See, there, things are settling back in.
The knit of Rennis’s clothes shift. You know your girl, for all that she ain’t any longer, and you know the paths of her mind. Her fingers ache to touch, to loop through yours, or to wind her clawtips into the tassel of your braid, or to twist hard into the drape of your cloak. But she doesn’t. And you can’t begrudge a motherfucker for craving the past, not when it’d been so easy for you to do the same.
Had been. Raphae’s gift hadn’t crossed your mind much in perigees, not after Chiloa’s reprimand, but now you suppose you’ll have to go and send your brother some thanks.
“Poor snake,” you tease, rolling your shoulders back. Her face’s pale, under the dark swathe of her skin, and you oughtn’t be doing this. “Ain’t you folks all about shedding your skin? Startin’ the fuck anew? And yet you come lecturing to me, dripping those fears off your tongue like the most vile kind of venom. Like this shit ain’t the way of your kin?” You oughtn’t do this at all, but that doesn’t stop you from leaning forward, resting a hand on her shoulder as you purr: “- the way of your fucking soul?”
“With doubt comes error, little green.” You tap your fingers, light as the thrum of an undiscovered lie, right against the curve of her treacherous fucking jaw. That’s the trap of Rennis: green-flushed, blood-bleached, she’s still the same snake under all of it, poisonous and sweet-faced enough you almost want to forgive. Do you want her laying fronds on you? No. But there’s that trill of something, over setting the rules and the ways of this interaction, of knowing she’s as sour over this as you. (As you were.) “And I’ve had enough fucking doubts.
"Don’t worry, now. Got this all planned out. A motherfucker will not slip.” And, oh, you’re slipping now, right into old habits as you add, lids set low, words so sly she mightn’t even buy you ain’t playin’: “- the cards said it was fucking so.”
For all their silliness, Riccin has always had a distressing way of seeing to the truth of you. You open your mouth to claim you don’t know what they’re talking about -- and shut it with a click of your fangs. Haven’t you built a different Vide for every person who needed it? Or does it count as a different Vide, when it’s the same you underneath? And what do they mean by leaning in that close, when you’re not anything to each other anymore?
“Is,” you say, out of breath and bewildered, and then realize no, nope, you’ve got to try again. “Is it only doubt as hatches error, though? What about o-ver-con-fee-dence?” It’s a word you know, but you draw it out anyway, lilting from syllable to syllable, raising your eyebrows high, high, high. Your tongue dances the way your body can’t, on account of holding yourself very still and very biddable under Riccin’s touch. Not the stillness of a mouse under a snake’s eye, you tell yourself. The stillness of a snake itself, biding its time.
And striking. “The cards?” you ask, sharp, before you remember to watch your tone, girl. “Them -- those fortune-telling cards, you mean? Because -- because Riccin, you’re joking with me, right?”
Ori gets her cards read. Mister Vadaya gets his cards read. Jerath got his cards read, by the pretty (pretty mean) redblood in the street stall. And now Riccin, apparently, gets their cards read, because the entire world is just full of suckers!
“Right?” you say again, less sharp this time. “You are smart,” and you would gently bap their shoulder but you don’t think you’re meant to touch them right now, so you just sort of hover your hand above their sleeve instead, “and I know you wouldn’t rely on -- on some fortune-teller’s say-so that you won’t get caught. ‘Spect you make a very pretty indigo anyway, enough that no one will catch you, but why? And what happens if that Mister Chiloa catches wind of it?”