It was already late in the evening but the merchant seemed unfazed by the passing of time. He sat, poised and elegant, watching the world around him. He didn’t seem bored, even as he leaned forward and laced his fingers atop the table; below it, he kept his toe tapping to some silent tune in his head. He was tall, by human standards, though while sitting down he didn’t seem particularly threatening. If you didn’t look at his face.
He had graceful features--sharp and refined. His chin and nose tapered to a point, giving him an air of sophistication, but that, combined with his slitted eyes and pointed teeth, there was something undeniably predatory about him. He watched with a hungry gaze and a mischievous, nearly sinister smile. His ears were pointed and were prominent despite being tucked behind his vibrant, multi-colored hair. The most intrusive feature that indicated there was something not human about him were the curling horns protruding from his temples and the oil-slick black scales that brushed his cheeks and forehead. He was well dressed, in a fashion obviously otherworldly, and seemed to enjoy dressing himself up in glistening gemstones.
His table was somehow both simple and overwhelming; it was draped in a dark purple tablecloth, with extravagant embroidery in different designs. Scattered neatly atop the table was an array of items that seemed to carry some magical weight to them.
He did not seem intimidated in the slightest and, upon noticing that the barrier surrounding him rippled when his visitor entered, he smiled.
He did not rise to meet them nor adjust his position in the slightest. He followed them with his fierce eyes and greeted, in a silky voice, “Welcome.”
Another year, another Star Festival—and yet, despite knowing that it would come, Reiki felt as if the holiday had snuck up on him.
Then again, he felt the same way about Pride Month, this year. Even neck deep in bookings, even going through the motions of his usual sparkling banter as a host and over-the-top dedication as a performer, Reiki……hadn’t felt as connected to Pride Month as he normally did. Maybe it had something to do with how he’d agreed to fewer bookings than last year, by design and orders from both his drag-moms and his Mom-mom……but “fewer than last year” did not really mean very much.
Especially not when Reiki suspected that he’d come up feeling empty, no matter how many bookings he had. He’d never lose himself in the wild abandon of a show, not if being present in the moment meant needing to acknowledge the ache in his chest, somewhere deeply rooted, around his heart but even deeper than that.
Around his starseed.
Around his starseed, which was broken, or at least it had something so incredibly wrong with it that a robot who had believed he’d needed to steal a starseed in order to become a real boy had given it back without a fuss……because it was defective. Because it didn’t burst with warmth, and light, and color, the way that a starseed should have done. Because of the way that Mirrorspace Chaos worked on a starseed. Because of the coating that it had put on Reiki’s starseed like a straitjacket.
As he made his way out into town from tonight’s show, the warm weather took Reiki by surprise. It shouldn’t have, and in a distant way, he realized that. But in the same way that he hadn’t emotionally gotten his head around it being Pride Month—in the same way that he hadn’t entirely processed that it was time for the City’s StarFest once more—summer had yet to fully settle into Reiki’s mind as A Thing That Was Happening. Everything came to him as filtered through layers of cotton and sticky marshmallow innards. Other auras passed by without registering fully, and Reiki barely noticed where he was going—not until he spotted a familiar sign.
Well. The words on it seemed different from last year, he guessed, but nevertheless, the dragon-man behind the table seemed the same—and definitely worthy of a smile. Reiki couldn’t manage a very large or very bright one right now, but still, he gave the merchant a smile. “Now, what’s a nice guy like you doing in a town like this,” he deadpanned, absent any actual invective.
The Space Cauldron
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2023 11:01 pm
“Oh, that was almost flattering. I could ask the same of you, of course.”
Almadel liked Dark Mirror Senshi, partly because of their unique charm and access to the relatively unknown Mirrorspace, with too many corners to explore and too much mystery to unravel. He liked the ones that liked him most of all.
“Was your heart in it? You don’t have to push yourself on my account. My Dark Mirror Senshi of Hunger, yes? Do you want a snack? I’ve got…” He leaned back and picked through a few boxes before he pulled out a bag of small, pale flowers. They looked stiff, like they’d been frozen. “...Well, you might like this. Come, have one. Candied roses, I made them myself. You’re supposed to do them petal by petal, but I’m a busy man and don’t have time for that. But they’re just as good.”
He opened the bag to allow Murikabushi to pick his own. The flowers were pretty, in shades of pink and red and white, and they had a pleasant fragrance to them.
“You must tell me how you’ve been, what’s kept you busy since I saw you last?”
……Oh, there were snacks being offered? The bag of candied roses caught Reiki by surprise, and for a moment, he blinked at them as if he didn’t know what to do. Which, he supposed, wasn’t entirely inaccurate as a description of his whole……current state.
“Thank you,” he said, keeping up his small smile, because it was easy enough to do that. Not quite as easy to decide what he really wanted in the face of an offer that he hadn’t planned on. But easy enough to just……be nice. “Even if you didn’t go petal-by-petal, they still look lovely, and they must have taken you a good deal of work?”
On one hand, it probably would’ve been rude not to take one, especially when Almadel had apparently put so much work into making them himself. Reiki wasn’t kidding with that stray comment: even if he didn’t have the time for going petal by petal, making them at all must have been a pretty significant investment of time and effort on Almadel’s part. Considering how Reiki was probably going to end up being incredibly rude to at least one of the other beautiful boys in his life—considering how he felt more capable of owning the major, life-altering choice he was about to make to the face of the Negaverse General-Sovereign than sufficiently explaining himself to the fellow Dark Mirror Senshi who’d brought him into the Court—it felt like rejecting a kind offer from Almadel would’ve ******** up all of Reiki’s Boy Karma for the next foreseeable “ever.”
On the other hand, if Reiki were entirely honest, he really didn’t want to deal with unexpected snacks right now, and a part of his brain that he often wished would just go away hissed like a particularly upset cat about the fact that Reiki was even remotely considering taking one. Thrashed around, having an intangible tantrum about no, bad, stop this, and snacks aren’t okay, what’s wrong with you that, and this is why you have so many problems in your life, you know, because you lack sufficient willpower and dedication to anything except for making everybody miserable.…
Which ultimately undermined that nasty little head-voice’s endgame goal of getting Reiki to reject the unexpected snack, about which he didn’t really have enough of the information that said nasty little head-voice wanted him to believe mattered more than life and death. Despite his initial hesitation, Reiki took one of the pink roses. Its color reminded him of the fluffy petticoats on his fuku, and Reiki appreciated its sweet smell, even if certain nasty head-voices that he wanted to ignore screamed at him that this was bad, this was wrong, he didn’t deserve to enjoy such a sweet scent like this.
“As for how I’ve been……? ‘Busy’ is a really good word for it, yeah.”
Much like how he’d felt during the conversation he and Levi had had some weeks past—the one where Levi had told Reiki, among other things, that it was actually possible to leave the Court, just like how Kerberos, Monoceros, Lilith, Amsvartnir, and so many others had left the Negaverse—Reiki……didn’t entirely know where to start. He traced his fingers along the edge of one of the candied rose’s petals for a moment, then decided to just give his mouth free run of the place and whatever happened, happened.
“I got to see two of the White Moon senshi in town power up into princesses—plus, I heard about a third one on top of that,” he said, and couldn’t help the genuine, unguarded smile that blossomed on his face. Even though one of the three recently minted Princesses in Destiny City still annoyed the ever-living s**t out of him on a personal level (for the not-actually-a-crime of having opinions Reiki disagreed with about someone he cared about)—and even though part of him still felt very “Wow, Cosmos will really let anybody be a princess, huh?” (based entirely on how Cybele had not been kind to someone Reiki cared about, even though he recognized that passing this judgment against her was neither fair nor kind of him, especially since the bad blood between her and Faustite was entirely mutual)—still……Reiki couldn’t help being happy about so many magical girl princesses running around town.
Sure, his own Court only had Remarque, as far as he knew, and he hadn’t heard anything about any Negaverse Princesses (only General-Sovereigns, and at that, only Faustite), but at least the White Moon had a lot of princesses and all of them lived up to Reiki’s personal fantasies of what a magical girl princess should have been.
“The princess I didn’t get to watch level up like that? She helped one of my friends get out of the Negaverse—which is why I even know she got that power-up.” Probably better to avoid bringing up Lysithea’s name, Reiki thought. Stirling didn’t much seem to mind running around and saying her Princess’s name out loud whenever she felt like it, but Reiki didn’t know if Lysithea wanted her princess status advertised to beautiful dragon-men from outer space. “The other two powered up in huge, very public battles.… One of them got restorative magic out of it, and the other……hrm.”
Reiki pursed his lips. “Well. Her magic seems more offensive, and it attacks Chaos pretty indiscriminately. Which isn’t, like, her fault or anything? It’s not like she asked to have the sphere and magic that she does or got a real choice about it? Just, it didn’t feel very fair in the moment, since I was trying to help people, and these two other Dark Mirrors who were there? They hadn’t done anything to hurt anybody.… Not like they were helping anyone, either, but all they did was share some popcorn and gossip, then rush to clear out after a Negaverse General-Sovereign who I know summoned a bunch of youma, then told them to attack everyone but the Negaverse people and me, so……”
Reiki shrugged, plucking off one of the candied rose’s petals. “Pelting them with magical arrows felt kinda unfair to me. Maybe they weren’t really helping by most White Moon folks’ definition, but they were just minding their own business, y’know?”
Pausing his gossip, Reiki popped the petal into his mouth. He made an approving “mmm!” but the sweet taste didn’t entirely distract him from the warm, bright little chest butterflies he got while thinking about how ~*Faustite hadn’t wanted the youma to hurt him*~. Probably not the best thing to have on the brain while chatting up another guy.
“What about you?” Reiki asked earnestly, his expression soft. “I thought I saw you up at that whole……thing on Astraya, with those robots, but…? How have you been?”
The Space Cauldron
Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:20 am
“Princesses, is it? Oh, that’s fancy.” Pity that the Dark Mirror Senshi seemed happier about that than seeing Almadel, but he didn’t take it personally. He was pleased enough that Murikabushi accepted one of the roses, and helped himself to one of his own before tucking the rest away.
“All this fighting here, it’s too much trouble for me. Not a fan, if I’m being honest. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
He batted his eyes for good measure and brushed his hands together to make sure there weren’t any stray sugar crumbs remaining. He seemed like the rose might have dissolved on his tongue.
“That whole Astraya thing. Very interesting, don’t you think? You never know what you’re going to find out there these days. I’ve been good though, thank you.”
He gestured to the spread on his table. “I’ve got plenty to show from all of my adventures, of course. Do you see anything you like? You know I’m always looking to make a trade. I’ve got a few nice things that might suit you.”
He picked up a mirror, gilded with gold and decorated with ornate, crystal flowers. He flashed it so Murikabushi could see his reflection, but put it down quickly enough before moving to an ornate pen set, a necklace with gems that seemed to burn like fire, and a tea set sitting on the table next to him.
“You seem like a man of beauty and taste, of course. A mirror to admire yourself, a letter opener for all your romantic invitations, jewels to drape yourself in. Tea, for when you need the world to slow down so you can take a moment for yourself? Actually, I have a whole set for that one, I’d throw it all in. For you.”
