11 Ashan 706
Tonight wasn’t like any other night at the Lair brothel known as Lust’s Fallacy.
Yes, there was gambling like usual. Of course, the liquor flowed readily for the thirsty patrons and even workers alike. Spirits were high from the arrival of Ashan after an unusually cold Cylus season, and though it’d been a few trials into the new season, many still celebrated surviving to see the light again. Others were visitors, some brand new and others on return, to the city and to the provocative establishment.
But all these things were like any other night.
No, what made tonight special… grand… better than it had ever been before…
…was that Omesintihlih stepped onto the raised platform of a stage near the grand piano. It wasn’t her first time on the stage, of course, but it was the first time where she had the express allowance of Miss Madam Geneva Curie to do so. All the previous times she’d snuck on, in her younger arcs, she'd caused a fuss about it. But now Omesintihlih was most definitely a woman, no longer a girl, at the old age of 20 arcs.
She even got to be in the Yludih mask she'd grown up with. The mask that most of the Lair veterans who lived in Quacia through-out the arc knew her as.
Dark brunette of hair, caramel toned skin, and vivid green eyes, she wore a cream-white dress of frills and laces and ruffles and a bodice tightly cinched at her narrow waist so that it pressed up her fine womanly assets. She had stockings on, of a similar ivory color, and bright red slippers that had satin ribbons tightly wound around her ankles up to her knee.
Satin ribbons were also braided into her long hair. Under the interior lantern lights, the dark strands looked silken and curled and perfectly manicured for the occasion. Omesintihlih – better known as Carmen in the establishment – had spent the entire last ten trials preparing her look for the performance.
It was the makeup that put it all together. Powder white of face, the dust faded partway down her neck to where her natural skintone began. She’d powdered her bare shoulders and her hands to try and blend the disparate colorations but the white on her face was necessary. Her cheeks had vibrant dual red circles dotted on them, like the blush of a porcelain doll. The tip of her nose also had a dot of blended red, to make it pink instead. Her lips had unusual patterned lines of red drawn between pale beige which looked as if she’d drawn an X with crimson candle wax over them.
Around her eyes, she’d gone wild with black charcoal. Smudged dusting traced around her eyelids, and thin sharp lines of vibrant black created lashes of lines. One pair of lines cut from her underlid toward her temples in a sharp upward angle, and the other pair struck down her dotted cheeks as if she’d cried tears of charcoal. On the highest point of her cheekbone, she had the smallest black beauty mark set like she’d seen some Quacian noble women wearing when she’d snuck to the Gleam to search for such ideas.
So, when Omesintihlih graced the brothel’s stage with her presence, she took a moment simply to stand there. Not awkwardly… least not for her. She crossed her arms in front of her, hands pointed down, and slowly glanced around the room as people went about their little games and crude flirtations in a place where earning the affection of a lover was as simple as having enough nel in their pocket.
In fact, Omesintihlih held so incredibly still that those people who had looked at her, expectant of a show, moved back to whatever they’d been doing before. She was, perhaps, simply meant to stand there as a perfect doll.
The Quacians in the establishment understood that it was Carmen. She would be quiet and unassuming, though vaguely unsettling… until she wasn’t. To attempt prediction on what would snap Crazy Carma into action… that was a perfect way to go mad.
An older bearded man shambled up. He walked around her. Omesintihlih’s green eyes followed him but she remained motionless in her pose.
He settled at the piano, hacked a few coughs into the crook of his elbow, then settled over the pearly keys. Without much other prelude, he started to play quick, staccato notes.
dancing music
Omesintihlih immediately went into motion upon the first notes being played. She went up onto her toes with the slippers, to points that were wooden blocks set inside the satin cloth. Her arms outstretched, and she carefully lifted a leg, then in a controlled fashion she swung it around.
Then Omesintihlih started to dance. She tapped her wooden-block toes against the stage, smiled brightly, and brought her arms around in different fluid transitions between forms. Some of it was what she spied dancers in the more reputable companies doing, whenever she got away with spying, and other moves that were her own.
Through it all, it was more than clear that she lacked formal training but she made up for it in enthusiasm. If an actual dancer from the wealthy class had been there, they might’ve gotten offended by what would have been perceived as a mockery of their art…
…but in the Lair brothel, Omesintihlih was able to dance her heart out because what mattered more was that every time her dress flared, or flipped up, or she bent around so far that the ruffled skirt slid up her legs and to her hips, it revealed she was wearing a ruby red pair of undergarments adorned with ribbons and satin bows.
She continued to lightly prance about, limbs stretched long and the smile on her face fading occasionally as she focused on certain moves. She was, after all, dancing the story of Daia’s Curse.
As the notes sped up toward the end, she spun around and around so that the skirt billowed upward. Her hair fanned out behind her. Omesintihlih raised her gaze to the ceiling and she giggled, the noise barely audible over the music and crowd that continued to go about their night. Some watched more closely while other patrons didn’t seem to care in the slightest what Carmen was up to.
Her dance finished. Omesintihlih smiled. She listened to applause, regardless if it existed or not, and she looked over to her accompaniment.
The bearded musician, an old Lair dweller known as Duilio, ran his fingers over the keys then started to play a slower song.
Singing
This time, the costumed woman gathered her skirt in her hands. She pivoted her performance and sang now, in heavily Quacian-accented common. As she sang through the words, she gradually lifted her skirt. Once the ruffled hem reached her hips, she threw the skirt back down and repeated the slow lift to reveal her stockings and undergarments. Omesintihlih left the stage, and went to engage those patrons who weren’t paying attention to her.
As the song went on, she repeated it in Vahanic with even more flair because she understood the words better, and then once more in common while she toured the lobby room. Geneva had told her that she could only perform if she made it for visitors as well as locals. The common was incredibly difficult to her but she'd been learning the song for a long time specifically so she would know one in the common language.
She smiled and giggled and flipped her skirt at certain people who gave interested looks, but mostly tried to encourage and gesture for patrons to go with one of the Lust's Fallacy women who waited at the wings. If she could get the patrons to purchase more, earn some coin, she hoped that Geneva might allow her to perform again, and soon.
Omesintihlih didn’t want to stop performing either and while she sang, she forgot that eventually it would end. Eventually, Duilio would tire of playing and go back to his drinking instead. But she loved being the only one singing and dancing and performing for such a wonderful crowd, and in a warm and guarded venue rather than on the cold dark street!
♢ ♢ ♢
