Kez stands before a wooden door painted in dark orange, wondering whether she should knock or simply enter. Nobody's told her what she should do now she's here; the funny, flitting, fashionable phantom in the foyer asked her some obscure questions, she answered as honestly as she could, and her interlocutor smiled and directed her to this floor, this room.
Now what?
She raises a hand, intending to turn the round knob, but the hand soars up past it without taking hold, and instead runs through her hair as she sighs. She's thought, a lot, about all the things that might be a little... sensitive or embarrassing about visiting the Twisted Vixen, but it's never occurred to her until now that opening a door would be so spectacularly awkward.
Someone else comes down the corridor. Christ, really? She whips out her phone and scrolls rapidly through Twitter in the hopes it'll somehow look like she's totally comfortable where she is, everything's fine, no cause for concern here, thanks very much. Maybe she's just checking the details before she confidently takes to her allotted room and bedfellow, or something equally reasonable.
The footsteps pass behind her; she steals a glance as the other person swishes past. She could swear, as they stride away, that their hair colour shifts from dark brown to vibrant red. Maybe it's a trick of the light. Or not, given what she's been promised is possible here.
She tucks her phone back in her pocket and collects herself, straightening her shirt and exhaling firmly. She can do this. She can totally do this. Her hand rises again, this time forming a fist poised ready and eager to knock on the wood in a way that'll tell anyone who might hear it that this is a confident person who knows exactly what they're doing.
Before she can knock, the door opens.
"Oh, hi."
Kez puts her hand down. "Um."
The young woman on the other side of the door reaches out with a slender arm, skin drenched in ink that pools and rushes to form dozens of flowers and vines and shapes Kez can't identify, and takes Kez by the hand. "You must be Kez - first time, right?"
"Is it that obvious?" Practically squeaked. Yes, it's that obvious.
"Maybe," says the woman holding Kez's hand, "or maybe I just read the form they got you to fill out."
"Oh."
Kez feels the gentle tug of soft fingers on her wrist and allows this stranger to pull her into the room; she glides across the threshold, smoothly invited in like a paintbrush lovingly drawn across the edge of one sheet and onto another. The room behind the door almost seems to be reclining casually, so at ease it seems with its own layout: not too big, not too much emptiness between things, but more than enough space on the bed or the sofa to sit or lie in blissful comfort.
"Evie," says the woman, letting go of Kez to close the door.
The skin on Kez's wrist and hand blushes warm as the contact breaks. "I - um - what?"
"My name." Evie laughs, a sparkling cascade of delicate sound. "I'm Evie."
Now Kez is blushing too. "Kez," she says, unnecessarily.
Evie just smiles at her. "Nice to meet you." She's not what Kez expected, although now she thinks about it she has no idea what she was expecting: perhaps in her late twenties, Evie has dark hair dangling in a loose braid across her collarbone, which her baggy T-shirt exposes. Her face is... honest, Kez thinks. The kind of face you'd look at and just immediately trust to be kind to you, although some ethereal angle of her features makes you wonder whether you can trust her not to disappear off into another world entirely, leaving you pining after her as she vanishes to some place where you can't follow. Those wide green eyes look like they could see anything, no matter how well it was hidden.
"You too," Kez says after a moment, realising she ought to say something. She wonders, absurdly, whether she should've worn something different. She's just in a long-sleeved top and jeans, and Evie's in pretty much the same minus the sleeves, and yet somehow Kez feels hugely underdressed to be in the room with this person.
Evie crosses to the sofa and sits, patting the seat next to her. Kez descends onto the plush cushion - much less gracefully than Evie - and stares at the floor, fingers playing at the ends of her sleeves. Evie reaches out and places one palm on top of Kez's restless hands - not pressing or restricting, a reassuring weight.
"This is weird for you," Evie says after a moment. She's tilting her head forward to look into Kez's eyes, but they're still fixed on the carpet.
Kez blinks a few times, then glances up. "Just a bit," she admits.
"It's okay." Something in Evie's voice makes Kez want to believe it, makes her feel like it couldn't be anything other than okay if that's what Evie says it is. There's a certainty to it. "It's always a bit weird, but you don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with."
Kez looks into Evie's face. "I don't... know what I'm comfortable with."
