"How do you find Fata?"
"What region in Lustris do you hail from?"
"What do you think of my hair? Is it elegant enough?"
"Is it true you can’t lift a boulder with your bare hands?"
"Ladies! Ladies! Give her so space. She needs to breathe too, you know?" Floriel placed her body between the rest of the eager fairies and Arabella, putting both hands up in front of herself to emphasize her words, "Forgive them. So of them have never even seen a human in the flesh before, let alone speak to one,"
Up until Floriel’s intervention, the fairies kept on gradually advancing while pushing and shoving each other out of the way for a chance to ask their questions first.
The hearty laugh that had escaped Arabella only made their eyes grow rounder and fuller in awe.
"Please, don’t apologize. I will answer every question they have for as long as I am allowed to stay," she smiled while nodding.
When the fairies had co to fetch Arabella, Silas showed so reluctance to the idea of separating from her, but they’d all reassured him that everything would be alright.
Even Liriel had chid in to quench his qualms. Eventually, in the face of all the squeaks and shrills, the vampire relented and let her out of his sight after making them promise to keep an eye on her.
"You know," the tiniest of the bunch had half asked, "Silas has never brought any of their house servants with him before," she added, her eyes threatening to hop out of their sockets.
"Did you not hear him, Mariel? She is no servant. She was personally selected by Lady Persephone to work as an entertainer," the one with the longest, blond hair corrected the first.
"That is alright," Arabella tilted her head slightly which earned her a kinder expression, "In a way that does make a house servant," she chuckled.
"Oh yes... Yes," most of them nodded and responded, their voices blending together at parts and overlapping at others.
"But well, to be fair, Mariel told no lie. Silas has, indeed, never brought any... House servant to Fata with him before," Ariel floated forward, "Not that we don’t allow him to. Liriel told him ti and ti again that he can bring visitors he trusts along, but he never did,"
"Until today...," Arabella muttered more to herself than them, but they still caught her words.
"That must an you are special then!" Floriel clasped her own hands together and held them right under her chin.
"Oh no... I don’t believe so," the young woman shook her head, sensing the looming creeping of the temperature around her face.
"Your face is getting red. Is that natural or are you sick?" a fairy with a pixie haircut spoke, leaning back against her hands on the rock that served her as a seat.
"It is natural. Worry not," Arabella could do nothing about it but laugh, "By the way, to answer so of your previous questions, I hail from Regalis," that was her attempt at shifting topics.
"Isn’t that the royal capital of Lustris?" the blond one dashed forth before suddenly stopping, right by Arabella’s face.
"The one and only capital of Lustris. Yes," Arabella gave slow, theatrical nods.
"Do you fancy Silas?" Floriel blurted the question, causing Arabella’s smile to waver.
"What...?" she whispered, looking between all of their little faces, hoping one of them would ask a different question that would shift everyone’s attention once again, but none of them seed interested in doing that. On the contrary, they’d all quieted down and stared back at her with sparkles in their eyes.
"I an, are you too close?" Floriel insisted.
"Are you a couple?" the blond fairy pressed further.
"No! No! We are not!" red as a ruby, Arabella shook her head furiously as though it’d wipe that idea off the board at once.
"That is odd then...," Ariel held her chin, seemingly pensive, "His aura is all over you," she added, looking Arabella up and down.
"His aura?" she asked.
"Why yes, silly girl!" the pixie haircut fairy pushed her upper body forward before placing her hands on her knees, "Everyone has an aura that is unique to their person. At least, it is clear to us as fairy eyes are the sole ones that can spot it," she forced her own eyes to open wider using her fingers in a codic manner.
"Is that so?" Arabella patted her hair before moving down to her shoulders then chest, "I’d never heard of such a phenonon. The books I’ve read never made a ntion of this,"
"No wonder!" Ariel waved it off, "Fairies are a minority even amongst nightwalkers. It is not that well known of a fact,"
"Won’t they ever stop calling us nightwalkers? We sleep at night!" one of the fairies that had been silent up until then spoke up, sounding indignant.
"What does this aura look like, if it is alright for to ask?" Arabella ignored the contribution from the last fairy and addressed Ariel instead.
However, the response ca not from her, but from Floriel, "It is alright, it is alright... You can ask away! It sort of resembles a thin, glowy veil that hovers all over the person, colored in an exclusive blend of shades," she marked a pause during which she slowly made loops around the young woman, "I can see a total of two on you. The weaker and smaller one sticks to you the most. That one is yours, but then there is the one with the bolder glow which sort of hangs a bit distant. I’d recognized it as Silas’ the mont I first laid eyes on you,"
"But why would his... Aura be intertwined with mine?" Eyebrows a tad furrowed, Arabella tried to align all of her questions according to a reasonable order of importance.
"Well, are you two intimately involved?" with the blankest of expressions, Floriel crossed her arms over her chest.
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