Blood-Feud

Monstercraft One-oh-One

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Rather than having had to wait out either of Malenca's ensuing recovery or her oddly yet adept tinker like ever charming husband's return amongst the many slithering and eerily calm while unnerving creatures both visible and otherwise throughout the aquarium that had otherwise surrounded them, Delilah ever so politely had taken it upon herself to have graciously offered a tour of the apartment that their returning employee would now have use of as her home on floors well above and as far removed as physically possible from the snake like predators who intriguingly enough had appeared to have taken a rather unusually keen interest in their latest guest for reasons that had yet to have manifested to Delilah's level of proper understanding which was more curious than of necessary concern for the moment.

Even someone of her somewhat limited zoological or mammalogistic experience had picked up on their strange fascination, particularly so when Dioscorea had nearly touched the glass before the power had gone out while Dio herself appeared disinterested in having had anything to do with them as the young woman continued to digest what she had both seen and learned amongst everything else that had happened in what had turned out to have perhaps been the longest day of her adult life.

Not a word was exchanged during the entire ride up in the lift, nor once they had reached the apartment which Delilah dutifully unlocked to have revealed the entrance to living quarters far and above anything Dio had visited let alone could have dreamed of having ever called her own.

Double closets were open to either side of the door for outerwear of visitors should she ever happen to entertain which she had yet to have found reason to wherever it was that she had previously had lodging of any sort.

Not entirely surprising given everything that had happened today her hat and coat were there to greet her arrival, hung neatly on a hanger and shelf as if to mark ownership by possession as nine tenths of some fictitious law once declared so indelicately.

"I hope you don't mind, but we've arranged to have had some of your things moved." Delilah offered as she watched from the doorway. "The rest should arrive tomorrow if everything they tell me proves accurate and true."

Dio sighed as she calmed herself at the news.

"You ... of all people ... arranged to have strange men go through my things and pack them with unerring carelessness and ... contempt of what little may yet remain of my virtue or concern to have cared about?"

As weary as she had become, Dio was not entirely sure which had irritated her more, Delilah's thin smile of muse or how well she had seemed to have remained so sure of herself at all times which had proven time and again nearly impossible to have done as well as she had for a woman amongst men where they were so often found continually plagued with even in this place and much if not all of the city around them.

"Seriously," she scolded as calmly as she could manage, "... what woman would stand by and allow such ... tawdry and unclean paws of just any strange men to have mingled so indelicately with another woman's most private and perhaps cherished bits and parts of what meager possessions were hers to have otherwise owned and possessed in what was once her place of places to have lain her hat or her head."

"It was not my idea whatsoever, for it was your ... what was it now that you so eloquently have come to have referred to them as ..." Delilah paused with a narrow finger to her pale lips in thought, "... ah yes, the grey haired mafia who stepped forward to ever willingly have offered their services given how they have come to so highly both recommend and seemingly have approved of you in partnership with their otherwise fair haired John Francis as it were."