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<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">Perception 23 vs DC 25. Minor failure.</span></span>
You can tune her out with thoughts of your own. Thoughts that bubble to the surface of your mind like pockets of steam roil to the surface of a boiling pot. Stoked by the flames of curiosity, you take in the dream with new eyes, drinking in the sights of your memory. The opulence of the bedchamber, the beauty of the sea at dawn, the luxurious fabric that you never felt before brushing against your skin.
What brought you here? What was the khemical's purpose in dragging you back to the day of your knighting? Was there a purpose to it at all? On this day, you left behind the last vestiges of your childhood and became a woman with responsibilities and duties, one who could not afford the foolishness of youth. Heavy expectations that you greeted like another challenge, grew into as your adolescent self grew into your father's old clothes.
How do they relate to the demon you've silenced? To the curse mark you bear?
"Miss Louise," Ciaran's voice barges through a crack in the door, interrupting your train of thought. "Are you ready? It is almost time."
Finished with their work, the maids step away from you. The woman in the mirror has green eyes and glares at you, but that does not tarnish the effort they put into your makeup and your hair. For once, the waterfall of blonde hair that falls from your head does not shroud your right eye. Two locks remain to frame your face, while the rest has been tied back into a great braid that must near five feet long, tickling at the back of your knees. The makeup they put on your face is light and subtle, hiding away all of the tiny imperfections of your skin.
At your instance, in homage to all the girls among the cohorts of men-at-arms you fought alongside, they put the design you all painted on eachother before battle. A black narzissenmark, the abstracted profile of a daffodil, now sits right below your left eye.
Though you wear a different dress, everything else remains as you remember.
How much of that is truth, how much of that is reconstructed from half-remembered details, you cannot say. Did the khemical draw this memory forth for the curse to express its nature through the gaps that are filled in? Did the day have some association that you're missing?
"Ciaran, I have a question for you," you say. You doubt the butler will answer it well, and you have to wonder if he will answer it at all, or give a Ciaran-like dismissal before pulling you back on track. Without waiting for him to respond, you ask, "What does an audience with the King have to do with being possessed by a demon?"
"I am afraid I do not understand the question, Miss Louise," Ciaran says. He opens the door, his expression as quizzical as it is expectant.
"I figured as much..." you sigh. The woman in the mirror mouths something furious as you look away. You have no patience for the words of demons, not when you have a mystery to solve.
