Wait, What?

Written to DaHob’s prompt to my new “WTF?” Prompt Call.  Fae Apoc, early apocalypse.

Things had been going weird for weeks, but Tlalli had been doing a pretty good job of pretending they weren’t.

She went to classes every day, went to work after that, and screened stupid application after stupid application for a roommate, looking for someone who wouldn’t be torture to live with and would actually pay the rent something like on time.

There was some weird shit on the tv, weirder shit on youtube, and twitter was blowing up with the stuff people had seen – and the people that had died or vanished.   One person she followed posted a list every morning. Just an image, black names on white text. It was getting pretty long.

Nothing like that had come to their little city yet.  They had no portal, no god claiming it as theirs, no fights over their relatively small downtown center.  There were no names from their down on @RighteousTruth’s endless list.

But there was a man at the coffee shop waiting for her interview, and his answers had been just weird enough that, considering the current climate, Tlalli thought the “something is up” with him might be less he’s a sociopath and more he’s fae.

As Tlalli was fae herself, and hadn’t met another one since she came here for college, she was going to to laugh if the first fae she met in this city came off of craigslist.

Then the chair pushed itself out for her and she found her eyebrows lifting.  His Mask shifted for just a moment and she saw the slight hints of – not scales, but something that looked almost watery.  

Not human, then.  She sat down and let the edges of her own Change show, the green tinge to her skin.  Just for a second; there were a lot of people not happy with the way things were going down right now.

“You’re Tlalli?  I answered your ad as Zebulun.  It’s as good of a name as any other to call me.”

His accent had the stresses in strange places and his grammar was – careful, his enunciation sharp.  Tlalli stared at him for a moment before collecting herself.

“I’m Tlalli.  You – you know the ad was just for a roommate, right?  That is, someone who shares in the responsibilities and the costs of a rented apartment.  Not for any sort of – ah. Other relationship at all?”

His smile was coy.  “You are not interested in, what is the idiom, Owning someone?”

Somehow his voice seemed to be carrying only to her.  She leaned forward anyway. “I have no interest,” she murmured, “in being owned by a god-prince.”

“So you looked up the name.”  He was amused. “But, you see.  I have no interest in being a god nor a prince.  What I am interested in is being…. a roommate, as you say.  And perhaps, should I find myself in the company of a lovely person who is so interested…” His voice dropped even lower, and Tlalli was surprised to find that he was blushing.  “Perhaps I can be, what is the phrase, very down to earth indeed.”

His name might mean prince, but hers meant earth.  “I am… interested,” she allowed.  “Let’s go someplace more private and we can negotiate.”

Things had been going weird for weeks, but maybe they were going to go weird in her favor for once.

 


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