For the Love of Wrong Things

“We have plenty of time, you know.” she said, a still heart when love was new. She really doesn’t know what she is. 

“This is nothing to run from.” she’d said, an order from a heart that should’ve rotten out long ago.

All said above, twice washed finery, like it were natural for her, as a Paramour.

The table is set with concerning elegance by a creature who in her natural state could have anyone. 

These were the actions of a being so infatuated with the common, that she could not ascertain its true purposes. Minda wasn't as common as she seemed, and Elpis couldn't help but be ignorant to the true nature of the object of her affection.

Minda remembered a lonely life before now, though such feelings have not truly left her, in the tentative affections of a creature whose nature is that of one abandoned.

Elpis is thieving, wanton of the world, and more so how it bends to her.

It isn't in her nature to be faithful, though she is loyal to a fault.

The apartment is often still empty when she comes home, though in her nature as a lonely human she still speaks to it.

“Honey, I’m home. Oh wait, that’s right, I live alone.”

"Hey your home! I picked up some pizza.” Elpis said one day, it was her job to care about things like that after all. At least this was the role she'd subsumed, trying to take the one heart she fancied.

It was clear to her in memory, part and parcel to her purpose, she'd been assigned many times to this kind of role. 

It was in fact a long day up against creatures of similar nature to Elpis, that she’d learned of her new mission.

Her apartment, her old place, emptied by her handler.  

It was well within their rights, taking her out of one place and into another, even if it wasn’t, they had the legal team necessary to make up the difference.

“You're being reassigned.” her apparent handler said, though such a role had changed hands yet again. Minda’s role wasn’t a valued one. Though, considering how frequently this specific interaction had occurred, her handlers might be priced even lower.

“What to?”

“There’s a suspected Paramour down in Greensboro, and we need someone who's gifted against it.” her newest handler set the file down. It wouldn’t due for her to get a read out on them, and so it was the custom for all involved to act with distance.

She was one tasked with making contact with creatures, so was the ostracism of sin eaters and other such necessary evils.

Couldn’t have the beloved in hell for their frailty, so let the beggar eat the sweets.

It was only fair.

She knew what she was up against, even before opening the file. The creatures, the Paramour, are all descendants of the same rotten bloodline.

They owed their powers to a quartet of mystical beings trapped on earth with only the divine and human to torment. Such was their lineage in common, four to three, thinned in human blood. It was nothing she in line with the order hadn’t faced before.

Though she didn’t like moving, it was better to travel under contemporary sedation rather than horse tranquilizers.

And she was set yet again in a city she was only to be passingly familiar with before the enactment of her mission. She would be less than amused to find the file bereft of a photograph.

It was as if her time was truly worthless, all the information they deigned to accrue and not even a class photo to reference against. She had half a mind to shoot her handler whenever next she saw.

Only half, it wouldn’t do to kill her without a replacement. And there were plenty of places to put her away if she wasn’t amiable.

And if anything the impromptu investigation she’d been forced into would allow her so much more time to acclimate. Which to Minda would be more than worth it.

She was glad that, while her life was cloistered by the order her housing was always prepaid.

And that was how she met her, at a coffee shop ‘investigating’ a latte.

Which was a fair assessment, as she wasn’t all that adventurous. The barista was of more gregarious character. Much more gregarious, and she learned quickly of the lineage she was sent to deal with.

Still it wasn’t enough for her, she may have at one time had the webbing associated with a descendant of Myskia, but so did one out of every Two-Thousand Five-Hundred babies. She was adopted but the statistics on that were astronomical, even with such a lineage.

It was also no secret how those more intricate marks were called for. Minda definitely didn’t want to missapply her skills.

Elpis wasn’t near so apprehensive even then, she’d wanted nothing more than to impose on Minda much more complicated affections than those inherent to her kind. She showed with all of them. Those proofs of human ruin, but most fully in the last, Lejle.

Lejle was the only one among them that didn’t always use humans as hosts.

“Can we go out? It’s not good behavior, but you're a bit much to pass up.” 

It was the first unnecessary thing Elpis ever said to her, and it still held fast in her thoughts, whenever she was taken by the luxury of her presence.

Her merriment carried well into her life as it moved now. Minda was free, with the pittance that was her own affections shared.

They haven’t been caught yet. 

This was all she could think about as she looked at the old framed photo. It had been something she’d lost years ago, simply in her hands now, a gift from her Paramour.

“Well, how’d you manage that? They couldn’t even find kiddy photos of you.”

“And they never will, It was only a little farther to find yours though. Even the C.I.A is lazy about these kinds of things,” She followed her gaze down to Minda’s parents, “actual people tend to be more thorough.”

“You knew they hated us. And you stole me anyway. Did you ever know what you were?”

“Of course. We were never going to make it, if I didn’t.”

Like so many times before she held her hands, in the warmth of a room they’d found for themselves. Unbound by what their natures should mean.