Alice
Alice sat up bolt upright at Sulley’s tone, and she bit down on her tongue to prevent the squeak of surprise that threatened to escape. As he went on to introduce her to Kiara, Alice bit down harder, especially when he sort of semi-addressed her. Did he expect a response? Was he teasing her? Where the two of them secretly working together on a plot to kidnap her whilst Oliver wasn’t looking? She settled on a small terrified nod in reply, and warily eyed the two of them, not that it would really tell her very much, everyone here seemed just as suspicious as everybody else… she really didn’t know
where she was supposed to stand.
Of course, she’d much rather stand somewhere that was as far away from Kiara as possible, because she was seriously beginning to infringe on Alice’s personal space. She glanced towards Suleykaar, eyes wide with fright, as Kiara approached, rippling with an air of something that wasn’t quite malevolence, but close. She turned back to Kiara, or rather, was compelled to. A strange tugging sensation wrapped around the pit of her stomach, tendrils that reached deep inside her soul, the very core of the anxieties and fear that had taken root, and pulled. It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, full of a resonant emptiness, a dull exhilaration that tingled through the tips of her fingers like pins and needles.
Alice could only sit, dumbstruck, as she felt her pulse slowing, her breathing becoming a little easier, her muscles relaxing, all replaced with a sense of hollow relief that seeped into her limbs and settled. She wasn’t sure if she should be terrified, or if she should be grinning wildly… it was definitely strange, and disconcerting, and… now she was being called delicious. That was definitely terrifying.
“I-I’m what?!?” She yelped, startled at the complete frankness of the statement. She didn’t really want to be called delicious, by anyone, never mind scary cryptids with black eyes and vaguely menacing smiles. She felt the fear that had been taken slowly beginning to accumulate again, almost as if it was a physical
thing. She shivered, and pulled her coat tighter around her willowy shoulders, “What are you? What did you to me?” She muttered, her pitch high, but the pervasive numbness mad it difficult to articulate the words. And then she realised she’d just talked to somebody she’d only just met, on her own, without extreme prompting. That was a chilling thought. If the… thing that Kiara had done could lower Alice’s barriers so far in just a matter of seconds, what could it do over an extended period of time? Could she really trust somebody who referred to her as a piece of confectionary? She tried to make desperate eye contact with Suleykaar, but he seemed rather preoccupied by the fact that his cigarettes where currently somewhere other than tucked neatly into his pocket.
Of course, at that moment, yet
another complete stranger arrived at the table, and Alice couldn’t help but wonder what degree of ridiculously scary this person would be, on a scale of creepy soul-suckey-ness to nicotine deprived dragon. She couldn’t be any scarier than anyone Alice had previously encountered, right? Apparently she also already knew Kiara, like everybody else, and upon this realisation, Alice tensed.
They really were going to try and kidnap her, weren’t they? She was vastly outnumbered, this was bad, with this many people she could be taken down in seconds. She felt a pressure building up in the back of her mind, an energy that ebbed and flowed, uncontrollable. In front of her, the table rattled slightly.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat. This had happened before, once, when she and Oliver had been cornered. It hadn’t ended well for anyone, least of all their hunters. She gulped, and tried to get a grip, hopefully she could put a lid on this before anything happened, or before anyone noticed. If not… well, she really didn’t want to consider that.
