to be familiar with the needs of my customers… I am a business woman after all, and…" She rolled her eyes, "if the undead can't tell jokes, it seems the average elf has absolutely awful reading taste. I tried to interest them in lighter novels, there's even a wonderful series about a skeleton going to another world and getting a harem that wants to bone him… but it just hasn't taken off." Bertra grinned ear to ear at the pun and wiggled her long elven ears.
Entoma could only groan at that. "Go to bed, Bertra, your puns and absurd books are going to get worse if you stay up… and thank you, I'll sleep well now."
Bertra released her companion's shoulders and left the room, closing the door lightly behind her.
When the elf was gone, Entoma rocked back and forth in her white web hammock, her crimson eyes split between watching the now tightly shut door, and the high ceiling of her mostly empty bedroom. Outside her window, a little 'whowho, whowho' noise began to echo through the silence.
The swaying back and forth was comfortable and set her mind at ease, though she wasn't without things to occupy it. 'My closest friend outside of Nazarick… and she's strong, but she liked someone and look what happened. Though, that can't happen to me. If someone were strong enough and did that to someone from Nazarick, even the most powerful, sinful cardinal would be hunted to the very ends of the world. She should have come to me…'
In a strange sort of way, knowing what Bertra should have done, but didn't, set Entoma at ease, that someone could make a mistake, that she could suffer harm and still live as she wanted was a relief.
The 'whowho' of the owl continued for several more minutes, until Entoma got out of her hammock, went to the window, opened it and caught sight of it in the tree. Her webbing shot out, and struck the bird. It had only enough time for half a 'who' and to part its wings before the sticky substance sealed its beak shut. It flailed and fought while it suffocated, slowly dragged back by Entoma herself.
She wound her webbing up around her hand, dragging the struggling creature up to her. 'Me, that's 'who'.' She bemusedly answered the owl's evident question, enjoyed the feathery, crunchy snack, and then went back to her hammock to sleep soundly for the rest of the night.