The night had been a long and dreadful one, with little people to rob and many people to run from. She had been out since sundown and now the first rays of sunlight were already creeping through the otherwise shadowy alleys. All she wanted to do right now was curl up with a bottle of whatever and hope to be left alone for a while. At the beginning of the night, her hair had been carefully pinned up, but now loose strands of white were hanging over her shoulders and bouncing with every quick step that minimized her distance to the massive library she took the liberty to call her ‘mansion’.  

The enormous abandoned building was already dooming up in the distance. In the early morning, when the streets of Seere were most quiet because those who drank through the night were passed out or too drunk to leave the bars, the aged building had something mysterious over it. Ever since Sareth moved in, she hadn’t had many visitors (and the ones she had, usually didn’t make it out), but still, everyone at least knew of the place. Everyone had walked past it, had wondered what was inside and then never bothered to actually find out since there was a fair chance the whole place could come crashing down on you. Of course, this last part wasn’t true – at least not for the part of the building Sareth resided in – but they didn’t have to know that. The looks of the monumental building alone were enough to keep uninvited guests out, which was exactly why Sareth thought it the perfect place to fit her and Oliver’s ego.

As she ascended the stairs to the big wooden entrance doors, she looked around to see if no one noticed her going inside. When she’d confirmed no one was watching, she opened the door slightly and slid through the opening. The entrance hall of the library had the highest ceiling Sareth had seen anywhere. The overwhelming feeling of such an enormous building towering over her had come to feel as a sort of homecoming. Whenever she set a foot inside, she felt tiny, nonexistent even, and alarmingly, to her this was calming.  

She and Oliver (but mostly she) had done their best to turn the part of the library they occupied into a livable space. Needless to say, with little money and less motivation, they failed miserably, so that their living space was now marked by the empty or filled bottles they left hanging around, the many burning or burnt out candles they planted between and on remaining stacks of books, and random furniture they scavenged from all over.

“Good to see that you haven’t moved an inch since I left,” she remarked with a flat voice towards the figure that was seated in one of the chairs, surrounded with maybe a few more bottles than a few hours ago.

She moved to a small table on which she emptied her pockets. From between her breasts she took a tiny purse of cash – the biggest catch she had made this night. The purse landed on the table next to the two miserable coins that had come from her pockets.

“Fucking shit night.”

As always, his response to her presence was minimal. Sometimes she wondered why he was even still here. If you were to ask her, she probably couldn’t remember a single instance where they had ever truly been nice to each other. Where they had truly appreciated each-others company, or rather made the other know that they did. Of course, if they’d really hated each-others guts so much, they wouldn’t be holed up together. Then she wouldn’t have taken him under her wing, and kept him drunk from day one. There had to be something that made them stay together – she just hadn’t found out what it was yet.

“I didn’t want to scare you by making myself look productive,” he finally said, after her remark.

She rolled her eyes and turned to the table to empty her pockets. As she commented on the quality of her night, aiming at the meager loot laid out on the table, Oliver stretched and got up. She would have given him an applause for finally moving, but was way too bitter over his minimal usefulness and her failed hunt to give him that pleasure.

“You don’t say, it’s fucking boring without you.”

She almost wanted to smile in a response, but withheld herself and instead just nodded. Of course it’s fucking boring without her. If there’s anything you learn from being with Sareth is that while she can get under your skin, drive you insane or on a path of self-destruction, there is one thing it will never be in her presence and that is boring. She might be bored, but those with her will certainly have something to be entertained by.

Oliver then noticed the shit night she had been referring to. “Oh yeah, it was a shit night,” he simply mumbled when he realized she wouldn’t have enough money to fund their daytime drinking.

From under her lashes she looked up to him, waiting to see if he would say more or leave it at that. It seemed that he didn’t have anything else to add, so she pushed herself away from the table and accompanied this action with a sigh of frustration. As she turned to the room in search of at least one unopened bottle, or even just a few sips of something strong, the few loose strands of hair swept in the air.

“A shit night,” she repeated herself as she strolled towards the chair he had been sitting in and inspected the bottles lying around it. “All gone, I suppose?” she stated the obvious, looking up at him, hoping for an explanation or apology – something she knew she wouldn’t be getting from him, so in retrospect she might have just been hoping for confrontation.

“So now what?”

The last thing she wanted was to get back on the streets, but staying in without anything to get her through the day felt like an even worse option. At the very least she needed something to put her to sleep, because her body wouldn’t get her there on its own.

“Gotta do something when you’re gone,” was his answer, as it always was, in that monotone voice that indicated that he had been done with life three years ago but just couldn’t seem to get himself to stop breathing.

Without lifting a finger he moved one of the chairs opposite to the one whose surroundings Sareth was researching in hope to find one last alcohol containing drop of liquid. However, since Oliver confirmed her suspicion as to the absence of these kinds of liquids, she let herself sink in the chair and raised her hands in the air, as if to show that she’d given up. And, in all honesty, she had given up. After a long night of filling her pockets at the expense of others – or at least attempting to fill her pockets, attempts that, as was painfully obvious in this very instance, also had the very real potential of failing – all she wanted was to cloud her vision and mind with substances that you wouldn’t want your daughter taking. Now that even this proved itself impossible, she truly did not know what to do anymore.

Thus, her somewhat desperate, “So now what?”

As soon as the words had left her lips, she knew that the answer she was going to get was nowhere near the answer she wanted – or needed – to hear right now.

Another shrug.

“It was all nice and quiet until you arrived.”

The corners of her mouth glided up in a sarcastic smile while her narrowed eyes remained emotionless and fixed on the blonde fixation of frustration in front of her, who, again without lifting a finger, picked up the book he had just been reading.
Before she could tell him he was more than welcome to move his shit – or the absence thereof, since everywhere Sareth looked all the things she could see were hers, or were claimed by her after actually being somebody else’s – to another part of the library, or better yet, move out, he had decided to bless her with a fine piece of advice.

“Maybe your dress should be more lowcut next time,” were his words without even looking up from the book.

Sareth let out a frustrated sigh, let herself slide down in her chair just enough so that she could kick the work of writing out of his hands and did just that. As the novel dropped to the floor with a dull sound, Sareth pulled herself back up and straightened her back. She crossed her legs and placed her elbows on the armrests of the char.

“I suggest you fucking look at me,” she spoke, her voice louder this time, clearly more annoyed. And then, plain honest, “If I were to wear a more lowcut dress I might just as well wear nothing.”

It was true. If there was any way to describe Sareth’s style of clothing – especially when she was going out at night – it was ’revealing’. And if she were to reveal more than she was already doing, there would be literally nothing left to the imagination.

Perhaps to confirm her words, she started hiking up her skirt, a tiny smile around her lips. Of course, she was never planning on actually wearing nothing, she was just going to remove the collection of knives she wore under her skirts so that she could make herself comfortable without the risk of stabbing herself, but Oliver didn’t know this and Sareth hoped to see some recognition in his eyes, even if these eyes weren’t fixed on hers but on her thighs.

Carefully, she removed the first knife from her garter.

It was only after she kicked the book from between his hands and demanded his attention with a clearly frustrated, ‘not here for it’-voice, that he finally decided to look up. And when he did, he did this in the only way that he knew how to: like a defiant little child not getting what he wants. If looks could kill, his look merely showed a willingness to kill if the actual act of killing wasn’t so damn tiring.

Right in that moment, Sareth felt so deeply, terribly disappointed in the man(?) she had taken in. Sure, she enjoyed him from time to time, thought she liked him, even, at moments when alcohol had properly corrupted her judgement, and, though she would never admit it, she liked their constant arguments. The only thing that bothered her, that really bothered her, was the way in which nothing seemed to reach him. Nothing seemed to bother him. She couldn’t make him feel anything. If he just stopped being so passive all the time, if instead of looking at her as if he didn’t want her to waste all the oxygen in the room, he would just come up to her and single-handedly stopped her from breathing himself, then maybe she wouldn’t feel so disappointed.

“And when I look too long, you get mad,” he threw back at her, crossing his arms while passive-aggressively staring at her.

Sareth had to suppress the urge to mimic every parent ever – except for hers, where were they? – and tell him that she was “not mad, just disappointed in his behavior.” Instead she answered his stare with one of her own. It started as cool and deadly as Oliver’s did, but slowly softened as she started pulling up the fabric of her dress.

The whole of his body seemed to respond, open up, to the skin presented to him. He shifted, straightening his posture a bit, raising a brow. There was nothing in the world Sareth liked more than to see people loose their cool over a body – her body – and Oliver’s response to her bit of charity very seldom let her down. She noticed as his eyes slid from her pale thigh up to her face, and she responded with a little, almost friendly smile. Before long, his eyes dropped again to witness what was really important, namely whatever it was that she was hiding underneath that skirt.

It was knives, and a handsome collection too.

“I mean… If you want to practice, be my guest,” his voice calm, but with the slightest tone that indicated that for once, he wasn’t just bored.

She grinned, holding up the knife and turning it, looking at the dozens of candles reflected in its metal. “I could do that,” she started, taking the next knife from her garter, holding them both in one hand. She opened her legs, exposing the array of smaller knives worn on her inner thigh, “or, you could make yourself useful for once and we could come up with another way to get smashed.”

She removed the little throwing knives too, then got up and crossed the space between them to put her hands, with the blades in between her fingers, on the armrests of his chair and bend over him. She was fully aware of her décolleté that she was practically pushing in his face, and how for any other person this would be the most bizarre change of behavior possible.

“We could also do both,” she whispered in his ear, then pulling herself back, “that way, we will have twice the fun and half the sensibility. Now that I think of it, when was the last time we’ve been in a proper barfight?”