She watches with something of a detached interest in the proceedings between ghost and ruin. He stalks her like prey, and yet she does not run. Does not even understand what’s happening. Or maybe she knows exactly what’s happening, and simply doesn’t care. The wounds on her side suggest that pain is all the girl knows, that pain will be all the girl ever knows. Though she smells vaguely of the Gates now, and wonders if she’s found solstice there, some safe haven.
Yet here she is, playing cat and mouse with a monster. It’s pretty clear who’s the mouse.
He turns to her then, his tone mocking, but Straia seems to either notice or simply not care. It’s the latter, because it’s always the latter with her, but she simply cocks a back hoof, swishes her tail, and grins slightly. ”No,” she says, with voice smoky as it always is, composed and yet wild like the rest of her. “I’ve only seen monsters.”
She is not necessarily a monster herself. She’s no saint, don’t get her wrong. But there’s no blood on her hooves, and she doesn’t crave it. She’d kill, should the situation ever call for it, but she doesn’t seek out blood in any sort of lust or need. In this regard, she is not her father’s daughter. In most others, she is, and it’s likely these similarities that made it endlessly impossible for them to get along.
That said, she collects monsters. One as her pet (to the extent he could ever be anyone’s pet). The rest as loyal members of the Chamber. A few of them weren’t monsters, and they seemed to gravitate toward the peace caste. Probably good. The Chamber needed someone capable of sweet talking without drooling at the smell of flesh or rabbits. But they needed monsters too, if the kingdom were to become truly feared again.
And they would. She swears to whatever gods there are that they would.
The stallion’s attention is already back on the girl, and she’s responding with disjointed sentences. She is tempted to sigh audibly, because this is beginning to waste her time. She knows what kind of stallion she’s trying to recruit. There’s little else she can garner from this interaction. But she knows better, and refrains. But she grins a little wider, adding, “Shall I come back when you are done playing with your food?” What she wants to say, but cannot with the girl from the Gates here, is that in her home he could play with his food all he wanted. At least food from the Gates. But she doesn’t need to let that bit of information out in such a public area.
straia
the raven queen of the chamber
Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission