smoke & mirrors

Rovasha was able to sleep anywhere; the gift of being a street urchin. Myrefall inns were sketchy all-around, no denying it, but it was a familiar type of sketchiness. She didn’t need feel the same desire to clutch the dagger on the night stand first thing in the morning - not immediately, at least. The night before was mostly a blur, consisting of charming the mercenary by the bar, challenging her to a drinking game, and the overpowering scent of cinnamon trailing to a room upstairs. It was a habit she was used to, one of the only vices she allowed herself.

She was a light sleeper. She awoke when Sana pushed her arm away, but she didn’t open her eyes immediately. The morning light seeped in through the windows and she groaned, reaching for the scratchy wool blanket they shared. Her brain nagged at her, on fire. Her mouth thirsted for water. It was too damn bright.

At the sound of the scream, like a bird roosting or the alarm at camp, Rovasha shot her eyes awake. “What the fuck…” she grumbled before registering the face before her - the face of a rodent-like person that stared back at her in horror. She rubbed at her eyes, thinking it surely a dream. A sort of active imagination run wild. Blinking several times, a panic grew in her gut, launching herself off the bed and onto the creaking wooden floorboards below.

The mirror beside the door revealed all the answers. She watched herself comb through her dark curls with her fingers, her pointed ears, her horned growths, nowhere to be found. Where there should be dark fur on her legs was replaced by coarse dark hairs, leading not to hooves, but feet. She reached for her tail and felt nothing but its absence. A phantom sensation out of her grasp. She crawled closer to her reflection, gulping at the realization. It was tangible, unlike the temporary illusion spell she was so used to. She couldn’t stop touching her face. She was human. 

A whirlwind of emotions swarmed within her as questions begged to be answered. Shock, confusion, then relief. Why now? Am I in the gods favor? She remembered her father, who ached to rid the family of the curse of their body. He was plagued by shamed, embarrassed to be themselves. There was so much self-hatred inside him. She inherited all of it. She watched a smile grow on her new face as she rose to her knees and turned back to the stranger in bed.

“Sana?”

@roksanas​

Sana allowed herself a moment of shock that lasted only as long as Rovasha’s did. She looked over Ro’s shoulder, locking eyes with the unfamiliar face in the mirror. She opened and closed her mouth a few times to make sure the reflection was really hers, and though she was horrified to realize that it was, she had no energy left in her to scream again. It was strange to realize that she couldn’t read the emotions on her own face. Those beady eyes seemed stagnant and unmoved, and her pink mouth seemed to turn upward in a smile by default. If she couldn’t even take herself seriously, how could she expect anyone else to? How could she expect Zari to listen to another word she said ever again?

Oh, fuck. Zari.

The time for being mesmerized by her own reflection was over. Suddenly, it didn’t matter what she looked like at all. When she started to worry about her sister, there was nothing to spare for herself. It’d always been like that; it was the only selflessness in her nature. Her mind reeled drowned in thoughts of her sister. Was she okay? Had this affected her too? What if she was standing in front of an unfamiliar reflection with no answers, without her older sister to rely on? Zari was strong, and responsible, and resilient, but Sana didn’t want her to be any of those things out of necessity - ever. She would bear the weight of this moment a thousand times if it meant her sister would never have to experience it.

“Yes, it’s Sana,” she sighed, trying her best to ignore how foreign and unpleasant her voice sounded. Usually she liked to hear herself speak, but now she was thinking she might have to spend more time being silent. For now, though, she had to speak. She had to make sure Zari was accounted for, and she could wonder about what had just happened - and the permanency of it all - later. “Rovasha, focus. Do you have any way of sending messages to people quickly? Do you know of anyone in Myrefall who could contact someone in Khaggon immediately?”

Sarkesh didn’t hate his new form. More it was general annoyance than a hindrance. He’d been patted on the head by at least six children that afternoon. He wasn’t sure what had happened but after the earthquake he’d woken up, found it strange that his shirt had gotten bigger over night and screamed when he looked in the mirror to shave. Of all the times to be turned in to mouse?….rat?..creature? during a war was the worst. He hadn’t been intimidating to begin with but this was ridiculous. He was absolutely adorable. Who was going to find this scary?  He walked in to the inferno he needed a stiff drink after the day he’d just had. Trying to order stuff for the army had proven to be more difficult that he’d thought. For one no one was who Sarkesh had expected them to be. Damien, the human tanner was now Damien the Arakorca. It’d all been too confusing for his litlle fuzzy brown head to handle. Sarkesh Moved out of the way of some drunk patrons and made his way to the bar.  He heard a voice that sounded just as squeaky as his and went to investigate. 

“Oh I only know a little bit! Uh it’s blue right now so I think it’s sad. Blue’s like a sad colour.”

All of Sana’s interest in the flumphs diminished the second she saw who was giving her an answer. She hadn’t seen another jerbeen since this all started. In fact, the only jerbeen she’d ever met was a tailor that she couldn’t remember the name of. A sense of relief washed over her as she looked into eyes that looked exactly like hers. She hopped to the ground with fervor, the flumphs dispersing when she got a bit too close to them. 

“May I ask - and excuse my wording here - what you were before?” The moment she finished speaking, Sana saw the flumphs in her peripheral vision disappear from sight. She turned her attention to where the six of them used to be, letting a small whine escape her lips. They had been pretty cute, and her time with them had been so fleeting. It was a pointless little surge, but now she’d get free drinks for the rest of the night. She supposed it was worth it.

Orphea had been having a terribly unexceptional day. She’d tried to write when she’d first awoken, but the words betrayed her and wouldn’t come. She thought an hour of walking in a cloak of invisibility and people-watching might lighten her spirits, or cause some kind of inspiration to slap her in the face, but in the few minutes that she’d been walking nothing of the sort had happened. It was hopeless. She’d never write again and she’d have to kiss her authorship goodbye and be bored for the rest of eternity.

It was nice to wander the city unknown to everybody, though. Amusement bubbled in her stomach when she knocked shoulders with someone and their gaze darted around for their invisible assailant to no avail. She wandered until she came upon a fountain with two dull looking men chatting—they sat too far apart for them to be intimate partners, she decided. The day was shaping up to be truly boring—

Orphea found herself sprawled on the cobblestone street, her elbow stinging from her fall. She’d collided with something as invisible as she was and the tip of her nose hurt from the impact. With an audible huff she scrambled to her feet, her fingers dancing over her instrument case she had hanging from her shoulder. It felt undamaged and she sighed in relief, unworried about being overheard. She was invisible, but she wasn’t exactly hiding.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled at the whisper and she stepped carefully closer to the sound. “I’m Orphea,” she whispered back, though not nearly as quietly. She let amusement seep into her voice and her lips to curl into a grin. This was exciting! The last thing she’d expected to run into was another invisible person, and here of all the dull places… She waved her arm out in front of her until her fingertips brushed against the thick fabric of a coat or cloak. She latched on to it and tugged lightly, giving the other person a guide to where she was. “Who’re you?” She hissed, her voice nearly getting lost in the spray of the fountain. “Why are you invisible, a bad hair day?” Orphea feigned an astonished gasp. “Are you a spy?”

When something tugged on her jacket, it took everything in her not to attempt another swing. She jerked her arm back defensively, settling only slightly when she heard a soft voice responding to her. Clearly they weren’t trying to attack, but with her good ear facing the fountain it was difficult to hear the exact words being said. “One second,” she whispered. She was almost glad she was invisible for this exchange. No one could see the confusion painting her features, and her invisible acquaintance would never have to know that she tried to harm them. 

Sana followed the hand on her cloak all the way up an arm, eventually settling on what could only be a shoulder. She lead them through the sparse crowd of Myrefall, to the street corner adjacent to the fountain. Her eyes were still glued to the men sitting there. She knew she might miss something important if she stayed away from them for long, but it wasn’t every day that an invisible person knocked into her while she was invisible. It was mysterious and exciting enough to distract her briefly.

“I couldn’t hear you over there,” she said, her voice only slightly louder than it was before. She dropped her hand from their shoulder, noting how small this person seemed. If things did go awry, she could easily take them. “Plus, those guys at the fountain can’t know I’m here. You better hope their hearing is as bad as mine. If you blow my cover, I will retaliate.”

Roksana had never been a very heavy sleeper, so a small tickle on the nose was all it took to toss her into half-consciousness. She scratched at it lazily, noticing only as she went to rub her eye that her face felt rather soft. Wait - soft? Her eyes snapped open in an instant, and a tail came into focus: long, tan, with black and white feathering out at the tip. She reached out to grab it, and watched as a small, spindly hand took hold of it. She felt it as though it was the fifth limb she’d always been missing, like she was simply holding her own arm, and the shock of the sensation caused her to jump. 

Shocked into silence, Sana slid Rovasha’s arm off of this tiny body that didn’t belong to her. She turned on her back and stared at the ceiling, breathing air into these new lungs. It took a moment, but she identified the feelings overcoming her as shock and disbelief...and fear. She hated being afraid, but she’d found that a healthy dosage of fear could bring out the best in her. She turned to her other side, saw Rovasha’s newly human face, and screamed bloody murder. This certainly wasn’t a healthy dosage of fear.

The past few days had been a nightmare. Roksana had just finished a job the night after the earthquake; she’d had her sights set on home the following morning. But then she woke up as a fucking mouse. How was she supposed to return to Zari like this? She spent the entire day looking for someone to contact Zari, to make sure she was safe and unaffected by all of this, and the following days were spent willing herself to turn human again. At this point, she wasn’t sure she would turn back. She hopped onto a bar stool, her jerbeen feet balancing gracefully on the edge of it. She’d head home soon, human or not. She just needed a drunken night out first.

It was nearly impossible to get anyone to take her seriously when she looked like this. Damn these fuzzy cheeks and these gigantic ears. Damn this tiny, squeaky voice of hers. No one heard her over the cacophony of conversation that flooded the bar, and she wasn’t sure the bartender saw her beady little eyes peaking up past the counter. Damn it all, she thought, I should leave tonight. Then again, if she’d taught Zari right, returning home with this unrecognizable face could be dangerous. Perhaps she should have mentioned the race-shift in her message.

The moment Sana had given up on flagging down the bartender, a dark blue energy crackled at her fingertips. It looked like the beginnings of any spell she cast, except she hadn’t been aware of casting anything. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again there were six small tentacled creatures floating around her. They seemed to shake as they looked at her, their blue tentacles veering away. The applause that followed couldn’t have helped. “Flumphs!” Someone a few seats away from her shouted, and a few others echoed them. People clinked their drinks and laughed as though the strange occurrence had happened to them. 

Sana took the opportunity to wave the bartender over. “Two shots of your strongest spirit,” she shouted, her voice still sickeningly soft and adorable. The bartender nodded, and Sana finally allowed herself to sit back in her stool and relax. She reached out to one of the flumphs, and it cowered away from her. “Anyone know anything about flumphs?”

Sana had a lot of talents - all of which she was quick to boast about, especially to those who looked particularly well-off - but listening was not one. Her left ear had never been the same after an explosion on-the-job a year ago, and she lost interest exceptionally quickly. It was why she preferred a more straightforward approach, whether that be a clever manipulation of words or a clever manipulation of her blade. Unfortunately for her, today’s client had been very specific about her remaining unseen. She was to gather intel, and nothing more. She just wished the person who had this intel was a bit more interesting to watch.

Supposedly, the man Sana was ordered to watch was a supplier. He was to meet with someone to discuss a shipment of fey mushroom around noon, and all Sana had to do was be invisible and listen. Well, he had met up with someone around noon, but if they were meant to talk about a shipment of drugs, they hadn’t gotten the memo. They sat around this fountain and talked their wives, and then about mutton, and then about rash treatments. Maybe they were speaking in code - but for this long? Surely her invisibility would fade soon, and she’d be left with nothing to bring back to her client.

Frustrated and rather bored, Roksana slipped carefully from her seat on the edge of the fountain. She wasn’t sure what the men were saying now, but they didn’t seem to notice as she paced back and forth in front of them, weighing her options. Maybe it would just be easier to wait until one of them left and then disguise herself as them, returning to the other’s side and feigning poor memory. Or maybe it would - 

Roksana’s thought was interrupted by an invisible force, something too weak to bruise but still entirely startling. It felt like something connected with her jaw,  and she resisted the urge to curse as she stumbled backward. After a brief moment of frantically waving her arms she managed to steady herself. Luckily, the supplier and his friend seemed too enthralled in conversation to notice that there were now two unseen beings before them. Sana allowed her attention to stray to whatever was in front of her. She didn’t know who - or what - it was, but it was tangible and it had hurt her. That was enough reason, she thought, to send a fist in its direction. When her fist didn’t connect with anything, a dejected sigh fell past her lips. “Who’s there?” She whispered, the sheer volume of the supplier’s laugh enough to drown her out from anyone she didn’t want to hear.