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Minthara does not sleep. While she may rest, she will always retain her awareness. She does not fall into the numbing embrace of unconsciousness. She never does, for she has no need to, nor does she ever want to; nor will she, not while any other being exists on the same plane as her. Not while there is the slightest possibility that she may awaken to the taste of copper and malice. Some may call it fear, but she simply calls it self-preservation and wit.
Minthara does not sleep, and in the dappled glow of the moonlight directly above, neither does Vice. The tiefling idly threads her fingers through Minthara's silken locks with practiced delicacy, the pair lying half on a mat of worn cushions and frayed blankets, and half on the dew-touched grass of the night about the threshold of the drow’s tent.
Minthara and Vice's sleeping arrangement is not unfamiliar. Before, Vice would forgo sleep as long as her body would let her, fearing the lack of control that the lull of sleep would inevitably bring. It wasn't that she particularly mourned Alfira, but since the night that she had remembered the sensation of intestine and freshly congealing blood and viscera, she could not help but dread how loose of a grip on her control she truly had. Now, whenever Vice must relinquish herself to rest, Minthara will lay in her arms, ready to incapacitate her beloved at the slightest abnormal twitch.
"It is late, my love," Minthara murmured, her breath letting out a faint fog in the cold of the night. "Why are you still awake?"
Vice hums, contemplative, chin resting lightly against the other woman's head. "Just thinking."
"That is not a habit that often befits you."
"Are you calling me stupid, darling?" While tinged with affectionate humour, the tiefling's voice remains lazy as she continues idly playing with Minthara's hair.
"I only jest — what is on your mind?"
"Nothing. A lot. Don't ask me questions I'm too stupid and tired to answer." Vice pauses for a moment. An expectant, waiting silence, as she sought to find the right words. “What makes someone who they are?”
Minthara doesn't reply straight away, silent and still as she rests against Vice’s chest. She would raise an eyebrow had she the energy or will to, but her expression remains passive as she gazes somewhere far in the distance. She thinks on the question, as it's one she's never fully had the answer to herself. “Everything. The goals they strive for. Their intentions. Their actions. Their experiences.”
Vice chews on words of the smaller woman for a moment. “None of that… Works with me. I'm all contradictions.”
“Then you are merely a contradictory person. That is part of who you are.”
“All I know of myself is that I'm a contradictory liar. Gods, I don't even know my birthday. How old I am. Whether my name is even my name.”
“Birthdays are a pointless concept and age is merely a reminder of where you are between your birth and your death. Names only impact how you would refer to someone. You could change your name a hundred times and it would not matter.”
Vice grows silent for a moment, letting Minthara’s words settle into her fractured mind. After a pause, she speaks, voice more metaphorically quiet than it had been physically to avoid waking anyone. “What do you see in me? What do you like?”
“Was all of this merely foreplay to me raising your ego?”
“I have no ego, darling. I think that's been established.”
“I would not mind, even if you did. You are deserving of a little praise.” Minthara takes the tiefling’s free hand, gazing down at it lazily as she intertwines their fingers together, her thumb gently smoothing over the scars that littered her battle-worn skin. “You are a decent kisser, for one.”
Vice chuckles, chin leaning further down against the top of the drow’s head. “You make me aware of that enough already. I don't think you'd be kissing me so often if I wasn't.”
“Correct. I would not.” A breath, then, “I like your prowess in combat. The face you make when you are covered in the blood of our enemies.”
“Gods, now you're really making it sound like I'm just looking for an ego boost.”
Minthara brings Vice’s hand, still intertwined with hers, to her lips, and leaves a gentle kiss to the scarred skin on the back. “Is that not what a lover is for? To praise their beloved’s every redeeming quality?”
“Is that why you're with me? Because I praise you?” Vice asks with mock incredulity.
“That is one of the many reasons, yes.”
“The other reasons being that I'm a good kisser and that I'm hot when I'm covered in blood?”
Minthara nods. “That and coitus.”
“That and- Gods, you are so shallow.” Vice frees her fingers from the confines of the other woman’s hair to give her a light tap on the head.
“And you are a fool to think even for a second that I would ever stop talking if I were to give a full list of the reasons I like you.”
The tiefling kisses the crown of Minthara’s head, lips lightly brushing the soft white of her hair, affectionate. “So corny.”
“You seem to have such a penchant for criticising me.”
“Hey, I never said it was a bad thing.”
Minthara smiles subtly into the nightclothes adorning Vice’s chest, their banter slowly easing into a comfortable (or at least slightly moreso than the mood prior) silence.
Vice closes her eyes, expression something resembling content. She settles further into the thin pillows and blankets surrounding her, strong arms moving to wrap more firmly around her lover. A vast majority of her actions during the day may be manipulative and purely to her advantage, yet laying here, surrounded by naught but the sound of distant crickets and a cold breeze, she feels entirely herself, whoever that may be.