She had dressed for the light, as she always did here.
The green, the good silk of Callamar, bias-cut and sleeveless. A column of fabric that passed for black in Throneworld's dim lights that only confessed its true colour here, in the light. It sat square at the throat but cut low at the back, exposing graceful flesh that Hapan society revolved around. Cassilde was acutely aware she was developing a relationship with this dress: wearing it meant coming here, and coming here meant a fragile slice of peace in solitude, but she chose to indulge because the woman had so little of her own to indulge in now.
Everywhere else was spartan. No jewellery, no accoutrements; her hair was up, pinned plainly because there was no one she needed to pin it for here. She did opt to keep her boots on this time, because being caught barefoot by the Queen of Eshan would live long in the memory.
The nnar root was her current flora of consideration.
Plain and hideous, like roots tended to be. Overshadowed by striking blooms in a kaleidoscope of different colours, with faces that crept towards the light, and bold, beautiful petals of every shape and shade.
She could not relate to the nnar root.
Instead, she appreciated them for their other properties. Curative, yes, of course, when prepared properly by the Witches of Dathomir. However, if prepared incorrectly, they were poisonous. More than just poisonous, they offered plausible deniability. An assassination framed as an accident. Be contrite enough, and it was believable that it was carelessness instead of motive.
One hand was placed on the edge of the raised bed for balance as Cassilde leaned from the hips, the court-trained posture of a straight back evident. Her expression was pensive without creasing, as if looking at Dathomiri roots were creating a great philosophical debate within her.
Then the smell.
Harsh.
Irritating.
Wrong.
It was not a smell that belonged here, and for the briefest of moments, her posture stiffened, her shoulder blades pulling taut for a moment. Cassilde's head tilted upwards, searching for the source and finding nothing but the disturbed peace of the preservation gardens. Her face was already adjusting, finding something placid and still with more effort than it once required as she straightened her back, smoothed down her silk and prepared for...
...for what?
A voice.
Above her?
Behind the freshly equipped mask, the Hapan looked up, not expecting to know who she would find speaking to her in a tree and never in a thousand realities imagining a crimson Twi'lek smoking a cigarette in a wroshyr tree. Yes, there were all sorts here, weren't there. Tyrannical ham-fisted brutes, quasi-depressed cyborgs, self-cannibalising illiterate vagrants and actual bloody royalty.
Why not a cat-calling Twi'lek? Of course, it all made
perfect sense.
There was a great many things Cassilde wished to say, most of them backhanded in nature, or quietly scathing at a minimum. The urge came more often the longer she spent here, but she had not trained her face just to betray it with her tongue.
"Is there something you require?" She asked, giving nothing but polite courtesy, and not even drawing a single ounce of energy towards being a 'pretty little thing'. She was Hapan; being
pretty was standard and utterly boring. Being a
little thing was less so.
Grace
Mercy
would be somewhere, she never let her pets travel too far without her, and Grace allowed the leash because it came with certain benefits that suited her nicely.
