She finds her way to a quaint tea shop, somehow. She doesn’t remember the trip from... wherever she was last to here, but she’s here, and her mind seeps back into itself, her heart stops pounding, trying to escape, trying to seek something that isn’t here. She’s seated, and there’s a rat setting a steaming cup of tea down in front of her. It’s large, bipedal. It doesn’t try to bite her, just bobs a little curtsy and then scurries off.
This is a new sort of creature. The plague you’re expecting has never touched this place.
It’s enough to set her mind at ease, as much as that’s a viable option. She lifts the cup, inhales. The rat comes back, sets a little pitcher down. It looks like cream. There’s honey, too, she notes. She sets the cup down, loses herself in dissolving oddly thin honey into the tea, until it’s more amber than brown. She ignores the cream, picks the cup up again.
Some nights, her mood sinks low. The world feels lonely and cold, and - not right. She knows no peace.
If I could only speak to her now, my darling playmate from so many years ago.
Her eyes lift, find that so-familiar visage. Distinctive, sharp jaw and lazily cruel eyes, brilliant and longing and eager. Her darling friend, her sister, so long gone, and Jessamine never looked for her. Guilt curls dim and harsh in her chest. The cup clatters against the saucer as she sets it back down, heart pounding again, seeking, seeking-