Invictus || Book 1

C0.6 - Hestia

Hestia is lying in a ditch and she's pretty sure she's dying.

She's also pretty sure she's been lying in the same spot for half an hour so realistically, if she were dying, she would have done it by now. Although now that she thinks about it -because there's nothing else she's capable of doing but thinking- she might have only been conscious for about five minutes.

Hestia's grip on reality had been shaky at best since regaining consciousness and time seems to be one of the first things she's lost the ability to perceive. The only functioning part of her body is her face -and even that serves no further function than to glare at the living sky as it huffs, twirls, and mocks from above.

I'm still drugged then.

"Oi, girl! You need to move. You're scaring off customers."

If Hestia could move, she'd flip the sudden shadow hovering over her with a not-so-nice gesture. Thankfully her vocal cords still work.

"I'm paralyzed, you idiot. Tell your customers to walk around me."

Sweet silence follows for five seconds -again, it could be longer but Hestia wouldn't have a clue- and then she hears the shadow snort.

"I suppose I could always put up a sign- 'kick the girl and get half the price off any item."

"Ha-bloody-ha, just drag me around the back of your shop until whatever has me paralysed wears off," Hestia grumbles, squinting up at the shadow as they step further into the light and she can match a face to the sarcastic voice.

A girl with a large, jagged scar from the left corner of her mouth up to the right side of her temple glares down at Hestia; green eyes alight with amusement as she runs a tanned, freckled hand through a mane of white hair. For a minute, Hestia thinks she's collapsed on the set of some fantasy show.

"Shop?"

Hestia blinks. "Yeah, your shop? Or stall...uh, place you sell stuff from?"

The longer the girl, or woman -maybe older than Hestia- stares down at her, the more Hestia wishes she had the function of her limbs because she wants nothing more than to run away from this conversation.

"You're not Iruven, are you?"

When Hestia remains silent the girl crouches closer and pokes the side of Hestia's cheek. "You better not have died."

Hestia flinches away from the touch and glares at the girl, "I'm not dead, just confused."

"Right," the girl sighs, "I suppose I should keep an eye on you. Until you recover, of course." 

Hestia squints, "I hope you're prepared to sit out in the open because I'm too heavy to drag anywhere. I was joking before."

"You don't look very heavy." 

"That's the hoodie doing its job," Hestia snorts and then cuts herself off, lest the stranger get any ideas about joining Hestia in her self-deprecating jokes. 

The girl doesn't say anything about Hestia's little comment and instead offers an unamused quirk of the eyebrow before she wraps her arms under Hestia and begins to tug her. "What is a hoodie?"

Hestia furrows her eyebrows and stifles a sigh. Wherever she is, whatever period that happens to be in, Hestia wants to revisit the version of her that thought it would be cool to live in a fantasy world. If that's even what's happening right now; this could all be some hallucination from whatever drug is flowing through her bloodstream. 

"It's what I'm wearing." Hestia supplies before the girl tugs again and Hestia's chin dips down to her chest as she's dragged from the ditch. 

Now it's easier to observe her surroundings; to catalogue the stalls and the black cobblestones lining the street and where they lead. Hestia also watches the people crowding the road, noting their attire.