5
A lot later than she might have hoped, Beth finally makes it home, entering her demiplane with the world's longest sigh, the scant light from the entryway extinguished within seconds as the door slides shut behind her. She waits a moment, looking around, but the false-stars fail to come on.
"Ugh, what?" she goes and starts fumbling around in the dark, walking over to the wall and tripping over the toilet instead, at the last moment managing to catch the rim of her bathtub to steady herself. A series of mumbled what-in-the-hecks ensue as she tries to take stock of where she's wound up. Unsteadily she starts following the bathtub to the wall of her bathroom, from where she finds the sink and finally the parted curtain leading her back out into the little kitchenette. Having regained a little confidence and keeping one hand on the wall, she takes a step outside right into an unfortunately-placed bucket of swamp water. Startled, she jumps a little and back into the rest of the main cave, bumping into her coffee table and winding up on all fours in the middle of the room.
"All right, screw this!" Beth mumbles and roots around in her bag a second, drawing out her etheric mirror which she turns on in a laborious process involving poking one of her long claws into a hard-to-reach recess on its darkwood surface, her bewildered face illuminated by the faint light of the start-up plane. She sets it to display the Dominion of Light-Like-Spears and quickly turns it away from her face, the beam of light reaching all the way to the wall about six feet away. She begins to scan the environment with it, trying to get a good look at what's going on. The beam comes to rest on your grinning face, standing in just the right spot.
"Hey," you say, and Beth's expression is every bit that of a surprised eel, mouth half-open and eyes wide just before you lovingly tackle her, sending both of you onto the couch where you tussle for a second or two, and she lets you wind up on top before you settle into a slightly clammy but ultimately delightful hug, both of you laughing by the end of it.
"I missed you," Beth says when you both finally settle down.
"Same."
...
"Rough day?" you figure you should ask.
"Yeah," she says. There's another long silence. "Can you turn the lights back on?"
You rise up slightly and tap the wall in just the right spot, and she wiggles out from under you onto the floor as the soft starlight illuminates the apartment-plane. Beth gets her etheric mirror from the ground and checks it for a second before turning it off again and stuffing it into the pocket of her slick vantablack work robe which she hangs up by the doorway. The two of you hang out for the rest of the evening: Beth sorts out an okay-looking dinner, you tell her briefly about what's been going on back home since she's been gone, she nods back and smiles. After dinner she excuses herself to go take a bath, and in the meantime you reweave some supplies from your travel bag into a bedspread that you lay out on the couch, forming a miniature spatial anomaly of stygian darkness. You sit down in it and sink into shadow a little less than you'd prefer, but screw it, this'll do for now.
Beth comes back with her hair in a lot less of a state in a turquoise bathrobe, pausing at the bathroom door to wipe bogwater off her feet before coming over to her bed. She asks if you need anything else and you shrug, can't really think of anything at the moment. She does the smile and nod again, and you look away as she takes off the bathrobe and puts on a ragged nightshirt you recall from back home, slipping into bed and falling asleep with the faintest of smiles on her face maybe half a minute after wishing you goodnight.
It's a bit early for you to fall asleep, so you manage to get about an hour or two in of lounging about on the couch, idly surfing planes in your mirror, until finally you too lose consciousness, shrouded in darkness with the mirror sliding off your face as you lose grip on it.
* * *
You awaken way too early when the starlights come on again, looking bleary-eyed all around you. Beth's up early, about halfway through her morning routine. Your eyes drift open and shut, bits of the morning slipping by every time they do. Beth's midway through packing a lunch of damned herring swimming around in a small jar of pickling solution, the bubbling soft tormented shrieks of which stir you enough to begin properly thinking. You check your mirror in a daze - the Gyroscope of Time confirms your impression that you're closer to witching hour than you are to high noon.
A) Sleep in, you've got nowhere to be just yet.
B) No! You have so much you want to do today!
C) Engage Beth in conversation, but sleep in afterward.
Queh, Goddess of the DarkPower:
1Goodwill:
5Sanity: 4
Time: 6
Power reflects your reservoir of godly power, which is what you use for creation as well as what you need to purchase goods and services.
Goodwill reflects your standing with your roommate, which you've luckily got a pretty good start on.
Sanity is your state of mind in the face of the horrors of modern divine existence.
Time is how long you've got until rent is due, and will decrease inexorably.
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Topic: [SG] The Gods Are All Right: Queh, Goddess of the Dark (Read 10612 times)