Vanity and Dian cautiously looked at each other as they shipped their tea. There was an air of hostile silence in this little sitting room. Like the most intense game of 'She who speaks first, losses.' Dian decided the time for waiting has past, and she needed to instigate. "Well?" She asked ambiguously.
"Well, what?" Vanity replied with an annoyed tone.
"Well, why did you ask me to come here? Was it just to stare at me?"
"What? Of course not! And I didn't call you here! You called me here!" Vanity replied with indignation.
"Preposterous!" Dian spoke as she pulled a folded note from her pocket and placed it on the coffee table infront of them. I was an official Arkisium letter of invitation signed by Vanity Talvadi. "Explain that."
"Then explain this first!" Vanity pulled out her own note from the breast of her corset. It was also an official letter of invitation, this time signed by Dian Cecht.
"I haven't written a single word during my time here. How the hells does someone have my signature?"
"I could be saying the same thing..." Vanity said as she lent forward inspecting the papers.
"Do we know anyone that could read our thoughts and forge our signatures?" Dian asked as she their eyes caught each other.
"The Bird!" They said together with intense venom.
XXXXX
Gala was meditating underneath a tree in the rear garden. Her legs crossed and arms folded inward as she formed a eye with her hands. Though she was deep in her trance, she could feel the mid-evening sun, hear the crinkle of gravel and sense the emotion of anger. It was common for her to pick up the stray emotion here and there, but this one was approaching her quickly.
She opened her eyes and thought she might have accidentally slipped into an erotic dream as she immediately saw Dian and Vanity standing there looking down on her. Angry, disgusted stares; their collective gaze caused her to shudder. She thought one of them was about to berate her but instead a piece of paper was pulled out and almost slammed into her face.
"Oh shit, I'm not dreaming!" She thought as she tried to get her composure. Her mind was suddenly blank with panic as her trance was shattered, she was trying to read the paper, and one of the two were yelling at her but Gala couldn't make out any words.
Quite suddenly she was picked up by the neck and slammed into the tree by Dian; not enough to bruise, but enough to hurt. The impact gave Gala a nice mental reset as she looked at the two. She was scared, and slightly aroused. Scaroused, one might say.
"You spent your whole mission flirting with Vanity, then trick me into a date. Then what? Pull some sick prank to see if you could get us together or something? Explain." Dian said with deep commanding voice as she had the bird pinned to the tree, pressing her index and thumb deeper into the her throat.
"Hhh-harder Mommy!" Gala wheezed out of habit.
Dian immediately let go out of repulsion. She wiped her hand on the back of her black turtleneck.
Gala coughed a few times then spoke. "Can we start from the beginning? I want to know what it is that prompted this so I can do it again." She chuckled.
Both women had disgusted looks on their faces as they motioned once again to the invitations they got.
"You're the only one we know who can get into our heads and forge our signatures." Vanity said.
"Even as a Psion I can only access your memories if you give your consent to it. The only other person who could see our memories without it would be... Julia."
"Ugh! Of course! Why didn't I think of that?" Vanity said as she started charging out of the garden in a huff. Dian waited for a moment until Vanity was out of sight. She then bent down to Gala.
"Sorry about that. I wanted to keep up appearances in front of the demon. Anything I can do to make us even?"
Gala sat there a little sheepish making sure not to make eye contact. "You could just... do 'that' again." Gala mumbled half hoping Dian wouldn't hear, but oh, did she hear. Dian leaned her head next to Gala and gave a sultry whisper. "Maybe if you impress me with that date of yours, my little songbird." Dian hummed a laughed as she righted herself and went after Vanity.
Gala could do nothing but internally scream. Her heart was the lead racer on the horse track. "Oh my gods that was hot! Why can't the girls at the church have that level of Dom energy?!"
XXXXX
The door to Julia's office slammed open as Dian and Vanity stepped in to a very... compromising sight. Julia starred back at the two as her tongue was still sliding along the side of a male dwarf's neck. She stood up from behind the chair the dwarf was sat in and wiped the spare saliva from her lips.
"Do you two mind? I'm in the middle of an appointment!" She said heavily annoyed. The dwarf looked quite upset as well but didn't say anything.
"Sorry..." The both said together; Vanity a little embarrassed, but Dian who was more shameless took the lead. "These letters of invitation we got. You used our signatures."
"Yes I did. I have a habit of using people's signatures when addressing them in writing. It's a side effect of the whole blood seeing thing."
"Wait, these letters were supposed to be addressed to us?" Vanity asked.
"Yeah look here it says... wait... no, I see the error. I wrote 'from' not 'for'. I wrote these in the middle of the night."
"That still doesn't explain why we have each other's."
"Which one of you is on the north side of the hall?"
Dian pointed to herself.
"Yep, mixed your rooms up. Also my bad." Julia placed her hands on her hips and looked slightly towards the ground realizing this whole ordeal was because of her.
"These invitations are really vague..." Dian started. "They don't even mention who sent them or where we're supposed to go. Now thinking on it I'm surprised how both of us ended up meeting at the same place."
"Do me a favor and say 'I accept this invitation'."
Dian and Vanity followed suit. They watched as a secret second fold of paper unfolded out of the letter. On it stated it was a invitation from the Arkisium Queen, Kivara, for a tea party in the eastern outer garden next to the pond. It was set for mid-evening today.
Both of them realized they were just about to be late for a royal invitation.