Jesse blinked at Cassie. She blinked back.
After a bit, the silence was broken by a loud meow, and a little calico-cat-head popped up from Cassie's back- Jesse momentarily thought Cassie had two heads before noticing the lump of fluffy fur under Cassie's pajama top.
Cassie Rose, the baron of Duomoon, had a cat in her shirt.
Somehow, so far none of the people in 'charge' of any of the cities had felt that intimidating to Jesse- perhaps the only exception was the Warden, but to be fair he was pretty serious.
They were more used to the informality of it all by now.
"Um... hi," they said meekly.
She blinked at them, before sighing and scratching at her elbow absently. "Hi," she muttered.
Cue the awkward silence.
After about a whole minute, Jesse blinked at the cat. "Um... is that your cat?"
"No. Just a random stray I picked up in a random alleyway in Duomoon. Of course it's my cat," Cassie grumbled sarcastically, but she reached up and scritched the calico's face, to the cat's pleasure as he closed his eyes to enjoy having his face scratched. "His name's Winslow."
Jesse smiled at that. The cat looked so blissful about being scratched on his little face that it was almost funny. "Aww. Hi, Winslow..."
Winslow mewed and licked Cassie's cheek, which Jesse found quite cute.
The baron regarded Jesse, shifting her weight awkwardly.
"It's, uh... really late. And all that," Cassie grumbled at length, scratching at her arm, still surveying them. She'd started pacing slowly around them in a circle.
Jesse nodded up at her vaguely. "I, uh... I couldn't sleep." They had insomnia more often than not, and it certainly wasn't a lie. They twisted their head to watch her as she prowled around them like a considering tiger.
"Makes two of us, then," she grumbled, still looking them up and down before giving a brief, decisive nod. "Well, come on."
"Ah?"
Cassie grabbed their sleeve and tugged them along. "I need someone to help me out with this, and you're better than trying to ask Radar," she muttered.
"Oh, I'm kind of usele- and you're pulling me along anyway, never mind..."
Winslow meowed, clambering up onto Cassie's head like a very furry hat as Cassie made her way briskly through the mansion hallways, pacing through the maze of wood-panelled hallways with almost no problem.
Cassie did nothing except nudge him a bit so that he could stay on her head without falling off. The cat seemed pretty pleased about this, nestling into her red hair.
Jesse let Cassie keep a grip on their sleeve as they made a hard right straight past a painting and into a secret passageway.
"What are the passageways for?"
"Supposed to be an escape route for the baron, in case there's a riot or an attack on the mansion-castle-whatever the fuck you'd call this place," Cassie said, gesturing around at the wooden walls and managing to accidentally smack her hand on the wall as they rounded the corner.
"What do you actually use them for?" Jesse asked meekly, ignoring Cassie swearing up a blue streak and shaking her hand out.
"Getting around the house. Hallways are overrated."
"Ah, that's why we couldn't see you earlier..." Jesse murmured softly.
Cassie gave a brief grunt of assent as she began leading them down some stairs. "I saw Hadrian came with your group. Doesn't he work for Ivor?" she asked, gruffly.
Jesse noticed absently as the wood turned to stone around them. "Ummm, he does... he had to teleport us back to Sky City..."
"The whole group? Shit," she said this absently. "Guess that's why Petra's here too."
"Uh, yeah, I guess..."
Cassie led Jesse past empty cells that smelled rotten, rooms with chests and storage systems, past what looked like a thousand pumpkins growing in a room, and finally into a small room locked behind iron doors that Cassie flicked open with a twitch of her hand.
To be quite honest, Jesse was really hoping this wasn't some kind of strange torture dungeon.
"Um... why am I here?"
"Because nobody else is allowed to know about this," Cassie said simply, spreading a huge tarp out on the dirty floor.
That was not particularly comforting.
Cassie straightened and turned to face them. "Could you sit on the tarp? However's most comfortable for you."
Jesse was starting to wonder if Cassie participated in the corpse trade. She certainly had a lot of things in this very dingy underground room that didn't look like they were cheap (or things you'd find shameful), so why did she hide them down here? Illegal obtaining?
Wait, no, the corpse trade was legal...
Obediently, they sat on the canvas and flopped onto their stomach, propping themselves up with their elbows. It wasn't the most comfortable, but the dirt and the tarp made it just about tolerably soft enough for them.
She reached into a chest and proceeded to pull out a knife- small, but not particularly sharp. Jesse had seen people use those before... what were they called?
Out came a little board that made the word click in Jesse's head.
Palette knife.
Out of the chest came a canvas and an easel that she narrowly avoided dropping on Winslow's head, fumbling her grip and regaining it at the last second with a swear. She glanced at them. "Oh yeah, that's a good pose. Keep that there."
Jesse blinked.
Then blinked again.
"Eh?"
"Oh. Perhaps I should ask, are you okay if I paint you? I really need to right now," Cassie said, perhaps a bit belatedly.
Winslow mewed and happily curled up on top of Jesse's back from where they were lying. Cassie tsked at Winslow, but set her easel up a few yards from Jesse.
Jesse was very bemused as Cassie pulled out her paints, adjusted their pose, and began to paint. "Why do you need to paint someone...?"
"I'm stressed as fuck for the party. I look shit in a dress and last time I went wearing one I got all the snooty Yurin people going 'ugh. Look at her disgusting dress. The spring green clashes with her hair'," Cassie quoted, taking on a very whiny, mimicky tone. "Like, Mevia showed up in dyed pale blue hair and a frilly dress from 302, and I get criticized because my dress's color clashed with my hair."
"Why did she show up in that dress?" Jesse asked, more than a bit amused at that.
Cassie leant back to get a better look at Jesse before returning to her painting. "I have no idea. She didn't look very good, either. The hair suits her, though."
"Oh, did she not have blue hair previously?"
"Nah... it was gray, originally, but I think she lost a bet, so she dyed her hair. Turns out it suits her. She shows up with that hair as a big fuck you to the Yurin denizens."
Cassie narrowed her eyes and leant in a bit closer. "Hmm... hopefully I can mix the paint for your eyes. Your eyes are funky."
Jesse blinked. "Um... I'm sorry?"
Cassie shook her head. "No, no, they're really cool. I'm focusing more on your face since... I'm okay at speedpainting bodies now, but faces are terrible."
She set the palette on her lap and started mixing paints into more nuanced shades than the original blobs of paint she'd squirted onto the palette. "One time I speedpainted Lukas."
"Speedpaint?" Jesse had only ever heard that term used in YouTube videos.
Cassie nodded. "I have the ability to paint really quickly- and apparently well." She regarded her palette for a moment before giving a brief nod and turning bright red eyes onto Jesse, her irises flicking between them as she tried to keep her eyes on both them and the canvas.
"Oh." Jesse considered this. "Did you mess up his painting then, then?"
"Well, let me put it this way," Cassie muttered, dabbing some paint on the canvas and going back for more of her mixed paint, "he kept self-consciously rubbing his nose for weeks."
From that statement, Jesse could only assume that Cassie had messed up his nose in the painting.
To be fair, Lukas had a bit of a hooked nose.
Winslow had started meowing loudly, staring at Cassie with big, accusing eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, Winslow, I know. Tell Jesse how I starve you, don't you?" she asked, turning a mocking but fond expression onto the calico. "Never mind that you get fed at the same time every day."
He meowed again, making Jesse giggle. "He's cute..."
"He's pretty sweet. Except when he insists on me feeding him at all times of the day." She poked his stomach. "You been abused? Huh? Not getting enough to eat? You poor baby."
Winslow purred and started licking Jesse's face. They were struggling not to giggle at the tickly feeling.
"Winslow, no, I'm painting- uh-" Cassie glanced at Jesse. "Jenny?"
"Jesse."
"Ah." Cassie stretched her foot out, still painting at a rather prodigious rate, and nudged Winslow to the right. The cat meowed but lay down on the tarp to rest. "Sorry to keep you up, Jesse."
"It's okay; you're doing it for stress relief..." Jesse watched Cassie paint. Her brow had furrowed in concentration, her hand moving between the palette and the canvas smoothly- like she'd done this a hundred times before. "Is this a branch of magic?"
Cassie paused only for an instant to process that. "... huh... well, it's more like the magic helps aid the process- it itself isn't exactly a branch of magic."
"Mm... what are the cages for?"
"Oh. I participated in the corpse trade. I kept extra ones there," Cassie said, rather bluntly. "Turns out people really like them."
... so Jesse had been correct...
"Should I be concerned?"
Cassie's lips quirked up. "I don't like it much anymore. It was mostly a Duomoon tradition- do a sacrifice, dress them up, sell, and rinse and repeat. My aunt used to show me how to do it. It was like this whole ceremony."
"Oh..." Jesse watched Cassie continue painting. "How come you stopped?"
"Painting is a lot more stress-reducing for me. Plus, over the years it's not become as lucrative up here- so many fancy Yurin people already own corpses, and selling to the South would be inconvenient- imagine how much energy it would take to send them there without issue. Not to mention Champion City's a prime location for it in the South." Cassie shrugged. "We focus more on trapping animals now, since it's not like redstone's rare up here."
Jesse watched Cassie as she cleaned her brush and began to work with different paint. She was leaving the area she'd just painted in alone. "I see..."
They weren't sure they trusted the (ex?) corpse trader, but she'd done nothing so far besides paint them, so they let their shoulders relax a little.
"... hey, I guess you're painting me... so I guess I could say..."
Cassie paused as Jesse did; her face instantly clouded over as she picked up on what they meant- Jesse wondered if other humans had made this joke before. "Wait, no-"
"Paint me like one of your French girls?" Jesse asked innocently, tempted to pose in a very sexy pose as a joke.
Except they didn't know any sexy poses.
Perhaps this was not the best comparison.
Cassie stared at them with the flattest expression on her face before she flicked a blob of paint at them with her brush and went back to painting, muttering about 'dumb humans and their dumb jokes'.
To be fair, Jesse had a very perplexing sense of humor.
A/N: Fun fact! Duomoon used to be the prime place for Yurin nobles (or some Northern Hizelk nobles) to purchase corpses. It is now instead the prime location to get fresh food.
trapping's illegal in Yurin though so don't tell any Yurin nobles *cough cough*
5.
Responses to reviews!
TheAmberShadow: Thank you for telling me! I've edited it accordingly. / No, I'm sure not. ;P I'm also sure that I didn't make Dan Cassie's plus-one to Xara's party just to bother Jesse with his hair. / She's behind that now. I think. lol / Hehee
DubstepDragon14: Hehe :D
Happygoluckymegami: Winslow doesn't like lots of people, haha. / Milo's rooming with Isa (he just goes to the bathroom to avoid being rude); Jack, Nurm, and Radar are rooming together since they're all from Jupin, and Hadrian's room is open in case something happens.
Toni42: Heheee / Past-murder-y, mostly. / fhsaf;
Bright: Haha, nice! Cassie just needs to draw sometimes to get all those nasty "oh i want to kill/kick the Yurin nobles minus Xara in the nuts" urges out lol
ParakeetLover3: He is! Cassie just doesn't mention it to the human. / Nope, not a Hoglin haha / Awww ty!
DarkbeastDend: A whole bottle of whiskey would barely make a demon with low alcohol tolerance buzzed, as context.
x.X. A.L. X.x
