Tales of Mirros for Everyone!

Near the edge of the Garden District, in the second-floor dining room of a three-story townhouse with a tailor’s shop on the bottom floor, Swan shares a meal with Kalisa and her parents. The four of them talk and laugh freely, any initial tension between Kalisa’s parents and their daughter’s paramour long since forgotten in the year and change they’ve been together. After the meal, Kalisa and Swan head up to the top floor, to what had been Kalisa’s childhood bedroom, and get changed for a night out on the town.

As they come back down the stairs, a comment delivered with a light, joking tone, by Amelia Inciya, a kind looking woman in her 50s with greying hair and deep green eyes; “Aren’t you a little old to be dressing like that?”

Kalisa, wearing faded dark blue cut-off short-shorts over fishnet pantyhose with black steel-toed leather boots coming halfway to her knees, and a loose-fitting black crop top smiled back at her faintly, but with genuine warmth. “I’m old enough to dress however I please, mother. Maybe you should try wearing something like this, sometime?”
“Are you coming back here after the show?”
“No, I booked a room at the Black Heart.”
“Oh, well, alright, just don’t get her pregnant.”
“Mom!”
“What? If you’re going to dress like you’re still sixteen…”

Leading Swan (dressed a little more conservatively in black leggings and a fashionably puffy shirt) by the hand, Kalisa bounced down the stairs and out of the shopfront’s side door to the sound of Custer Inciya’s guffawing chuckle.

The pair walked down through the edge of the Garden District, towards the central docks. Here, the lamps are lit a little later than the side closer to the palace. The streets a little dirtier, and more overgrown. But the buildings are well-maintained, and the few people on the streets in the last fading light of dusk well-groomed and dressed in moderately expensive fabrics woven by professional, if not exactly top-class tailors. The kinds of things you might buy in Kalisa’s parent’s shop.

“Y’know I’d go pretty much anywhere with you, sweetness.”

Loud, aggressive, magically amplified music bleeds up into the street, increasing in volume and clarity for a moment as the door is opened by a bouncer admitting a gaggle of young people with bright, strangely fashioned hair, abundant piercings, and gnarly ink.

One of the bouncers recognizes Kalisa, nods, grants her entry, “Welcome back, Mage Guardian,” he mutters in a gruff voice, “Not here for work, I hope?”
“I’d be in my uniform if I was Doug. Not this uniform.” She gestures at the black and fishnets.
“Enjoy the show then, Kalisa.”

Inside, a mass of sweaty bodies bouncing, swaying and smashing against each other. Flashes of magic fire and smoke above a dark dance floor. Kalisa and Swan mostly hang towards the back, passing the bottle of spirits back and forth (although Kalisa seems to have considerably more enthusiasm for the harsh grain alcohol). Kalisa joins the dancefloor with greater regularity and enthusiasm as the liquor starts to work, occasionally leading Swan by the hand. But mostly Síochánta stands towards the back, looking and feeling a little out of place. Pleased to see her lover vibrant and happy, but not quite feeling the freedom, sense of belonging, or euphoria that seems to be shared by most of the other club goers.

As the set starts to wind down, Kalisa, pleasantly hot and softened by the pounding music and the grinding crush of bodies, presses Swan against the wall in a darkened corner of the venue away from the chaos, kisses her, brings a knee up between her thighs, whispers... 'Let's get out of here, go somewhere more private.' A grateful agreement, a hurried hailing of a carriage, a fast ride back to the foreign quarter, a dash up the stairs of the Black Heart Lilly, flushed, murmuring to one another, and a different, though in some respects comparable, type of grinding.