#i am deeply in a classics phase rn and so will take any opportunity to compare xarrai to odysseus in that like

[trevisos]

polytropos for the wip game 👀👀?

i posted a (barely) more polished snippet of this one for last week’s wip wednesday BUT here’s an earlier passage as well! this one was very easy to draft but feels much harder to edit/revise. it’s really all talking and little action, which is fun as a character study and fun for me personally to write, but sort of difficult to make interesting for the reader sometimes. set early act 2, in the shadow cursed lands camp (the one with the red trees.)

His death-cold fingers trace practiced patterns across their skin, light enough that it almost tickles. They watch him this time, his hand sickly pale against the violet of their flesh, still flushed by the memory of him above them, inside them. They play their roles well. A stranger may even mistake the two of them for lovers, lying tangled as they are on the rotting bed, all smiles and wandering hands, speaking in warm, hushed voices. Finally, Astarion touches a jagged scar above their elbow, revealed by the bend of their arm propping up their head. “And this one?” His voice is sweet and low as a dying fire, dark smoke and glowing embers. A stranger wouldn’t recognize their game for what it is: a series of desperate bids for control.

Xarrai smiles and curls their tongue around another lie. “Got piss drunk at a party in the Upper City and fell down the front steps,” they say, and take a long, slow drag. They had been drunk when the mercenaries cornered them in the Lower City, sent by some merchant angry they had let his secrets slip. And drunker still when they tried to stitch the wound closed on their own after their magic couldn’t finish the job, body contorted to reach while their vision swam. This lie floats like smoke from their lips, something a little closer to believable - a sheltered half-truth, wiped clean of its mess and filed smooth at the edges. They turn it again, the cut-glass gemstone of reality, and watch the light it reflects fall across Astarion’s face.

He presses his nail into the knot of flesh just hard enough to sting, prodding at it as if he can spill the scar’s secrets like blood on an altar. A crack of thunder sounds outside, deadly close. “Oh?” He arches a manicured eyebrow and lets his hand fall from their arm to their breast as casually as he may rest it on a table, but they see that glint in his eye. “Parties in the Upper City. Aren’t we fancy?” he purrs. He squeezes, kneading at their soft flesh, shifting closer. Perhaps he thinks he can drag honesty out of them with a little distraction. Xarrai sighs, makes a show of melting into his touch, and fights the urge to smile when his grin sharpens. He is always, always sloppy.