#erisposting

Eris leaves the chatter of the joke being made at her expense behind, marching up the stairs as quickly as her body will allow. She looks around, finding a single room at the end of the hall to call her own. Slamming the door behind her, Eris dumps her pack onto the floor, slumping against the wood behind her. The room is fine enough, she supposes- a bit small and sparsely decorated for her tastes, but it would have do. Just like the muffled mockery she could hear beneath her feet. Her fingernails dig into her palms as she tries to take a few deep breaths. It. Would. Have. To. Do.

The one thing that wouldn’t do, however, was the small smear of blood that Eris could see just below the last knuckle of her thumb. She blinked at it for a moment, reliving the past few hours on her brain. One attack, and she had nearly crumpled into the underbrush . One attack, and Eris had learned that there truly were more painful things in life than break ups or paper cuts.

One attack, two healing spells, and three hours later, and Eris had quickly come to an understanding of her place in this party.

She finally tore her gaze away from her hand and sprung to open her pack, scattering her belongings across the room. Having secured her pajamas, soap, and a towel, she burst forth from her room, rushing towards the bathroom on the other side of the hall. She was greeted to a small tub and sink- it would have to do. The water to the bath ran cold, because of fucking course it did, but it would have to do.

At least fire came easily to her nowadays. At least the tub filled itself at all. Small mercies.

As she waited for the water to rise, she set about the business of cleaning the insignificant speck of blood from her hand. She’d performed the spell correctly, it was literally the first spell she’d ever learned, and somehow, she’d still fucked it up. Some small, rational part of her knew it hardly mattered- literally no one would have noticed- but to hell with that shit. It was a mistake. Mistakes needed to be perfected.

On the topic of mistakes, Eris could now hear the muffled musings of her “trust” (as if calling them such would magically make the namesake come to fruition) gaining clarity as the group ascended the stairs. Turning to the bath, she warmed the water as best she could, removed her clothing, and stepped in. She’d done a decent enough job- the steam flowed through the room, but it wasn’t quite the scalding temperatures of her private bath at home.

Home. Gods, she’d been so desperate to leave that she hadn’t even fully considered what it would entail. Her heart suddenly tried to leap out of her throat at the thought. She missed the manor in Karth so deeply it threatened to drown her before the water could get a chance. She missed playing dragonchess with Xander. She missed her bed. She missed the soft, easy smiles of her friends as they’d sit in the parlor and just talk about whatever came to mind.

Everyone in Karth was a known variable. Easy to please, placate, or piss off, depending on what Eris wanted. This “trust”, this group of commoners, was so, so, soooooo- Eris couldn’t even put the feeling to words if she tried. She was checking all the boxes. Smile, a slight wave if the situation calls for it, up the tone of your voice when you introduce yourself. So why wasn’t it working? By now, any polite member of society would have followed the steps, their conversations turning into a dance; slipping into an easy rhythm of leading and following, of attack and defense. And yet Eris constantly found herself stepping on toes, trying to waltz as her partners attempted some sort of bizarre, fucked up salsa.

She could hear Julian and Tooth talking as a door shut nearby. Maybe she just hadn’t learned the steps to this dance. She couldn’t even get a simple prestidigitation right- had she truly believed that a conversation would go any better? Gods, how naive she was. Eris sunk deeper into the water at the thought.

And there she sat, wallowing in self-pity, until the bath started to chill her bones. She finally straightened her posture and reached for the soap, attempting to clean away the feeling of her skin being ripped open by impossibly sharp twigs. She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until she couldn’t bear to anymore- whether out of concern for her soap supplies or her skin, she couldn’t tell. She drained the tub, dried herself off, and quickly changed before turning to look into the mirror.

The reflection staring back at her was… genuinely pathetic. The curls past her shoulders straightened out into stringy, damp clumps. The dark circles of her eyes were beginning to show, and she could see a small patch of redness on her chin where acne was threatening to make itself known.

For fuck’s sake, she couldn’t at least have clear skin during this shit?

The anger within her from this stupid day trapped in this sad, small village with these annoying, ridiculous adventurers and their rude jokes rose up into her chest… and immediately dissipated as tears welled up in her eyes.

She’d literally almost *died*. The realization finally jabs her square in the chest. Another, a clean right hook, follows, threatening to send her to the ground as quickly as that stupid fucking tree.

No one even knocked on the bathroom door. The building was silent, save for some snoring in the next room over. She’d vanished and no one batted an eye.

A part of her wonders if the same thing is happening in Karth.

Eris somehow manages to give herself the dignity of not crying in the bathroom of all places. She reaches her bedroom, depositing her clothes and soap on the dresser before throwing herself onto the small bed in the corner. Immediately, she can tell she’s not going to be comfortable in her trance. And that tiny, insignificant, pathetic complaint is just the shit icing to top the shit cake. The tears finally break free as Eris buries her face into the pillows, pleading that if they won’t stop, then they’ll at least be silent.

She couldn’t tell when the tears had stopped and the morning had started. But before she knew it, she’d tranced out, and now the sun was rudely shining through the window.

It took every ounce of her strength to sit up in that bed. She stared at her palms in her lap for a very, very long time. It was only later, when she stood up, that she would realize she’d never even gotten under the covers. She felt, in a word, like shit.