She gazed at the shadowed corner at the entrance of her cell, just inside the door, with narrowed eyes. She hadn't heard the door open or close, which irked her that her senses were getting so dull. The light from the barred window offered pale yellow light into her otherwise gray cell and deepened the shadows in the corners. It made her skin crawl at all hours of the day, and on nights when the moon shed silvery light into the darkness the shadows seemed like endless abysses. A figure in dark cloaks shifted into the light, a smirk permanently twisting his lips as his pale blue eye scanned her form which was curled on top of the crude straw bed shoved in the corner. Her back was pressed against the wall in the furthest corner, her head tilted back so she could see the tiniest sliver of the blue sky. She looked at the intruder out of the corner of her eye and scowled. "You know," her voice came out dry and hoarse, whether from lack of use or dehydration she wasn't sure, but she cleared her throat and continued, "It's rude to stare."
"Didn't your mother ever teach you to greet your guests with a warm smile?" The intruder purred, his voice dripping silk.
She scowled from the corner and turned her head to take him in fully. The cloaks made him look bulkier than he really was, she knew underneath he was lean built and lethal, like a predatory cat. His hair was the color of pure, shimmering gold and fell straight and long past his shoulders. He kept it unbound, which was unlike the other guards, to hide the left side of his face. He let his hair fall like a curtain across where his left eye should be, and she knew underneath that golden curtain, metal plates formed the left side of his forehead and the top of his cheek bone, following his hairline and taking up a good quarter of his face. A blue orb buzzed and whizzed, with a red lens that occasionally clicked into place. She had yet to figure out what that red lens did, and he offered no answers. The blue one though almost perfectly matched his right eye, which was perfectly normal other than thick black eyeliner that, for some reason she could not name, was what all the guards wore.
"Didn't your mother ever teach you make up was for girls?" she shot back, smirking as he scowled deeply.
"Glad to know your tongue is still sharp, Dragon Girl," he spat and she winced, averting her gaze instantly. She looked at the wall across from her where, on the grime covered stones, little white lines cut through the slime, in perfect little increments, counting the days she was kept in this cell. She had seen the full moon come and go three times, three months she'd been in this cell. She was running out of time.
"You need to eat Takara," The guard's voice lost its bite and grew softer as he reached into his cloak and pulled out fresh bread and cheese. Takara tilted her head slightly to look at him, inhaling deeply as she tried to scent the food he held, but could only smell the musty air around her.
"I'm not hungry," she said quietly, looking away from him. "Stop wasting your time Diada."
"Not until you eat, Dragon Girl," Diada said as he knelt at the foot of her straw bed. He looked at her in the shadows and sighed. Her dirty blonde hair was matted, and he'd noticed after she stopped singing it had become streaked with gray. When she had first arrived, she sang every night for the first month of her capture. It had been weeks, he realized, since he'd last heard her haunting voice drifting through the hallways of the prison. He'd noticed the gleam leaving her flame colored eyes and the glow leaving her pale skin. The bite was leaving her voice and she no longer put up much of a fight when she was taken out for questioning. Each time he had to take her out, she felt lighter in his grasp. Even the specialized cuffs on her wrists, used to suppress her powers, seemed looser and no longer chafed her wrists.
Takara shrank away, pushing closer to the wall when he knelt next to her. "I can't Diada," she said softly. "It won't stay down." She nodded to the corner where her chamber pot was located, and where the majority of her stomach contents ended up.
