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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Poised to learn how to Conga dance with a drink in hand, Natalyah and Almeiria find themselves ambushed instead by a woman from Natalyah's past, who bites off more than she can chew. Personal plot RP. 2200~ words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Natalyah is still basking in the potential for a combination of the ridiculous and a challenge of a dare, her cheeks prettily flushed, and eyes bright. She's mid-motion, turning to Almeiria to say something, her mouth already parted around the words when she's halted by someone else speaking first.
"Natalyah Kensington-Whit?" A tinkling bell laugh, one that Almeiria in particular might note as being so carefully sweet that it hides the razor sharp edge of the bell for the unwary. "It can't be you."
The voice belongs to a dainty brunette woman roughly around Natalyah's age, flanked by two others who seem at least ten years younger. Everything about her has an element of glossy, from the high sheen of her hair to the shine of her lips, and the shimmer of the expensive satin dress that was made just for her. She blinks wide fawn brown eyes in an innocence too perfect to be real.
Natalyah's lips curl in a snarl, and she crosses her arms over her chest as she floats in place to look at the newcomers. "Primrose Nero. Would that I could say the same, but it looks like it, in fact, can be you."
The flash of anger and cold cruelty in Primrose's eyes, hidden quickly and followed by a sweet sounding titter, speaks volumes. "My, my. I see some things really haven't changed, but perhaps I might have expected that." She deliberately looks over Natalyah's dress. "You look so charming in your dress tonight. Isn't it charming, ladies? Vintage looks from over a decade ago are such a bold choice to an event of the season, so you, Natalyah."
The ladies make vague assenting sounds.
“I agree completely,” Almeiria says, her lips curved in her usual oversweet smile. “Intelligent design is so rare these days.”
The social predator is alerted to Almeiria's presence by sound. She puts a delicate hand to her rounded chin. "Is that what it's supposed to be, Miss…Oh, I'm so sorry, I don't know who you are," Primrose says with false simpering. "My papa is so insistent that I only associate with the best of people, and I'm so unused to not knowing everyone in the room. Are you one of those commoner mercenaries?"
"You don't get to talk to her like that," Natalyah says a low growl that startles the Attending Ladies into a flinch, and Natalyah flinches in turn.
Primrose's eyes only brighten at the scent of metaphorical social blood. Natalyah has a weakness, it seems.
Natalyah uncrosses her arms, her hands clenched now at her side, every line of her body defensive in an extreme. "Her name is Almeiria Fey, and she's one of the heroes in this room, you pathetic social slug. While you use 'papa's' money to pay people to wipe your ass, she was out there wiping out an insane dragon aspect. Show some respect, or you will be shown why."
Oh, yeah, that's definitely a threat.
Almeiria seems entirely unphased by any of this. "Only the best of people, is it?" she says, taking the smallest step closer to the ladies. "Then it's certainly no wonder, dear. You see, I am the worst of people. The kind you only see in your darkest nightmares. One wonders what sort of fate it was that brought you into my path. Do you believe in fate, darling?"
Shadows swirl like black smoke off the edges of her dress as she speaks, but Almeiria's smile is unchanging. She does spare a glance at Natalyah, a single raised eyebrow.
Natalyah does not help de-escalate in any way, or try to hold Almeiria back. Instead, her expression is all openly you see? In fact, she's quite literally rising up in the air in the eerie levitation. It makes for a certain look standing next to Almeiria's simmering shadows.
Primrose Nero was raised to be a victorious, vicious fish in a very small, controlled pond. It's obvious in the way she pales and steps back that nothing happening is part of the game she thought she was playing, and she is rapidly realizing she has stepped into another one altogether.
Her attendants didn't sign up for this, and it's clear they are one tiny step away from fleeing. They might have to deal with the consequences of Primrose later, but of the three women engaged in the social battle, Primrose is not the scariest one there.
"You — you can't do anything to me," Primrose says, holding her ground, a shrill defiance screeching the gloss of voice. "We're in a ballroom."
Natalyah laughs bitterly, the sound carrying a little over the music and the excitement of the Conga Line. "What an idiotic, naive thing to say. What are you going to do next, hide under a blanket and say now no — " a strange brief hitch of a swapped word choice, "things in the dark can get to you?"
Almeiria brings a hand up to her chest in a bout of feigned compassion, the shadows dispersing. "Oh, dear, I didn't scare you, did I?" she asks. "It was a joke, darling. I was so certain that's what we were doing. After all, how could one look at Natalyah's dress and say it's anything but stunning? Unless… you really don't think so?"
The gleam in her dark eyes is a dangerous one.
Instinctively, Primrose takes another step back.
Natalyah make an amused hmmph of triumph, as she tilts her head in a distinctly canine way, a strange emphasis of the reminder that the rumor mill holds that the former heir to the Elwynn Kensington-Whits is now one of those worgens.
Primrose knows when she's already lost. Her eyes skitter from side to side at her attendants, now here to add social humiliation onto personal humiliation. She tries to pull herself back up, tittering weakly, a smile pasted on so forcefully it's amazing it doesn't draw blood. "Oh, of course I do," she simpers through clenched teeth. "Just stunning."
One of the attendants looks at Primrose like someone just broke a spell revealing an enormous giant was nothing more than a little kid playing with smoke and mirrors. Whatever else happens, one follower has found a reason to stop following.
Primrose is not gracious in defeat. "I'll let you two get back to whatever it was you were doing all by yourselves here," she grates out in acrid sweetness, a parting shot fired from under the flag of surrender. "So splendid to see you again, Natalyah, and to make your acquaintance, Miss Fey." She can't meet Almeiria's eyes, and she doesn't hide the uneasy fear well enough under the social cuts.
"I am simply charmed to have met you, Primrose, dear," Almeiria says. "Perhaps you will even remember me at the next big event. Did you know, I am quite close with Count Amerith? If I see you, I'll be certain to say hello."
Unfortunately, that is music to a social climber's ears. Primrose slides into an obsequious stance, turning her shoulder just enough to try to cut Natalyah out of the conversation, as she focuses on Almeiria anew.
"Oh, I hadn't realized you were so well acquainted with important people," Primrose says with an ingratiating smile. "Now I feel just terrible making assumptions based on the current company you've been keeping. Surely Natalyah here hasn't misled you in her own status, or should I say lack thereof? It's always such a shame when people are dishonest about their connections."
Natalyah is unusually silent, the hot flush of her cheeks pricking out her freckles in sharper relief, as she lowers her head, biting her tongue possibly literally as much as figuratively.
"Dishonest? Perish the thought," Almeiria says, waving a hand dismissively. "Don't you know that Natalyah here is a friend of the Fallons, our gracious hosts? In fact, Count Amerith and I were just discussing earlier how we didn't see her parents in the ballroom. If I were you, I'd keep better track of such things, or maybe I won't see you at the next big event."
Very real, deep horror passes through Primrose, even more than before. She loses all her social posturing, mouth agape as she looks from Almeiria to Natalyah, jolted out of her attempts to separate the two. "You…you wouldn't," she insists. "You couldn't do that to me."
Natalyah's eyes narrow. "Was that a dare, Primmy?"
Primrose has known Natalyah long enough (that is to say, their acquaintance is longer than ten minutes) to realize what mistake she has made. "No, no, of course it isn't. It's…it's…." She swallows hard. "I — I really should be going," she says without an ounce of social grace, as she picks up her dress and doesn't manage to fully avoid running, only one of her followers trailing her back to her papa, as the other shakes her head and heads to the strawberries table.
Natalyah watches as Primrose flees, a dark storm cloud over the worgen woman's face.
The Conga line dance comes to a triumphant end with general cheers all around of the enthusiastic dancers.
"Hmm… Primrose Nero, you said she was?" Almeiria asks thoughtfully. "Perhaps I will find a use for her in the future. You never know what cards may come in handy until you sit down to play them. Now… where did your Lathrik run off to?"
"Ugh. She was horrible ten years ago, and she's only grown worse. Her whole family is full of those climbers that are never happy with what they get, they always want more, and they think the best way to make themselves rise up is by shoving other people under," Natalyah says, practically spitting verbal nails, as she rises up another solid foot in the air. Pretty soon she's going to be the tallest person in the room even with the draenei and kaldorei in the midst.
The question of Lathrik pierces through enough of the storm noise that Natalyah begins earnestly looking for him in the crowd, and then frowns when she spots him by the drinks speaking to a pretty maid. Insecurity rears its ugly head, as hurt floods her face. "Apparently he's too busy flirting to do anything like running in any direction," she says sharply, and up she goes another half foot.
Almeiria seems to be staring at nothing in particular, but she makes a soft sound of acknowledgement. It's possible her vision has jumped somewhere else, though there is no outward indication of it. "Does he do that often?" she asks. "Flirt with others?"
Natalyah puts an arm around herself, scowling. "Well, he used to." She could have stopped there, and implied many things, but she doesn't. "Before me. He's not supposed to now, and he says he doesn't. Lathrik's never lied to me," she says, honest to a fault, even when it means revealing her own insecurities by it. She waves her other hand out at him. "But you see what he looks like, and what he's like. He could have just about any woman, and more than a few men, in the room if he wanted."
The angry storm peters out, leaving instead a melancholy that drags her down not only in energy but in actual levitation as she loses nearly a foot. "Especially now," she says morosely.
"Now that he isn't cursed?" Almeiria infers. "Well, he's talking to Melialise, one of Count Amerith's maids. I suppose they could be flirting, but she knows who he is, so I doubt it. More likely, he's hoarding all the drinks to himself, and I for one, intend to retrieve some."
And so she does, sweeping over to the drinks table where Lathrik is stuck in conversation with the brunette maid.
"Just give me a rough estimate," Melialise is begging. "Hours? Days? Did we meet?"
"I'm tellin' ye, I don't know what you're talkin' about," Lathrik says, draining his glass and reaching for another.
Natalyah might have considered jumping to Lathrik's eyes, perhaps to read the lips of the maid, but if she did think about it, she ultimately decided against doing it. All she sees is the body language, and she infers her own interpretation of it.
The worgen doesn't follow Almeiria, choosing instead to drift like a sad rapidly-losing helium balloon for the ballroom exit.
Almeiria stops by the table for a glass of kir, leaning towards Lathrik casually. "Lathrik, dear, you're losing your date," she murmurs.
Lathrik frowns at her. "What are —" And then he realizes, and his gaze flies out over the ballroom. "'Talyah?" he calls, throwing back the drink, setting the empty glass down, and moving briskly from the table. He is not running, but it's a near thing.
"Did I distract him too much?" Melialise asks, covering her smile.
Almeiria takes a slow sip, watching him locate and hurry after Natalyah. "That abominable line formation is over," she says. "I'd say it was just enough." Her lips curl into a triumphant smile, and she slips away to enjoy the rest of the ball.