Sullen Drinks

[Miriam Bell]

"I'll have to trust your word on it."

[Chione Muqaddam]

"My flight's at seven, so I won't be joining you for breakfast, but I think we can make up for it," she teases.

[Miriam Bell]

"Not planning to stick around this town any longer than you have to?"

[Chione Muqaddam]

"I could probably be tempted to find excuses to visit more often."

[Miriam Bell]

"Are you in a hurry?" she asks, letting the question hang for a moment before going on, "Because you seem to be moving rather fast here."

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Honestly, what I'd expected was being bored to tears drinking here, riding back to my room, and regretting most of the trip."

"My mum doesn't like the unexpected, but I certainly do."

[Miriam Bell]

"People always say that. What they mean is they want to be pleasantly surprised." she says with bit of a smirk.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Even an unpleasant surprise is a change of pace."

"You should see how that woman plans."

[Miriam Bell]

"Trust me, you don't want me to get unpleasant." she says with a smirk that shows teeth that are a little too sharp.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"I don't think you know me well enough to make that call yet," she smirks back, unfazed.

[Miriam Bell]

"I could change that very quickly..." she says, reaching out as if to brush a stray strand of hair behind Chione's ear but staying just a fraction short of actually touching the side of her head.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"You wouldn't be the first girl I've met who likes to bite," she chuckles.

[Miriam Bell]

"I meant the knowing you part." she adds with a smirk before pulling her hand back.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Oh, and I thought we weren't going to be bringing up what we do," she laughs.

[Miriam Bell]

"If you'd rather be surprised by it..." she says, trailing off.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Perhaps we'll surprise each other," she replies.

[Miriam Bell]

"Promises, promises." Miriam says, pushing herself off of her barstool. "Come on then."

[Chione Muqaddam]

A short ride later, Chione turns the key on the room a the Limes that she'd described as "cozy."

"Suit your tastes?" She smirks as she struts in.

[Miriam Bell]

"It has a... certain rustic kind of charm." she says, running her hand along the bed post as she looks around the room.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Yes, I think it has a certain frisson with the monstrous things I've been thinking of doing here," she grins.

[Miriam Bell]

"A strange choice of words, but I like it."

[Chione Muqaddam]

Walking over to the wardrobe, she pulls out a small suitcase.

"Ever try MGH perchance?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Can't say that I have. What is it? Like an Ecstasy or LSD kind of synthetic?"

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Bored rich kids take it to pretend to be mutants for awhile."

"Bored rich mutants have some real fun with it..."

[Miriam Bell]

"A Mutant drug..." she says, curiously.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Can't bring out anything you don't already have in you," she nods, pulling out a vial marked with a stylized eye and two individually wrapped syringes.

[Miriam Bell]

"And what if what's in me can be..." for a moment she seems to be reaching for the right word, "...perfidious?"

[Chione Muqaddam]

"As if what's in me isn't," she grins and unwraps one of the syringes, drawing a dose.

[Miriam Bell]

"Don't say I didn't warn you." she says. The sight of the needles and the thought of amplifying her powers in some manner has her, frankly, scared. But the feeling is exhilarating at the same time and even though her heart can't beat faster, it still feels like it might. "Someone should figure out a way to put that in pills." she jokes, trying to keep the giddy fear out of her voice.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"There's an inhaler, but Mum always said I have a flair for drama..."

She cinches up a constricting band on her arm and finds a vein, plunging the syringe in. She grits her teeth as she injects the dose, her canines growing sharper. Her fluttering eyes pale to yellow-green, the pupils stretching to slits.

"Ready to be monstrous together?" She smirks before licking a newly-grown fang.

[Miriam Bell]

"That's a lot more literal than expected." she admits as she takes the other syringe and draws up a dose. And somehow seems much more serious, not just dramatic.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"Oh darling," she laughs, a ripping noise traveling up her back, "you have no idea."

A sinuous black-furred tail starts swaying behind the girl. The sound of tearing continues as dark feathered wings burst from her back, and soon her frame has outstripped what's left of her dress, leaving her looming over Miriam resplendent in a lush midnight pelt that ends just before her still largely human face. Some parts of her are still recognizably feminine, but a fair bit has given way to the sphinx of legend.

What Miriam can sense of the beast's mind is positively labyrinthine, even at the surface. Thoughts turn and twist into cul-de-sacs and looping whorls. A mind someone could get lost in.

Chione lifts a pawlike hand and licks at it, preening hair that's grown wild and sprawling over her monstrous frame. Miriam gets a glimpse of a mouth that can open far wider than a human's, sporting rows of sharp teeth.

"I've shown you mine," she purrs. "Show me yours, Miriam..."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam snaps her eyes away from Chione's, forcefully shutting the connection down before she gets too lost in the twists and turns of her mind. "Breath-taking..." she whispers, finding a vein that easily stands out against her pale skin and pressing her thumb down on the plunger. And as the substance flushes into her it's like her perception of the world is widened, like a door that was slightly ajar is thrown wide open. The quaint and cozy room suddenly grows darker, walls reaching up and stretching into a vaulted ceiling. Long drapes of dark-red curtains uncurl from the shadows and clad the room in a gothic veneer. Here and there bits of reality still blend in, the bed-posts showing parts of lighter-brown and smooth, comfy design, in stark contrast to the rich walnut wood that twists in the shapes of people and rose-bushes intertwined while almost ephemeral curtains gently blow around the bed in a non-existent wind. Miriam's mind is bleeding out into the real world and it's impossible to tell if it is illusion or forcing itself into reality around her.

Miriam doesn't notice her own physical transformation, eyeshadow turning into large-round markings and tiny feathers sprouting on her cheeks and bringing patches of healthier-looking skin with them. At least for a moment, before Miriam's shoulder's suddenly clench and something seems to wrench her body. She shakes her head once in trying to stand up straight, sending what little downs had grown to fall free. Instead her skin grows even more pallid, ears elongate into dull points with characteristic ridges on the inside and nose turning slightly upwards. A pained snarl shows her sharp incisors and something rustles underneath her clothes as she pulls away at her sleeves to accustom the narrow membrane stretching along the inside of her arm all the way to her fingers. "What... what is this?"

[Chione Muqaddam]

"It's a night to not let anything tie us down. A night to show our secret selves to each other and feel alive for a bit."

She reaches out her clawed hand to cup Miriam's cheek.

"And you do, don't you? You don't have to be ashamed of this..."

[Miriam Bell]

She glances down at her hands and how they're vaguely deformed. Thumb, index and middle finger more prominent than the rest with thicker nails reminiscent of claws. It's objectively hideous, she thinks, but she does feel alive. Less trapped in a dead shell and more free, even if the narrow membrane of skin is nowhere near being functional wings.

"You want to see the monster, do you?" she asks, lifting her head to glance at Chione with a smirk full of sharp teeth.

[Chione Muqaddam]

"I'd a feeling you were going to appreciate the appeal," she grins back toothily.

"It gets better every time you try it. A little more glorious abomination let out."

[Miriam Bell]

She leaps, her clothes almost seeming like the full wings she's lacking as she jumps onto Chione's back, grabbing fistfuls of fur to pull apart and sink her teeth down towards the exposed skin of Chione's neck.

[Chione Muqaddam]

The sphinx struggles but is unable to prevent Miriam from poising sharp teeth at her neck.

"M-my my," she says in a hissed whisper. "You do learn fast..."

Though it's hard to grasp Chione's thoughts for long, Miriam can sense a current of thrill looping along the whorls of that confusing knot.

[Miriam Bell]

"This particular lesson is nothing new to me..." Miriam's thoughts aggressively bleed into Chione's mind as the woman's blood spills into her mouth. A strange almost oaky taste along the metallic tang. Rich and brimming with an almost electric sensation. She drinks deeply as she lets her mind spiral along the thrills of Chione's mind. The thrill she is causing. Her fingers clench harder into the Sphinx' fur.

[Chione Muqaddam]

At first it's bliss for them both. The entwining, almost chasing of such an elusive mind delivers the pleasure in bursts, which seems to coincide with the spurts of the sphinx's drug-laced blood.

But as Miriam drinks, the emotional component seems harder and harder to connect with. That beautiful maze of a mind that Miriam has burrowed into is fading around her, the whorls slipping through her fingers more and more.