Liz was tossed out of the floo, staggered a few steps, her her feet skipping against the tile. She'd barely even come to a stop, letting out a shivering breath, when she twitched at the sound of her name. Daphne was already here waiting for her.
Straightening with some effort, still shaky from the trip, Liz glanced around the room — she'd never been here before, she'd only come and gone through apparation or Víðir's neat gate thing. It looked rather like a public floo (which it technically was), a sizeable open hall with several hearths along one wall, but still had some obvious Greenwood touches. While the room was mostly all wood, large sections of the walls overhead had been filled in with stained glass, shining with sunlight and throwing slants of colour throughout the space, in other places trellises covered in wandering vines, pots and planters scattered here and there against the walls and across the floor, the rows placed such to form little green-lined corridors leading to the hearths, flowers blooming all over the place, the tiles under her feet forming the now-familiar wheel every few metres.
She hadn't given much thought to what the floo at the Greenwood looked like, but she might have expected something exactly like this. The Mistwalkers did have a...certain aesthetic.
Daphne was standing near a tall, arched doorway in the opposite wall, waving and smiling over at Liz. She was dressed like a Mistwalker again — obviously, Liz assumed she only bothered trying to look like a normal person when leaving the Greenwood — body wrapped up in cloth done in vivid green and yellow and white and red, colourful beads glinting around her wrists and her neck and in strings plaited into her hair. She happened to be standing in a chink of red and blue light from one of the windows, giving her sunny blonde hair and pale skin a faint glowy tint in patches.
Walking toward her, Liz suffocated as best she could the urge to tug at her dress or fiddle with her hair. She had tried, at least a little bit, but she was aware she looked like shite, and there was very little she could do about that. The dress was nice enough, Liz thought — it was new, she'd gotten it while in France, soft blue and white and kind of...fluttery, definitely a summer thing. (With a too-tight vest underneath to keep her from looking lopsided, of course.) Part of the reason she'd chosen one in white was because it would more or less match the shawl thing that went with her nice white robes. She'd taken to wrapping her scarves around her neck and over her head, to help keep her hair out of her face — a waitress at one of the cafés she'd gone to had once mistaken her for Muslim, which was odd, Liz thought they completely covered their hair but hers was definitely still visible — but her normal scarves looked kind of scruffy and bluh, this one was pretty. Maybe too pretty for normal everyday stuff, the gold thread woven into it glittering, but whatever. She hadn't bothered with shoes, since Mistwalkers often walked around barefoot anyway, and her white boots had heels. She'd pulled on a few of the Mistwalker bracelets she'd come away with last time, and had considered wearing one of Lily's necklaces for like three seconds before remembering it'd be mostly hidden by the shawl anyway.
She'd checked in the mirror before leaving, and she thought she looked...less shitty than usual, anyway. And she'd been careful with the floo, taking multiple short trips instead of the whole thing all at once, so she shouldn't have picked up too much ash. Daphne standing over there watching her — eyes crawling on Liz's skin, warm and tingly — and looking bloody amazing (as always) was making her feel self-conscious.
(Liz would like to be able to blame these moments on the Dark Lord being strangely girly, but honestly she thought it was just puberty fucking with her. What she planned to do today didn't help.)
"Hello, Liz," Daphne said when she got close enough, her head sparking warm and bright. "Didn't have too much trouble in the floo this time? We can stop for tea for a minute if you need to."
"No, I'm fine. I stopped at every public floo on the way, short trips don't bother me as much."
"Mm." There was a roar of fire, someone coming out of the floo, Daphne's eyes flicked over her shoulder. A glance that way showed a middle-aged man stepping out, dressed in normal person magical clothes — trousers and a long baggy-sleeved tunic thing under a cloak, a leather bag of some kind hanging over one shoulder, Liz guessed a relatively well-off commoner. "I won't be able to eat for at least a few hours after mine, so I was thinking we would get lunch right away."
"That's fine." It was a little early, but.
On stepping out of the floo building, Liz realised they weren't technically inside the Greenwood yet — they were in the middle of a small group of wood and slate buildings, like a tiny village, settled in a flat patch, the ground around them grassy and rocky, a hill slowly rising nearby to the east. A short walk down a brick path in the opposite direction was a forest, a thick line of tall trees completely blotting out what stood past them. With how rocky the ground was, Liz was pretty sure those trees couldn't have grown naturally, the sudden break between the hills and the dense forset obviously artificial.
They started toward the path, were alone for maybe only a minute before the man from the floo caught up with them. Obviously identifying Daphne as a local, he asked where he was supposed to go for...some kind of meeting, Liz thought — he was speaking in Cambrian, hers still wasn't a hundred per cent. Daphne said they'd show him the way, all smiling and pleasant, but Liz caught the irritation sparking in her head. Since Liz had a finger in her mind, she knew it was because Daphne assumed (correctly) that Liz would be all quiet and closed off until after he was gone.
Which was honestly a little weird — it'd been a few years now since she'd started having friends, but sometimes she still wasn't used to other people actually enjoying her company.
Daphne and the random bloke kept up a low conversation as they walked, by the sound of it just smalltalk, a little bit about the weird fertility magic shite they— Oh, that's why he was here! Liz was aware other people often contracted the Greenwood to bless their lands to be more fertile — in fact, that service and how important it was to magical Britain's economy was why the Greengrasses had had the leverage to be made nobility in the first place — and he was here to arrange for some people to come by and do his family's orchard. Right, okay. Anyway, it was maybe a dozen metres from the edge of the village before they passed the wardline — marked the same as it was by the owlery, polished tile maybe as wide as her feet put together, a twining design of green and yellow, the wheel of the Greenwood every so often, alternating with little knee-high posts painted in complicated, colourful patterns she couldn't make out. (An enchantment reinforcing the wardline, she assumed, but she'd never asked.) Walking through the wardline kind of tickled, magic warm and cool prickling over her skin in a wave, intense enough the bloke hitched for a second in obvious trepidation, but the wards let them through without any resistance, and a dozen metres later they stepped into the shade of the trees.
It was dark in here, without the magic carrying the sun through the branches they had in the actual town part, but it wasn't very thick, the path carried them out of the trees and back into the open air in just a couple minutes of walking. Now Liz was hitching in surprise for a second — they'd stepped out into an open field, in the sense of a farm field, tall grass-looking things (wheat?) and shorter leafy things and— And all kinds of crops, Liz could hardly identify any of them, and not in separate rows and patches but kind of all mixed up, free-standing trellises thick with vines and patches of trees (orchards) in the near distance. It was all kind of weird-looking, the plants mixed together giving the fields an oddly gnarled texture, rising and falling at random, narrow paths wandering around to give the farmers more direct access to everything — Liz assumed the locals must know how to get around, but the placement of the paths looked completely random to her. And there were farmers around, humans and nymphs, none nearby but identifiable by the rustles of movement out among the plants, the occasional flash of skin or hair.
As she got better glimpses, she noticed some of them had their weird Mistwalker dresses wrapped around their waists, leaving their chests uncovered, and several people she spotted were practically naked. It was a warm day, she guessed, and weeding or whatever they were doing out there was pretty physical work, but Liz would never be able to, just, do that — she wasn't even entirely comfortable being naked alone in her bathroom, to be honest.
(One of those Dursley things, she knew, dragged out of the shower too many times as a kid. She had no idea how long she was going to be stuck with this shite, but she didn't know what to do about it, and at least this one was never actually a problem.)
The paved path continued on more or less straight along, only turning and rolling slightly to follow the contours of the land underneath. After a few minutes, Daphne pointed their hanger-on down a side path, giving him directions quick — there was a building of some kind that way, but it was slightly downhill, Liz suspected the crops might break line of sight as he got closer. The man left with a few last smiles and thanks, and they went on.
"Sorry about that," Daphne said once they were alone. "Someone should have been there to meet him, but it must have slipped through the cracks. Things have been rather busy here, lately."
That wasn't really a surprise, a lot of people had been busy with politics shite, and— Oh, wait, no, that wasn't it. Daphne's mum had been busy with politics shite, yes, but the Greenwood in general had been thrown off their schedule by more births than they could easily handle unexpectedly happening all at once — all the kids had been born around a month early, and suddenly, which was apparently something that just happened here sometimes. (They had no idea why, presumably a side effect of all the weird ritual magics on the Greenwood.) They'd had to call midwives in from the other Mistwalker communes and everything, it'd been a whole mess. But anyway, "It's fine, don't worry about it."
"Mm. I didn't want to bring it up while he was still around, but you feel different. Did something happen?"
Liz glanced at Daphne quick — she realised Daphne meant her magic, but that someone felt different was just a kind of funny thing to say. "You can feel that?"
Amusement tingling in her head, Daphne said, "Of course I can, Liz." The texture of her mind shifted a little, solidifying — that was a familiar feeling, occlumency, but Daphne wasn't actually trying to push her out, just nudge her a little bit. "With you this close, it would be difficult for me not to."
...Oh. She hadn't thought of that, honestly. She kind of assumed people wouldn't be able to tell she was there if she didn't try to do anything — most people didn't, but Daphne's occlumency was pretty good, so. "Um, I've been doing a lot of subsumption, like memories and shite. I think my mind, or magic or whatever, is just a little bigger now, that's probably what you're feeling."
Daphne nodded, accepting that explanation, with the additional thought that puberty also probably had something to do with it. (The more magic that was around when new stuff was being grown, the higher natural magic resistance it had, so people tended to see a big power boost in their teenage years.) Which was good, because Liz was hardly likely to admit that she'd just recently subsumed someone's soul — and she'd been told repeatedly that she was a terrible liar, she probably wouldn't be able to brush Daphne off convincingly.
That was still a problem, one she hadn't really anticipated. Obviously, she'd known the soul magic subsumption she'd tried would increase her magical power — that was the whole point — but she'd underestimated how much. After all, Valérie was a muggle, she kind of hadn't had much magic? But once Liz had come to, there'd been a warm, stinging pain in that spot in the base of her skull, something tingling unpleasantly in her chest, and she'd been a little dizzy, felt...off. The dizziness had gotten better, but the pain and the tingles hadn't really — it was still noticeably present now, some days later, though less than it'd been at first — and she'd still felt, just, weird, uncoordinated despite no obvious clumsiness she'd noticed, didn't know what that was about. For a little bit, she'd worried she'd done something wrong.
Out of a lack of any better ideas — going to Severus about this probably would have been a bad idea — she'd written to Tamsyn with hypothetical questions about what might go wrong when doing soul magic subsumption. Since Liz was still sane, her magic still worked, and she hadn't spontaneously combusted, she actually hadn't done anything wrong. But, Tamsyn had said that it was (hypothetically) possible that it could work too well — she'd increased her channelling capacity, but hadn't increased her magical resistance, so it was too easy to channel more magic than her body could handle. Since she was always channelling a fraction of her magic into her mind (and didn't know how to turn it off), the volume of that fraction had also increased, which was why her head hurt.
Tamsyn had recommended that their hypothetical metaphage should be more careful casting magic than usual, so they didn't hurt themself — doubly so if they were a mind mage, hypothetically, because it was really easy to cause serious brain damage overchannelling. If their hypothetical metaphage hypothetically happened to have a duelling tournament coming up, they should hypothetically double up on any routine blood subsumption they might hypothetically by doing, and might hypothetically start taking a low-dose healing potion every night before bed, and hypothetically a second one targeting the nerves specifically if this hypothetical person were a mind mage. She'd included a recipe for one such potion as part of her hypothetical explanation, in case Liz could use it — hypothetically, of course.
(Liz also still had a book of meditations and exercises and stuff Severus had given her back in December, designed to help increase magical resistance. She thought those were helping a little bit, but progress was slow.)
The overuse of "hypothetical" was Tamsyn — she'd been mocking Liz in her response, a little bit. At the end, she'd broken character to tell Liz that she really didn't need to be so cautious about these things, it was fine. Tamsyn had confessed to murder in the second letter she'd ever written her, over a year ago now, so she was hardly likely to make a fuss about it. Which was obvious when Liz thought about it, she'd just been freaking out a little at the moment and not thinking straight. She'd still been slightly paranoid Aurors or whoever would come busting down her door at any moment — she had kind of murdered someone, after all — and she'd been a little, well.
Daphne definitely would make a fuss about it, so, yeah, it was a little bit of a relief that she so easily accepted the tame explanation. And Daphne actually knew a bit about ritual magic and stuff, so Liz decided that was a good sign for how other people would take it.
(It was still a little surreal that Liz had just murdered someone earlier this week. She'd kind of expected actually killing someone should be...a big deal? She didn't know, she didn't feel any different...)
(But then, why should she? She'd already known she was a monster, nothing had actually changed.)
(She realised that was a Dursley thing too, Severus would say something about internalising something abusers something something, but she didn't think they were wrong about that one. She had just murdered someone and eaten their soul, after all.)
Anyway, they continued walking through the field for some minutes — not really talking about anything important, just, things going on with them since school ended. It was a little weird to actually have news to talk about, what with Sirius and moving into the new house and everything, but. They came to a little farmhouse eventually, settled in a little island in the middle of the fields. There were several people around, farmers taking a break and getting lunch or a drink or whatever, some rather less fully-dressed than others — Liz stared at a nymph woman, sitting casually reclined in the sun without a stitch on, for probably too long before she caught herself — there were a few waves of hello and comments but Daphne led them right through into the house. There didn't really seem to be anyone in here, they took a turn into a side room, Daphne opened a door toward the middle of the house, and they stepped through into...
...a hall that was way too big to fit in that dinky little house. Looking very Greenwood-ish, warm wood with plants hanging here and there, the tiles colourful with designs Liz couldn't interpret, a wide hallway with doors all along both walls. Daphne was about to tell Liz to close the door behind her, but Liz saw the thought before she got the words out. There was an open archway to the right, Daphne led them that way, zigzagging through the people heading in or out of one door or another. On the other side of the archway was a sunny courtyard, surrounded by funny colourful Greenwood buildings, their surroundings very green with gardens and trees — they were in town, not far from the centre, Liz thought, definitely nowhere near wherever the fields were.
Huh. There must be some weird space-warping shite going on here — it couldn't have been a gate, Liz hadn't even noticed the transition. Neat.
It wasn't the holiday season this time, so the Wheel was rather less busy with people playing around all over the place, the town noticeably quieter than the last time Liz had been here. Also, the offerings for lunch were rather plainer and thinner. They ended up putting together these sandwiches — little loaves of bread that they sliced in half themselves, there was butter and honey (which Liz skipped) and cheese and vegetables (which she also skipped) and slices out of what must have been huge damn mushrooms, like pre-sliced meats for sandwiches, bloody weird — and some baked beans, which was a significant step down from what she'd been fed on her last visit, but it was fine, she wasn't complaining. The mushroom sandwich was kind of weird (and where the hell did they get mushrooms this big?), but the beans were actually pretty good, all herby and shite, though she couldn't decide exactly what they tasted like...
Anyway, after they were done with lunch — sitting in the grass somewhere out of the way, talking aimlessly about Sirius and the Refuge and politics both inside the Greenwood (which was weird, Liz didn't really get how things worked here) and magical Britain in general and school stuff, whatever — it was time to go see the piercing...person. Liz didn't know what the proper word was. Daphne used one in Cambrian, but it was a Mistwalker dialect thing, and Liz fully expected to forget it.
It wasn't a very long walk, at a courtyard where one of the bigger avenues leading away from the Wheel and one of the ring roads met. There was what looked very much like a market over here — though that wasn't the right word, since no money actually changed hands — and that right there was a bathhouse, and other things, some of which Liz didn't entirely understand the purpose for — not much in the way of residences, apparently this courtyard was for public, official things. (Not like much anything was really private on the Greenwood to begin with, but words were hard.) Their destination was one of the smaller buildings, only a single level, the walls relatively plain wood curved to make a circle. As they got closer, Liz noticed the walls were actually rather complex, not a flat surface but carved like a ring of trees supporting the ceiling overhead, instead of random ridges the bark showing curling patterns, some Liz assumed were local religious symbols or whatever but some were definitely runes. Placed too randomly to form any coherent enchantment, must just be decorative.
Through the door was a little hallway — Millie could probably reach up and touch the ceiling, and it wasn't quite comfortable for two people to walk side-by-side — the walls and ceiling showing more curly patterns. Oddly, there wasn't any floor at all, instead just dirt, an occasional weed or stubborn flower sprouting up here and there. Also oddly, the hallway wasn't a straight shot, kind of zig-zagged in the middle, didn't know what that was about.
She could have just waited a few seconds — the room at the centre of the building was obviously where this shite happened, apparently they'd arranged it so people couldn't just see in from outside. It was an open, circular space, the sky overhead partially hidden by reaching branches, a firepit at the centre and various chairs and workstations and whatever scattered around. Some of it was identifiable — they definitely did some enchanting in here, Liz recognised the necessary tools — but only some of it, Liz didn't know much about this stuff. There was a sizable fire burning at the centre, but she was certain it wasn't a natural one — fire generally wasn't pure white with little flickers of purple around the edges.
Despite the fire, it was noticeably cooler in here. As they walked closer to the centre, sharp prickles stinging at her exposed skin, Liz grimaced — of course the fire had to be light magic. It wasn't that bad, really, just a little unpleasant, she could tolerate it for a little while.
There was a man inside, kneeling at one of the workstation things and fiddling with something she couldn't make out from here, and fucking hell, this bloke had a lot of piercings. They were bloody everywhere, several in his nose and both of his lips and each eyebrow — and even some opposite his eyebrows, framing his eyes, which Liz hadn't seen yet — his ears had to be more metal than flesh at this point. And he wasn't wearing a shirt, so Liz could see it wasn't just his face. His back was half to them when they came in, so she noticed he had the rows following his spine that all the locals seemed to, and when he turned, the waistline on his Mistwalker-style skirt thing was low enough she could make out a few of the ones following his hips, which was also typical. There were also a bunch on both sides of his neck and along his collar — rather denser than she was used to seeing, connected by dangling strings of beads — and, just, a lot, it was a lot. (And of course his nipples had been done too, which was also normal here but Liz still thought was a bloody weird thing to do.) All the metal smooth and polished, gleaming in the sun and flickering from the fire, the beads all over the place in a wide range of vibrant colours, glittering in the light, some of them supporting dangling silvery chains or strings of beads, and—
It didn't look bad, no, it just seemed like a bit much to Liz. How the hell did he bathe?
Actually, thinking about it for a second, he wouldn't need to worry about a towel pulling on all the metal shite everywhere, since he could use drying charms — or just sit lay naked out in the sun for a while, since this was the Greenwood and nobody here cared. Still.
The man greeted Daphne by name, which wasn't really a surprise — there were too many people living in the Greenwood for Daphne to know everyone, but all the locals recognised her by sight. She was the heir to the title, which Liz guessed kind of made her like a princess of a really tiny kingdom? The magical government was bloody weird, but Liz thought that was a mostly accurate way to think of it. (Though the Greenwood had some more democratic government Liz didn't know much about, kind of analogous to Parliament, but still.) He didn't speak English at all, the conversation was all in Cambrian, which Liz could more or less follow. The man talked all...slow and drifting, almost absent — low and gentle, just really mellow like, which didn't match his appearance at all.
Or, not by muggle standards, at least, Liz realised the Mistwalkers had very different cultural attitudes about this stuff. Maybe some bloke marked up as thoroughly as this one being all chill would actually perfectly expected to them, who knows.
Daphne never used his name, just called him "Meistr" — master, in the sense of an expert in a craft or an artist or something. Okay, Liz guessed she could just do that...
As the conversation went on, the more or less Liz could follow started trending further toward less. She had to ask Daphne what words meant multiple times, but that wasn't really a surprise, it was very technical language — the different terms for different kinds of piercings and everything, and the process of doing it all, was very particular to Mistwalkers, and not something even native Cambrian speakers from other magical communities would be familiar with. Which was slightly annoying. Liz had found she actually had an easier time understanding Mistwalkers than any random mage off the street, in Edinburgh or Charing or whatever. The Cambrian spoken on the Greenwood was very precise, close to what they were taught in class, while Cambrian in other magical towns tended to be more slangy, people lazier about proper grammar and the pronunciation not quite on point, especially some of the vowels getting off. Of course, Liz realised this was because the Mistwalker dialect was just unusually conservative — the Cambrian they were taught in school was the formal language used in official documents and shite from before the switch to English a couple centuries ago, it was a bit archaic relative to the common dialect today. (Not so extreme of a difference as, like, walking around modern London speaking bloody Shakespearean English or something, just noticeably old-fashioned.) She was used to understanding Mistwalkers pretty well, so it was a little frustrating that so much of this conversation was going over her head.
They decided that Daphne would go first — Daphne had done this before, but this was all new to Liz, so she could see how it would go before her turn. There was a chair near the fire, a wood frame with cloth pulled taut instead of a proper cushion, the back tilting at a forty-five degree angle. As Daphne sat down — side-ways, not moving to lean back yet — Liz perched on a stool behind her (at an angle to make sure Daphne wouldn't accidentally see up her skirt when she did sit back), "Meistr" retrieved a few woven baskets, bits of jewellery gathered inside, silvery bars and rings with beads in all colours. Daphne went through the baskets one at a time, picking something out of each. Liz didn't know what all Daphne was getting, exactly, just that it would be on her face, obviously visible. Which was kind of a big deal, because the purebloods had a whole thing about that and her mother had always been particular about not being too Mistwalkerish in public.
Daphne was rather nervous about it, in fact. "Meistr" threw the ones Daphne had picked into another basket and...reached over to swish them around in the flames — whatever kind of magical fire that was, the basket didn't burn at all, interesting. While he did that, Daphne turned to sit back in the chair, face turned up at the sky, her fingers tapping anxiously at her thighs. As minimal as it looked from the outside, that was actually a lot for Daphne — she tried to act all cool and aloof and unflappable, even when not putting on the good noble girl act aiming for warm and pleasant at all times — and it was a lot more obvious in her mind, intensely sizzling with nerves, enough that it was making Liz's skin crawl even worse than the light fire magic, almost even audible. There were reasons Daphne hadn't done this before, the nobility could be stupid about this stuff, some people would defintiely be difficult about it when they got back to school. And she didn't know what would happen, it could be bad for the Greenwood politically, and she didn't want to make things harder for them over something so small, and her heart was pounding in her chest and a tension headache was building, she didn't think it would be that bad, really, but if something did happen she didn't know how she would face—
Only half thinking about it — remembering Dorea's first seizure at school, seeing her in the hospital afterward and still kind of freaking out a little — Liz grabbed her hand. Skin contact made Daphne's nerves even louder, but it was quickly interrupted with a jolt of surprise, Daphne twitching to look over at her, blinking. There was a short delay, and then a smile flickered into place — the nerves were still there, but half-drowned with a wave of surprise and affection and gratitude, all thick and hot and bright, clinging to Liz's skin and latching in her throat. It wasn't especially unpleasant, just kind of a lot, as other people's feelings tended to be. Sometimes Liz didn't know how normal people could stand it.
After a few seconds, Liz caught Daphne thinking about kissing her again — hot prickles sprouting across her skin, she glanced away, suddenly uncomfortable. (She couldn't say why, exactly, this was hardly the first time, and she, well, silly, yes.) Daphne must have noticed that she noticed, or at least guessed, a tingle of something Liz couldn't quite read in her head. "What do you expect of me when you're being so sweet?"
"I am not sweet."
"That is categorically untrue. It only requires some familiarity with you to see it for what it is — and I'm not the only one who's noticed, I've heard comments from several of our friends before." It didn't feel like a lie, Daphne definitely sounding very confident about it, all warm and smiling.
Liz let out a huff, rolling her eyes, but didn't bother arguing the point. After all, she could hardly come out and tell Daphne she'd literally subsumed a woman's soul not even a week ago. "Sweet" was generally not a term frequently applied to metaphages.
She hadn't let go of Daphne's hand by the time "Meistr" turned back around, he noticed but didn't comment. Though, a quick glance showed he didn't really think anything of it — she guessed a lot of straight girls could be uncomfortably...touchy, so.
The whole piercing process was kind of neat, but very smooth and uneventful. When she thought about it, she didn't know what else she'd expected, it wasn't like it was actually that big of a deal. In the mechanics of what was being done, she meant. "Meistr" was being more careful about sanitation than she'd expected — before doing anything, he waved his own hands through the white fire (which Liz was assuming had disinfectant properties), there was a bottle of some clear liquid that he tipped onto a cloth and rubbed against Daphne's eyebrow (which would be first), apparently another disinfectant.
Finding the right bar thing, "Meistr" cast a mirror illusion over Daphne's face, and then an illusion of the bar thing actually in Daphne's eyebrow, what it would look like when it was done. Muttering back and forth, the positioning was adjusted a little, until Daphne agreed that looked right. Picking up a little clip thing (cleansed in the fire along with the jewellery), looking kind of like tiny tongs with the hole in the middle of the grippy part, "Meistr" pinched up a little bit of Daphne's eyebrow, carefully centred the holes in the clip around the illusory jewellery. Once he was satisfied he let go, the clip clinging on by itself, dismissed the illusion and reached for the real bar thing. One end was removed, where the bead and its setting had been instead attached to a needle (which had also gone through the fire), narrow and sharp and visibly curved. Daphne was told to turn her head a bit, Liz guessed so the bar dangling from the needle didn't jab her in the eye or something, "Meistr" lined up the needle with the holes in the clip. He asked Daphne if she was ready — her grip on Liz's hand tightened, she squeezed back — and then counted down from three. The motion was so quick, clearly well-practised, that Liz hardly even saw it — a push with one hand, catching it with the other on the opposite side and pulling, the clip was removed and dropped in Daphne's lap, the needle was swapped back out for the end of the bar, and the disinfected cloth was taken up again to be gently pressed against Daphne's eyebrow, the needle dropped in a nearby metal bowl. And that it was it, it was done.
Liz was a little surprised, honestly. Doing the piercing itself had taken maybe only a couple seconds in total — Daphne picking out the jewellery and discussing where exactly to put it had taken much longer.
From there, they went through the rest of Daphne's pretty quickly, "Meistr" re-sanitising his hands, the clip, and the needle between every one. There was a second one in the same eyebrow, maybe a half-inch away — this was noticeably uncomfortable, the clip tweaking the fresh injury raising sparks of pain in Daphne's head, but she said the close ones had to be done right away before any swelling set in — and then one in the opposite eyebrow, and then a smaller one at the top of her nose, in that soft spot between her eyes, which seemed like an odd spot to Liz, but Mistwalkers were creative about this shite, and it wasn't her business. The one actually in her nose, the right nostril, was a little more complicated to get sanitised properly, and "Meistr" didn't use a clip thing for this one, instead doing it entirely by hand — the jewellery for this one was just a little pin, from the outside looking like a sparkly green bead settled in the dip behind the tip of her nose, which Liz guessed didn't look terrible, but wouldn't having something in your nose like that all the time be uncomfortable?
Then "Meistr" got out a big bottle of some kind of potion — the size of the container made it look more like a wine bottle or something, the contents a translucent green — poured a little bit out into a cup and had Daphne swish it around for like half a minute. There were two being put in her lips, and these "Meistr" did bring out another clip thing — it looked funny, Daphne's lip pinched and pulled away from her face a little, Liz had to try not to smile. These seemed a bit more painful, Daphne's mind flinching and her hand tightening on Liz's, the one on top more than on bottom, but before long those were in too, a loopy thing set in her top lip and another pin thing, like the one in her nose, in her bottom lip, the former on the left (Daphne's right) and the other opposite.
And the last one was really weird to watch — because apparently Daphne was also getting a bit of metal stuck through her tongue, which, okay then. Daphne had to sit there with her tongue stuck out for a little bit while "Meistr" poked at it with some kind of device that looked sort of like Liz's enchanting finishers. (Detecting the placement of blood vessels, Liz would later be told, so he didn't accidentally stab anything important.) Then he grabbed her tongue with another little clip thing, propping the heel of his palm on her chin, which looked uncomfortable, put together the jewellery and the needle and everything, and after getting a little nod from Daphne counted down from three again. Like the lip ones earlier, "Meistr" had to hold the clip and didn't have a free hand, so after pushing the needle up and through from underneath — sitting at this angle, Liz could clearly see it poke through, gave her odd unpleasant tingles down her neck, flinching a little at the flash of pain in Daphne's head — and then reach around to pull it the rest of the way through from the top. Tossing the needle into the little bowl, a few seconds later he put the end back on the thing, loosened the clip, and it was over.
While "Meistr" wrapped up, sanitising his things and putting shite away, Daphne relaxed in the chair, her eyes closed. She was humming under her breath just a little, quiet enough Liz wasn't certain what she was hearing at first, something turning in her mind Liz couldn't make out without intruding further than she was already. Turning back toward Daphne, "Meistr" muttered something, but it wasn't in Cambrian — Liz was pretty sure it was that old British language she'd heard at their solstice ritual thing. Daphne replied with a sentence in the same language, and something about the feel of it told Liz it was a quote, that Daphne and "Meistr" were reciting something to each other. Didn't know what that was about, presumably weird Mistwalker cultural stuff. Anyway, a few seconds later Daphne's eyes blinked open again, shot a little nervous-but-excited grin at Liz.
Her mind warm and bright, tingles in Liz's chest, she could tell that, however uncertain she was about how the other noble kids might react, Daphne was happy to have done this. You know, normal Mistwalker shite, all the cultural stuff she'd grown up with — Liz didn't really get it, but she realised it was kind of a big deal. So. Good for her? Liz didn't know how she was supposed to respond, so she just tried to smile back at her. She suspected she didn't do a great job — Liz was really bad at purposefully smiling and not coming off like a bloody axe-murderer or something, she'd stopped trying at some point because she kept accidentally creeping people out — but Daphne didn't seem bothered, so it was probably fine. Either that or she was just used to her, honestly couldn't say.
And then it was her turn.
Liz hadn't known what to expect from this whole...getting piercings thing. She'd assumed it would hurt, since it was basically getting stabbed (if only a little bit), and that it would probably be really uncomfortable, since the person doing the stabbing would have to touch her, which she could be ridiculous about. But she hadn't really given that much thought to the actual doing it part. Mostly just they looked neat, and she could, so why the hell not — more than anything else, she'd spent time worrying that they'd be distracting. Tattoos would probably be better for comfort reasons, since people couldn't feel those there at all, but she didn't really know anyone who did that on the magical side — it was far less common here than piercings, and closely associated with certain criminal subcultures — and she assumed few muggles would be willing to mark up not-quite-fourteen-year-olds.
"Meistr" did hesitate over that for a moment, but Liz didn't think he was being quite serious about it — it sounded like a joke, drawling about parents showing up to yell at him. With her usual sense of tact, Liz just said her parents were dead, so he definitely didn't have to worry about that; something about that got him to give her a closer look, and he belatedly recognised her. Thankfully, he didn't make a big thing about Girl Who Lived shite, just gave her a little bow quick — not making a big production of it, but the gesture did come off rather more respectful than the usual head bobs Liz was used to, she had the feeling she was missing something — and then just moved on. Liz was sat down on the chair, and "Meistr" asked what she was looking to get, handed her a few baskets of jewellery and started getting all his stuff ready again.
Liz waffled a bit picking things out, but it didn't take her as long as it had Daphne. The smooth, silvery metal tingling against her fingers a little — the feeling reminded her of goblin silver, but she didn't think it was, must be something the Mistwalkers made through a similar process — she sifted through the ones for ears. Apparently the paired ones were enchanted to stick to each other, which was a neat trick. Anyway, Liz had given this some thought, and she'd originally assumed things in her ears were a bad idea because they'd just get caught in her hair, but since she always kept it completely tied back these days, why not give it a shot? She'd inherited a bunch of earrings from Lily, so, might as well — she could always remove them if she decided they got in the way too much. She wasn't really sure what to pick — it's not like these would be permanent anyway — but she accidentally caught a thought from Daphne about maybe a green that matched her eyes being nice. Unthinkingly glancing over her shoulder, well sure, not like Liz had any better ideas — it took her a moment to find a pair of little U-shaped things with green beads speckled with yellow at each end, there, those would do.
The eyebrow one actually would be permanent (at least she was pretty sure you couldn't easily swap those out the way you could earrings), so after a bit of sifting through the stuff she grabbed one capped with these beads that were mostly black, the dye a little thinner in places making little purplish swirls. She half-expected she'd decide to take out the lip piercing in the end — those and the eyebrow ones were her favourites, appearance-wise, but she thought lip ones might be too distracting and get in the way — so she didn't worry about it that much, after carelessly sifting through the basket lucked into a U-shaped thing, curving more like a ring than the ear ones but not quite closing, with purplish-black beads very similar to the eyebrow one, perfect.
Liz took a tiny sip of her calming potion, just in case, and they got down to it. She hadn't really worried about it hurting, just assumed it would, but it wasn't that bad at all — she'd gotten much worse in duelling or quidditch practice, honestly she thought she'd gotten stubbed toes that hurt worse than this. They did the eyebrow one first — apparently "Meistr" planned on going top to bottom — and it was awkward and tedious getting everything set up, with figuring out the placement (toward the outside end on the left side) and settling the clip and all, but the actual stabbing part was quick and easy. A sharp sort of pinching feeling, followed by a dull, cold ache settling in over the next seconds, twinging a little as "Meistr" got the end on. The cold was a little uncomfortable, but it wasn't that bad. She thought the ones in her ears actually hurt more — she'd definitely expected it to be the other way around — though those resolved down into the cold ache before long too.
The lip one was a little more annoying, but it wasn't that bad either. He had her swish around some of that potion stuff for a little bit too — cool and tingly, reminding Liz very much of the potion she'd started making instead of brushing her teeth, though without the mintiness. (Which she still thought was odd, there wasn't actually any mint in it.) It was going on the bottom right, kind of mirroring the eyebrow one like, and "Meistr" fiddling with her lip and tugging with the clip was making her very uncomfortable, their eyes crawling on her skin like wasps. She couldn't say why it bothered her so much, exactly, she just did not like it. Thankfully, it didn't take very long — this one didn't hurt too bad either, and there, they were done.
Since Liz was new to this whole piercings thing, "Meistr" had instructions for taking care of everything, preventing infection and not breaking anything or whatever. There wasn't that much to talk about it, but Liz still ended up borrowing a sheet of paper and an unfamiliar pencil-looking thing to take notes — it was enough she wasn't certain she'd remember all of it otherwise. While they went through it, Liz poked at the jewellery in her lip with her tongue. It wasn't super obvious, but she could feel it there, the inside bead reaching up enough to press against the bottom of her top lip if it was turned the right way around. There was only a slight stinging of pain, which was odd, it really hadn't been that long for any healing to happen yet. Poking at the thing, she realised that if she flicked her tongue like this, one of the beads would kind of click against her top teeth, heh, that was—
"You should try not to do that."
Liz blinked up at "Meistr". "Do what?"
"Play with it. It isn't—" He broke off unexpectedly with a sigh, his eyes flicking away — realising he was about to use technical language she wouldn't understand, she guessed. Instead he turned to Daphne and explained it to her.
"Even with the enchantments on the jewellery, it will take a few days to heal, at least." Daphne sounded off, probably from having a bit of metal stuck through her tongue, but she was still understandable. "If you put too much stress on it now, you might cause unsightly scaring — that can be fixed, of course, but you would need to have the piercing redone afterwards. And the metal is hard enough to chip your teeth."
Oh. All that made sense, she guessed. "Right, I'll try. It's just hard not to fiddle with it, you know, it's right there."
"I would think that should hurt — talking is quite uncomfortable for me right now."
Yeah, Liz imagined it would be, Daphne had three holes in her mouth, so. "I hardly noticed, honestly, I think the cold might be making it a little numb. Is it supposed to be this cold, by the way? I think it's getting worse, it's uncomfortable."
Daphne blinked at her for a second, confused, before a bright flash of realisation bloomed in her head. Switching to Cambrian for some reason, "Are you sensitive to light magic?"
"A bit, yeah. Remember when we did Cheering Charms in class?" The things worked on Liz — though she felt more restless and jittery than actually happy, like she'd just had way too much coffee, she assumed that was because of her brain stuff — but they'd also been very uncomfortable, sharp frigid needles jabbing in a wave over her skin, leaving her feeling chilled for a good minute afterward. Not as bad as some of the light spells she'd been hit with in duelling practice, but still pretty bad. She'd noticed that light magic most often (though not always) made her feel cold, which was odd when she thought about it — you would think light magic would be warm...
"Ah, that would do it," the man drawled. "The healing spells in there are light. I can heal them now, if you prefer."
Liz agreed with a shrug — she wasn't sure why they didn't just magically heal them immediately afterward by default. "Meistr" actually pulled a wand for this, for the first time since they'd come in here — most people in the Greenwood didn't even own wands, which she'd learned was very common for working class mages (only people who went to academy needed wands) — and Liz kind of got a roundabout explanation of why they didn't just instantly heal everything. It wasn't spelled out, but instead of just sealing the holes up with a basic healing spell (which should be easy), it took multiple layered spells on each, doing them one by one. (Which was uncomfortable, since these spells were also light, but it wasn't that bad.) Liz had the feeling "Meistr" wanted them to heal in a very particular way, but she didn't intrude far enough to find out why. He was the expert here, Liz was just going to assume he knew what he was doing.
By the time he was done, Liz felt very cold, so she quick pushed a pulse of magic through herself and out — like the process for quick-step, but not digging in and just letting the magic float away — chasing out the lingering light magic around the holes. (Daphne twitched, leaning back a little — apparently that'd been enough magic for her to feel it.) Liz waited for a second, but the chill wasn't coming back, perfect. It felt like the healing magic had worked, she didn't feel them at all anymore, not even the slightest twinge as she poked at the one in her lip with her tongue. "Right. I guess I don't need this anymore," she said, holding up the page she'd been taking notes on.
After saying their thanks and goodbyes to whoever this bloke was (Liz had still never caught a name), they started on their way out, Daphne pausing a moment at the bend in the hallway to cast a mirror charm. Liz couldn't help smiling at her own reflection — at least there was one thing she didn't completely hate about her appearance now.
The piercings were the only reason she'd come here — or the only reason they'd actually discussed, at least — so they really didn't have anything else to do planned out. They ended up just wandering around at random for a while, talking about whatever — Daphne going noticeably lispy, a little bit of swelling from the tongue piercing, but it wasn't that bad. There was a lot about Romania and the Jassy trip, since that was coming up. Neither of them really knew that much about Romania. Liz knew there'd been a failed communalist uprising there in the 30s, and the government had been overthrown and the country completely occupied by foreign communalists, mostly from Greece and the western Balkans and a mix of Slavs and Germans from central Europe, for a brief time in the 40s before it was handed back to ICW forces as part of the ceasefire — the war in the west had gone badly for the Revolutionaries, but in the east they'd actually been kicking arse before stalling with the collapse of the front in the west — but that was pretty much it. Daphne knew a bit, especially to do with some war against the Turks bloody ages ago and then the politics around the beginning of Secrecy, but no more about modern Romania than Liz did. And about the duelling tournament in particular, well, Liz had been given a pretty good impression of what it'd be like for the participants, but she couldn't say much about the spectators' side. She would have a full day off, where they could meet up and check out the city, but on the actual competition days Liz doubted she'd be able to see the people who'd come to watch at all. Maybe she could slip away late one evening to go out for dessert or something, but the organisers had pretty much their whole week scheduled out, so.
Daphne agreed to let Liz copy memories (with the charm, not subsumption) so she could put them in her pensieve later — obviously Liz could do the matches she'd be in herself, but Daphne would get to see plenty that she would be occupied elsewhere for — though they weren't sure whether they'd be able to get the memories to Liz during the tournament. She was considering bringing her pensieve along, to research the competition between matches, but with the way the schedule would work, she wasn't sure if it'd be worth it. Whatever, she'd still have material to go over with the rest of the team running up to the next tournament over the new year, it would be fine.
Yes, she could read people's minds in a pensieve, it was so cool! She couldn't interact with the minds there, so she could only get glimpses of what they were actively thinking or remembering in the moment, but still, pensieves were neat. That wasn't what she planned to use it for, just, you know, figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of particularly intimidating competition, to better plan out strategies against them, and maybe pick up a few tricks here and there, that kind of thing. The mind reading was definitely good enough to learn hexes from people after the fact, even if they were casting silently, so there was that too. Should be fun.
No, Liz was not going to spend all of August in her pensieve doing duelling research. Just, maybe a couple hours every day? Oh stop that smirking, it wasn't like Liz had anything better to do...
The whole time walking around and talking, it was a little hard to focus on the conversation at times, Liz feeling all giddy, distractible and fidgety. Whenever it was Daphne's turn to talk, she kept flicking at the ring in her lip with her tongue, had to resist the urge to reach up and fiddle with her ears. She could feel their weight there, swaying as she moved, when she spoke, pulling at one side of her lip — the one in her eyebrow was less noticeable, but she could definitely still tell it was there. It was kind of distracting, but not in a bad way, she thought? She thought she kind of liked it, though she couldn't put words to why.
(Though more than once she started feeling a little anxious, and had to remind herself that she wasn't going to get in trouble, Severus didn't care, they'd even talked about it and everything. It was fine, really, just enjoy it, Liz, come on...)
After a while, they ended up sitting on the edge of a canal thing in a random garden somewhere. Well, garden, Liz didn't think there were any parts of the Greenwood that didn't have things growing all over the place — it was in the name. They were near one of the little side streets, weaving in random curving angles through the funny-shaped colourful Mistwalker houses, just off an avenue lined on both sides with double rows of some kind of fruit trees, apples or cherries or some shite. (The locals did have fields and orchards proper around somewhere, but they also grew things in the middle of the town, because why the fuck not.) She was pretty sure this green space they were sitting in was a big vegetable garden — it was hard to tell which section of it belonged to which house, no obvious dividers anywhere (except the walk path running through it, of course), but Liz was willing to bet the locals didn't really give a damn about that kind of thing. The canal thing was a little artificial waterway made of brick, narrow enough Liz could step right from one edge to the other, the water level raised a couple feet off the ground. Liz had no idea how they got the water from the canal to the plants — magic, presumably — but it made for a very convenient bench.
Some time later — definitely getting into the afternoon, by the angle of the sun overhead, but Liz wasn't really keeping track — the conversation started trailing off. Not in an awkward way, there were only so many things to talk about. They ended up, just, sitting there, Liz's feet bobbing a couple inches off the ground, a toe occasionally brushing the leaves of nearby bushes (because she continued to be too bloody short), the water babbling behind them and the trees rustling lightly in the breeze, the low chatter of voices somewhere in the near distance, dogs snuffling and barking and birds and squirrels and shite chittering. (Because it wasn't just plants in the Greenwood, obviously, there were actually a lot of animals around too.) One of them occasionally making one comment or another, but not really making a point of keeping up a conversation proper, just, sitting.
Idly fiddling with her new lip ring, Liz kept glancing at Daphne, trying not to be obvious about it — and probably failing, she'd been told repeatedly that she wasn't a very subtle person, but oh well. This would be a good time. She would have to get home eventually. It was her turn to make dinner tonight, and she had a tea date tomorrow morning — with Gwenfrewi Eirsley, an elder cousin of Cynfelyn he'd put her in touch with, about arranging someone in Ars Publica to handle the Wizengamot stuff for her — and she wanted to be at least somewhat presentable for that, so she shouldn't stay up too late. Not that she was getting that close to the time she'd really need to be out of here but, um, she didn't know how long the other thing might take...
She might have kept waffling like a neurotic mess, her fingers anxiously tapping at the brick, if Daphne hadn't nudged her, completely by accident. They were in another patch of silence, and Daphne was sneaking glances at her — Liz didn't happen to be looking that way at the moment, and Daphne was much more subtle than Liz, but she wasn't bothering to keep her thoughts private, so. Though, this was hardly the first time Liz had caught Daphne glancing at her today. She rather liked the new piercings, seemingly couldn't help it.
Not just for the look of it — thought she did like that too, because of course, they were neat — but just that Liz had done it at all, coming over and seeing one of their people with Daphne and everything. (There was some subtle thing Daphne didn't spell out about being there for it, must be cultural stuff Liz hadn't picked up yet.) Little flashes behind Liz's eyes, their funny wrap-around clothes and colourful beads plaited into her hair, Daphne was imagining Liz as a Mistwalker. This wasn't the first time Liz had noticed Daphne doing that either, it'd come up several times today — she was certain Daphne had noticed Liz noticing, but she hadn't bothered saying anything about it. It wasn't like it bothered her, really. Liz had no plans to convert, or whatever the proper term should be — they were technically a religious community, so Liz thought "convert" was correct — Daphne just liked the aesthetics was all. Because obviously, it was what she'd grown up with, she could play along with the mainline culture but Mistwalker style was still her preference. And she was maybe being just a bit silly and sentimental, her mind glowing, her attention warm and tingling on Liz's skin — not unpleasant, exactly, but definitely intrusive, Liz couldn't not notice it.
Liz was not at all surprised when Daphne's daydreaming transitioned into kissing speculative-Mistwalker-Liz, hair soft and warm and beads smooth and cool against her fingers, and the ring in her lip—
Resisting the urge to clear her throat or shuffle in place (the brick probably wouldn't be great for the fabric of this dress), Liz cut Daphne a sideways glance, finding Daphne's eyes on her exactly where she'd expected. "You're doing it again."
Her mind flickering with something very ambivalent, not unpleasant but too mixed up for Liz to guess what that was supposed to be, Daphne gave her a rueful sort of smile. "Yes, I suppose I am. I can try to think of something else, if I'm making you uncomfortable."
"It's fine." Liz had mostly gotten used to it at this point, it'd stopped freaking her out months ago. The first couple times it'd come up after they'd started speaking again, it'd been kind of... Well, she'd managed not to completely flip like the first time, but she'd still had to consciously take a step back and remind herself that it was fine, Daphne just liked her for some entirely incomprehensible reason, having occasional squishy thoughts wasn't any kind of threat. She thought Daphne had been making an effort to keep that stuff to a minimum while Liz was around, at first, but as she failed to go off like that first time she stopped trying, so Liz was densisitised to it by this point.
In fact, she suspected Daphne was intentionally thinking about it sometimes, so Liz would see it. Sort of lowkey sending a message, like — Liz had explained in that first letter that she hadn't believed the sentiment was genuine, and could be a crazy paranoid bitch apparently, so, so very obviously thinking Liz was pretty and imagining kissing her where Liz could see was sort of like saying no I really meant it, look, I'm doing it right now. She never said anything aloud about it, but it didn't make any difference, honestly it was hardly subtle.
And maybe "desensitised" wasn't the right word. She... It wasn't unpleasant, now that she was used to the idea. She could get kind of neurotic about it sometimes, yes — she still didn't really like being touched, especially without warning, and when Daphne was being really loud about it, it could be a bit unsettling. But Daphne was very pretty, that hadn't stopped being a thing, and it was kind of... Liz didn't know the word. Feelings were hard.
But it was enough that, after a brief hesitation but before Daphne could change the subject, Liz blurted out, "You can, if you want."
Daphne blinked, confused. "What do you mean?"
And now Daphne was watching her, curious, and Liz had to figure out how to say what she meant — the words locking her throat for a moment, twitchy with nerves, because she didn't know how to say it. She wasn't exactly an expert with this sort of thing, she didn't know what— This was awkward, that was all, she didn't know what she was doing. Glancing away without really deciding to, Liz shrugged. "Kiss me. If you want to, I mean, I'm, um. Yeah." Fucking hell, Liz, very articulate, totally not pathetic at all.
There was a long silence from Daphne, her mind sizzling with...something. Liz was looking, but she couldn't say what it was for sure, warm and sparkly and uncertainly shifting. After a long, awkward moment of silence, Liz practically jumping with tension, she said, "Of course I would. But, are you sure? I wouldn't wish to...make you uncomfortable."
Liz puffed out a breath. "No, but do it anyway. I've been thinking about..." She trailed off, gritting her teeth against the warm prickles spreading across her skin and— This was hard, that was all. "I, um. I want to know if I can handle it, you know. If I can't, well. That's that. If I do freak out, like last time, I do still have a calming potion, so it won't... You know. I just thought..."
She wasn't looking, but she could practically feel Daphne smiling at her, mind glowing warm and bright nearby. "You were thinking you want to kiss me."
"Well, yeah," Liz muttered, shooting her a quick exasperated glance before looking away again. "You know that already."
"I suppose I do. But it's still nice to know for certain — maybe you forget, Liz, but I can't know what you're thinking the way you can me."
Liz just shrugged, because Daphne did have a point. She had little idea how well normal people could read each other in general. At least some, Liz had been told she was hardly subtle, and it wasn't unusual for Dorea or Hermione or whoever to understand what was going on with people better than she did, even without being able to see in their heads, but, well. If she didn't cheat with mind magic she was basically blind — when pulling herself in or using her mind magic shield she couldn't interpret people's expressions reliably, or sometimes even tell similar-looking people apart (which had been news to her when she'd first noticed, during a bad day at dinner, she'd had no idea she relied on it that much) — but Liz was pretty sure she was an outlier here.
The point being, if their roles were reversed she'd have no idea at all. Actually, even with her mind magic, she hadn't noticed anything until Christmas, and in retrospect she was pretty sure it'd been going on for a few months by then. It could be really easy for Liz to miss something if she wasn't actively looking — as paranoid as some people could be about her knowing literally everything about them, she honestly didn't look that often. Mostly because she didn't care enough to, most people's minds were pretty boring, which maybe wouldn't be much of a relief, but still.
"But, I'd be happy to, of course. Let me just— Here..." There was a shuffling, Liz looked that way out of the corner of her eye, Daphne had brought up one foot far enough to prop her heel on the edge of the canal, then with a hup pushed herself up. Daphne didn't stay standing for very long — which was good, because Liz could get an angle up her skirt very easily from here, and that thought was terribly distracting, Daphne probably wouldn't be happy if she caught her — turning around to sit down again facing the opposite direction. There was a watery noise, while Daphne shuffled closer Liz looked over her shoulder, and yeah, Daphne's lower legs were actually in the water.
Was she supposed to do that? Daphne would know the rules, since she lived here and everything...and if they were worried about things getting into it they would cover it somehow, since there were animals running around. Must just be for plants and stuff, not drinking water, didn't matter if people got into it.
Daphne was sitting very close next to her now — not quite touching, but Daphne could probably feel the cloth of Liz's dress on her thigh just there. (Liz was temporarily distracted eyeing Daphne's legs, forced herself to look up again.) She'd scooted back to put her bum near the edge, sat facing Liz just a little bit in front of her, her hip not quite bumping against Liz halfway up from her knee. Which, she guessed this was, um, as convenient of an angle as they were going to get, without just standing up. Maybe better, actually, since Liz was so bloody short...
With the canal and the vegetable garden pushing back the trees and everything, they were kind of in the sun here — there were enough clouds it wasn't too bright, or else Liz might worry about sunburn — and this wasn't the first time she'd noticed it, but Daphne's skin kind of seemed to glow in the sunlight. Not like a lot, but. It wasn't just about being seriously bloody pale, since Liz didn't think she did the same thing... Actually, how did that work? She meant, she'd never really thought of it before, but with how things were at the Greenwood, Daphne must be in the sun a lot, but she didn't seem to tan at all. There was a little bit of texture in her hair, lighter toward the edges and darker underneath (though it was yellow enough of a blonde the contrast was pretty minor, easier to tell from this close), which Liz was pretty sure was from sun exposure, but it didn't seem to affect her skin at all. Magic, maybe? Supposedly the magic here reinforced the residents' health somehow, and she thought she'd heard somewhere that tanning was technically damage (if a manageable kind), so...
Liz hadn't been worrying about it too much, but was it even possible for her to get sunburn on the Greenwood? Huh. She was curious now, maybe she should test that at some point.
"What are you thinking about in there?"
"Oh, um, nothing important." Liz somehow had the feeling that Daphne wouldn't appreciate her being distracted by random magic theory stuff at the moment, it wasn't very... Well, she didn't know. She couldn't help it, her brain just did shite like that. Though, she was kind of grateful for it, at the moment — too busy distracted by nerdy nonsense, she'd forgotten to be nervous.
Daphne smiled at her, curling and amused — Liz caught a thought, Daphne was assuming she'd been distracted by sexy thoughts, which was fair enough, she had been a moment ago. "Come here, you," she whispered (in Cambrian), starting to lean over, the beads in her hair and her clothes tinkling just at the edge of hearing, the weight of one of the folds resting on Liz's thigh detectable through the fabric of her dress. Her breath catching hot in her throat, she twitched at an unexpected touch on the side of her chin, a thrill jumping through her, her neck and her back crawling with nerves, but it was just a light push, Daphne turning her face a little. Fingers lingering ticklish on the edge of her jaw, Daphne's face was only centimetres away now, her eyes fluttering closed, and— With an unpleasant cold lurch in her middle, nauseous, her limbs going tense, Petunia's screeching about freaks ringing in her ears, but that was stupid, she'd already decided that was stupid, tried to push it back, Daphne's hair tickling at her cheek, and...
Like the piercings, Liz would decide in retrospect that she'd worried about this way too much. It really wasn't that big of a deal.
She wasn't sure what she'd expected it to feel like — memories could be fuzzy, and people's feelings got a little too overwhelming for Liz to want to eavesdrop on people while it was happening — but it was kind of just, you know, a thing. Daphne's lips were soft and warm against hers, with the exception of the lip ring, which was noticeably harder and cooler, just touching for a moment, gently, the pressure hardly noticeable, just... Light enough it almost tickled, actually. Or, maybe "tickled" wasn't quite right, more tingly and... She didn't know, a similar feeling, anyway. Physically touching someone tended to make their mind louder, and that was actually more immediate than the kiss part itself — like dropping into water hot and smooth and, just, like a wave of tingles washing over her skin, and...
It was kind of a lot, but it wasn't unpleasant. Having people's feelings flung at her could be too much sometimes, but this fine. Nice, even. It probably helped that Daphne was enjoying herself, but. Yeah, Liz had worried about this way more than necessary, she was very silly.
It only lasted for a second or two, Daphne pulling away again — but not very far, only a few inches, the fingers on Liz's jaw dropping away (the bridge between their minds broken), her hand moving to Liz's other side to prop herself up. Her eyes blinking open again, the blue light in the sun, the metal dotted here and there shining, she gave Liz a little smile, her mind smooth and warm. She seemed to wait for a little bit, but Liz had no idea what she was supposed to be doing, just stared back at her. What Liz was pretty sure was amusement fluttering in her head, Daphne whispered, "How are you feeling in there?"
She didn't know, honestly, words were hard. "I'm fine."
That was definitely amusement. "Oh, fine, are you? I see..." There was a bit of a teasing drawl to her voice, but Liz didn't know what she was getting at.
"Not freaking out, I mean. You know."
"Well, that's a start, I suppose." She was still close enough Liz could feel the puff of breath from the P sound.
Oh! She got it now — Daphne had meant only fine, like, is that all, kind of sarcastically offended. Maybe? Liz was terrible at this. She opened her mouth to say...shite, she didn't know, "I have no idea what I'm doing."
Daphne let out a bright little giggle, lips pulled into a toothy grin. "You're adorable."
That was certainly not true. Daphne just had really weird taste.
"Well," Daphne said, in a sort of rolling drawl, her mind eagerly sparkling, "if you're fine, then..." Fixing Liz with a teasing sort of look, she inched closer again, slowly enough Liz had plenty of time to stop her.
She didn't bother. That first one had been nice, after all.
Awww, how cute. Wait a second, didn't Liz just horribly murder someone a few days ago? Huh.
Yeah, you see why I wanted both of these scenes in the same chapter. When I was making my outline, I had them highlighted in the same colour with a comment that they were definitely supposed to go together, thought it was important. This second scene ended up being not quite as long as I thought it would be — I originally planned for there to be a little more at the end here, but I decided to cut it off here late in the process — so I probably could have put them together without it being too absurdly long, but two 10-12k chapters is probably easier to read than a single 24k one, so oh well.
And if you don't see why I wanted them in the same chapter...well, reasons! and stuff! Whatever, I'm going now, bye.