[SNEAK PEEK] Spill
Ambrosia's so cool-headed.
Ambrosia's so clumsy.
Ambrosia's so gullible.
Art by RATFRIDAY
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Spill By Limewah Commission for Yana_Ambrosia Includes concepts co-created with Izzy 18+ SNEAK PEEK
“Ambrosia?”
The lilac dragoness looked up from her phone, then back down again to actually see her date. Ambrosia’s round, red-lensed sunglasses hid her bemused eyes, and their golden rims matched the huge ring through her septum.
Ambrosia’s red, sleeveless dress let her show off her toned, tattoo-freckled arms - the left one was dotted with oval eyes, and the right was tattooed with a long skeletal spine that spiralled serpentine from the shoulder down to the wrist. To complete the look, her dress, already form–fitted to her slender, small-chested figure, was shaped with a gold-buckled belt. She had the look of a poised, precise, glamorous movie star on a day out - a good first impression for a blind date.
It did seem to have her date smitten.
Seraphina was the textbook definition of a short queen, only just a little over 4 and a half feet in height. The violet Noibat’s style was a fascinating collision of nerd and goth aesthetics. She had thick, round glasses in front of her big yellow eyes, and black piercings in her huge dish-like bat ears. Her fanged snout had a little ring of black lipstick around it.
She also wore a black graphic tee with the indecipherable logo of some black metal band, along with dark pants and a thick metal-studded belt. Over all of that was a white labcoat, of all things, like she was on her way to a gig straight from work at the lab.
It was a pretty powerful look, all things considered, even if it did make her look wildly mismatched with the dragoness. They were so incongruous, Ambrosia half wondered if someone was going to take a photo of them, post it online, and suddenly they’d go viral as the latest ‘me and who’ meme.
She was fine if people stared. She was hard to fluster.
“You’re Seraphina I’m guessing?” Ambrosia said.
“Yeah, that’s me,” the little bat said. She had the fidgety look of a student who had hit a wall with her studies, a subtle sense of barely contained anxious frustration. She even looked a little intimidated by the dragoness; while Ambrosia wasn’t quite six feet, she still had about a foot and a half on Seraphina.
Ambrosia couldn’t blame her.
Both for the exhaustion, and for the intimidated-ness. She’d seen that look many times from her time as a teaching assistant. Maybe Ambrosia and Seraphina had even been in the same room together before. There was a sneaking familiarity about the Noibat.
“Lovely to meet you,” Ambrosia said, proffering a hand for Seraphina to shake and trying to avoid leaning down.
“Oh n-no, let me, uhm…” Seraphina leapt up, flapping her winged arms once to get herself up to eye level, before offering one hand, expertly keeping herself aloft as she did so.
Ambrosia was a little impressed.
“You have to do this a lot, don’t you?” Ambrosia remarked.
“Yeah, hah,” Seraphina said, allowing herself to drift back down to the ground. “The life of a short queen, hehe…”
Her giggle was quite cute, a little chaotic, concentrated in the nose.
But Ambrosia didn’t want to give her the wrong impression. Even if this was a blind ‘date’, she planned on doing her best to de-emphasise the date part.
This was a networking exercise for Ambrosia; it was so difficult to meet new people, especially in academia. Organising one-on-one dates like this was a rather convenient way to strike up a friendship; and even if that didn’t happen, it was a good chance for her to yap someone’s ear off. She’d cultivated a reputation as someone who was quite unruffled, hard to rattle or embarrass, which also lead to a slight intimidating air. It was a reputation, not quite accurate to what was going on inside…
Really, Ambrosia was anxious, a little tightly wound. There was a lot she wanted to talk about, and rarely had the chance to cut loose and just ramble on about her life and all its ups and downs.
Ambrosia had a habit of monopolising the conversation - partly to soothe her own small anxieties and partly to keep the space firmly under her control. But Seraphina didn’t seem to mind.
The dragon didn’t feel much of a spark for the little bat.
Ambrosia hoped Seraphina wouldn’t come away from this too twitterpated.
But as the date went on, and as their somewhat one-sided conversation continued, Ambrosia became more and more aware that there was a one-way spark, blocked by a tripped fuse.
It was in the way Seraphina stared at her with big wide eyes, drinking up every word the dragoness said, far more voraciously than her mocha.
It was in the way she laughed a touch louder than ‘normal’ at the dragon’s little quips and asides, not even attempting to get a word in edgewise.
It was in the way she fidgeted with her napkin, tearing little strips from it and crumpling them up.And it was in the way she spun that sleek, shiny little white thing she’d placed on the table between them, off to the side next to her face-down phone.
It was disc-shaped, not quite big enough to be a case for a set of earbuds, and Seraphina couldn’t see any hinge or lid. Not even a charging port. It looked like fancy tech, but it could have just been a well-polished stone, a fidget toy she’d just found somewhere.
Ambrosia hadn’t passed a comment on it, but curiosity was taking up more and more space in her head, like a growing itch.
“Enough about me,” she said. “You’ve probably heard enough about botany to tide you over for a month, what’re you studying?”
“Pharmaceuticals,” Seraphina said shyly, still spinning the white pebble. “A lot less exciting than flowers, I mean, who cares how drugs work all that much… h-hey, can I get you another coffee?”
“Oh, no, allow me,” Ambrosia said, standing.
“You sure?”
“Of course. My treat.”