No Title Necessary

That was the difference between them: while Ingram was still worked up in a lather of neurotic stirrings, Nisa was sailing through her work with a lighthearted ease that in no way hindered her dexterity. But the witch did not consider it a divisive contrast that ran afoul of their friendship, rather more of a keystone that hoisted up and bridged the long-running span of their relationship.

She felt Nisa's freedom of mind breeze over her as the merchant renewed the conversation, leading with the subject of roads.

In the high-ceilinged caverns of a castle that had known no sound save the mechanical daily grind of the witch's domestic bustle, the stone walls rang with the energy of Nisa's voice, like a fresh draft of air and light disturbing the decrepit stillness. It couldn't have been over half a year since the merchant had last paid her the courtesy of lodging in her castle. So how could she have become so alien to simple conversation during the intervening months? Even the shape of the words in her mouth felt off, as if spoiled from disuse.

Still, the subzero temperatures seemed to have the same ability to preserve her pride as they did the goods in her pantry. In this way, she was afforded a mask of arrogance to hide her social inadequacy, and only at the expense of looking like a fault-finding lunatic near half the time. She hinged her head in a meager nod, succumbing to Nisa's subtle sales pitch. "Indeed. I would. I lost my entire soapbox cleaning those two filth-mongers..." The nagging voice of her social conscience barely won out. At last she paused to breathe and remind herself that she had saved a life and, soap or no, that was all that mattered. "I was afraid I would have to content myself with holding my hands to t...

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...ent when she is hyperventilating."

She set the pot down flat on the counter after she had planted the finishing touches on the pie, finding relief in the soft-grit sound of the hot metal seething against the wood; she wanted that sound to settle into her bones and soothe the jagged shock that had rent through her body.

Turning directly toward Nisa, she advanced on the woman. "Do you know what she told me two days ago?" Her movements were diffuse, circling discursively around the merchant, her voice drifting like a contrail of whispers, "She said that when you are here, it is like falling into a daydream." The mirror woman brushed a few stowaway shell remnants off the sleeve of Nisa's dress; somehow the gesture was both familiar and unsettling in its likeness to Ingram's mannerisms. "But I told her that no, she was wrong. It is more like staying awake all night."