Smoke!
Drabblus Promptus || Always Accepting
It’s routine. A ritual.
The Wolf never did like the taste or smell of conventional cigarettes. Sure, they’ll do in a pinch when the stores run dry until she can restock, but they don’t have the same feel or taste as raw tobacco does.
She remembers when the old silver pipe came floating into her life, something a Zoner or another probably dug up in much the same way a stalker does artifacts. It’s an odd thing, she realizes in affection, staring at it as she pulls it out.
The wood is hardly worn, a marbled dark red wood with the patina’d silver cap and mouthpiece. Not even real tarnish, just age, mar the intricately molded wolf’s head at the front, with its toothy jaws open to belch the fiery embers lit within. It suits her a little too well. Perhaps it was just waiting for her that day on the merchant’s table with its banged silver case, some inexplicable pull of the cosmos bringing her to it, and in turn pulling it to her.
Yes. It was meant to be hers, she thinks bemusedly as she packs it with the darkened dry tobacco leaves soaked in clove oil.
A ritual, a routine.
The mouthpiece fits almost perfectly between her top canine and incisors, held in place with the slightest pressure of her jaws. The old banged-up lighter she’s had since she was twelve sets the leaves ablaze for a brief second, she stokes the fires with a few good puffs until it smoulders as it should.
A blaze of embers in those quicksilver eyes that continue to scan the markets of Northtown, and she sits up on the boulder that marks the middle of the bustling market town. It’s a moment before she exhales a ring around her head of the sweet-smelling smoke, and her shoulders sag a little to relieve the tension of the journey prior, a shrug of arsenal and equipment off to the side of her.
Inhale, exhale. A ring of smoke reflexively released. A routine, a ritual.
@severingblade
