Alcohol & Economics - Something Dangerous - Part 21

Deceit passed Merci on her way up the stairs, and she was almost concerned at the look of sheer mischief on her sister’s face. Brushing it off as her imagination, Deceit pushed the library door open and slipped in without a word. The stranger from the night before, however, noticed right away, though he pretended not to. Deceit saw right through his act as easily as she spotted the newest addition to her library: a small potted plant with large, coiled rush like leaves.

“You kept me waiting.” The plant’s leaves uncurled.

“You gave me such short notice.” She countered, leaning up against her desk, looking over the various notes left from Court related visitors of the day. The stranger took a few moments to take in her appearance: bright blue hair and green-blue eyes, tanned skin hidden underneath a dress shirt and jeans; a lace up corset to complete the ensemble, simple and yet not so much. What caught his interest the most, however, was the many silver colored Threads of Fate that seemed to web around her very being, laying a near invisible net.

‘It shouldn’t be possible…’ This was the cause of the shifting, Osiris realized. All this time, he’d been focused on looking for something that was causing it. Never once had it occurred to him that it would be a person, let alone a girl. Deceit, however, didn’t notice the wave of surprise that flitted across her stranger’s face; she was too preoccupied by the lack of noise coming from where he stood. There were no thoughts at all, from what she could tell. That was certainly out of the ordinary for her.

Silence between the two only thickened, but she paid it no mind. Busting open the water bottle, she took a long sip to relieve the dryness in her throat.

“…Aren’t you curious or something?” Osiris finally asked, after the silence became too much for him to handle.

“I’d just like to know who in hell you are and why you keep bothering me.” If he could answer those two questions, she could finally relax. Stalkers were one thing, but this guy was a completely different level of creep.

“You don’t already know? I left you a calling card.” Right then, her warning bells should have been going off. Instead, she remembered the drawstring bag.

Taking a seat at her desk, she fished it out of the drawer it had gotten shoved in that morning and promptly dumped it all over her desk. Only a large ostrich feather with a gold tip fell out. Deceit, one of the top students in her Godly Studies course, instantly figured out who her stranger was.

Osiris, the god of the afterlife, was sprawled out in one of her library chairs.

‘Well, fuck. So much for the Gods not existing theory.’ And that was right around the time Merci’s new plant smashed the god of death in the face and promptly informed him to shush for laughing.