MABEL
All this commotion, all this despair, all this anguish surrounding, pervading the halls, because of a fallen Ascended Queen. A woman she would have liked to have met, to have spoken more than a single word to, to pick her brain, to wonder aloud, to marvel at capabilities Mabel herself might have some day. But foolish Outlanders and scandalous doors had pre-empted the entire fiasco, and there they all were, without a sovereign, without anything at all but the weight of expectation and terror.
But Mabel was a natural, had lived through fifteen other LongNights, and had no intention of opening windows or doors, of listening to the monsters scratch their claws down the walls. She wasn’t stupid, wasn’t inept, wasn’t about to think she could fool any demon. But god, the temptation to scrawl her way and pave the floor with her fiendish intentions, to mark them just as the infidels outside had done, was a glorious foundation and ambition.
Instead of doing any of the latter, she wandered along the familiar, Temple halls, eyes ghosting over shrines, over empty vessels, before walking near a stranger. They were almost all strangers to her anyway, in one shape, form, or another; and she tilted her head at the man, at the looks, at the slumping posture. Straight and tall, she stood before him, an indignant arch to her brow. “First LongNight?”
But Mabel was a natural, had lived through fifteen other LongNights, and had no intention of opening windows or doors, of listening to the monsters scratch their claws down the walls. She wasn’t stupid, wasn’t inept, wasn’t about to think she could fool any demon. But god, the temptation to scrawl her way and pave the floor with her fiendish intentions, to mark them just as the infidels outside had done, was a glorious foundation and ambition.
Instead of doing any of the latter, she wandered along the familiar, Temple halls, eyes ghosting over shrines, over empty vessels, before walking near a stranger. They were almost all strangers to her anyway, in one shape, form, or another; and she tilted her head at the man, at the looks, at the slumping posture. Straight and tall, she stood before him, an indignant arch to her brow. “First LongNight?”
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
