((Reposting from Discord!))

It was a dark and stormy night- or well, it should have been. Nerea frowned at the last dregs of the sun; even towards the end of the day, they still hurt her eyes. The weather was supposed to be rough and rainy, her favorite, and she'd watched with glee from the rented villa as the fog had rolled in- but somehow, it hadn't stayed in. It had passed over like a skimmed stone, and as the market opened, she kept pulling the brim of her hat down to shield her sensitive eyes.

It was an incongruous hat. An extremely incongruous hat. She'd never owned a straw hat before, let alone one so ridiculously wide. The brim's shadow skimmed her shoulders, and the bullseye stripes made her look like a target from above. She was never one for... that type of ostentation. Ostentation was fine, provided it was silks and velvets the color of night. There was nothing she enjoyed more than relaxing on a plush chaise lounge in a damask robe the color of a fresh bruise, or being swathed in navy chiffon for a ball or a party. But the beach hat... well, it just didn't go, darling.

Still, as the sun seemed so reluctant to fade, she felt glad of it. The more brilliant and bright the sunset, the worse she felt, and this was shaping up to be a beautiful sunset, orange and pink and scarlet. Fire in the sky. Night sloped towards them, ambling slowly, and she remembered what she came here for.

Everyone here used magic, and there were more charms and enchanted trinkets than one could shake a stick at. Surely here, in this charmed town, she would find something that could help her. Something that would alleviate her curse- and perhaps, someone to help as well.

There was a stall that sold charms, a big one, with as much variety as she could want. That seemed a promising place to start. The shopkeeper seemed busy, so she started looking for what she wanted on her own.

In a town like this, the graveyards there were were well-kempt, far from the shores, and had expansive, but very full, family plots. The paths through the rows of graves were often gravel with flagstone, offering good traction and better drainage for people who would be walking through with formal attire and, more often than not, impractically tall, slender heels.

Esraa spent much of her nights looking over the places, digging graves on the occasion one was necessary, but as often as not merely patrolling the place to make sure that any trespassers were the benign types-- teenagers, for example, or children with particularly dark, moody predilections.

In her family, the magic had run strongly towards an affinity for the dead, and the ability to handle the restless. In practice, this had nothing to do with her job. People being put in cemetaries were given careful rites, and in a place like this, bodies were almost never treated in a way the once-living would have frowned upon, even if their final rites failed to meet their idealized expectations.

Death, as in life, seldom lived up to the hype, and one of the last things everyones' lingering spirits seemed to do was come to terms with some slight disappointments before, once again, moving on.

Much like the dead, Esraa had found her first serious jobs after graduation to be far less related to what she'd hoped or expected-- the spirits of the people and pets here were too well-adjusted and happy to really experience any trauma, so like many, she'd merely come to accept her career as an imperfect field in which to apply her hobbies and skills to, while she plied her Workings on her own private time.

And what she'd found in the intervening years was that handling the displeased spirits of the... undearly departed involved ammassing a rather large amount of, for lack of a better term, more-or-less-ethically reclaimed parts that many, many people used for charms and spells.

In a town like this, the graveyards there were were well-kempt, far from the shores, and had expansive, but very full, family plots. The paths through the rows of graves were often gravel with flagstone, offering good traction and better drainage for people who would be walking through with formal attire and, more often than not, impractically tall, slender heels.

Esraa spent much of her nights looking over the places, digging graves on the occasion one was necessary, but as often as not merely patrolling the place to make sure that any trespassers were the benign types-- teenagers, for example, or children with particularly dark, moody predilections.

In her family, the magic had run strongly towards an affinity for the dead, and the ability to handle the restless. In practice, this had nothing to do with her job. People being put in cemetaries were given careful rites, and in a place like this, bodies were almost never treated in a way the once-living would have frowned upon, even if their final rites failed to meet their idealized expectations.

Death, as in life, seldom lived up to the hype, and one of the last things everyones' lingering spirits seemed to do was come to terms with some slight disappointments before, once again, moving on.

Much like the dead, Esraa had found her first serious jobs after graduation to be far less related to what she'd hoped or expected-- the spirits of the people and pets here were too well-adjusted and happy to really experience any trauma, so like many, she'd merely come to accept her career as an imperfect field in which to apply her hobbies and skills to, while she plied her Workings on her own private time.

And what she'd found in the intervening years was that handling the displeased spirits of the... undearly departed involved ammassing a rather large amount of, for lack of a better term, more-or-less-ethically reclaimed parts that many, many people used for charms and spells.

She looked so stupid. So stupid in this hat, searching for something that would break a curse at a night market for tourists. And now somebody saw her and, and, and-

And what was so wrong about that, actually? She was on vacation, technically, in a town full of magic where her only obligations were to herself. She was stepping away from her life for a bit, taking a break. She was allowed to take breaks. Hers was a world of ballrooms and parties, and as good as she was at being the face of her family, a nebulous position at best, sometimes one needed to get away from that. It was good that she was taking a break. Not just from family business, but from her own life.

She wasn't schmoozing. She wasn't delicately draped on somebody's arm, laughing at their jokes and charming the life out of them. She was here to relax, recover, and look into breaking her curse. She was allowed to look silly while doing this, she kept telling herself as she ran long, delicate fingers over useless charms- and that's when she saw the woman looking at her.

Her heart jolted sideways. Remember why you're here, and what you're running away from, she thought. You are a dangerous creature and the last thing you want to do here is hurt someone. Because she did. She hurt people. She never wanted to, but it always happened. It was her destiny, her inexorable fate. Her family told her to take it less seriously; that she was gifted, and that if other people couldn't keep up with her gift, that was no fault of hers. It was a weakness in others, and that's what her gift was after all; a way to demonstrate power and strength, a way to show who was worthy, and who wasn't.

She didn't believe this, or at least she didn't want to. It simply couldn't be that everyone was unworthy. And yet she had to watch as friends and lovers simply... faded in her presence. She saw it every time. Bright skin turning sallow at her touch. Laughing eyes dimming, bubbling emotions fading away. She was a drain, a curse.

Which was what she was here looking for. These charms... these baubles. They were bright, and beautiful, and frivolous. This one would help you find love; this one would protect you from misfortune. This one for avoiding the evil eye, this one for strengthening your own darker thoughts.

None of them a protectant against her life-draining presence. She hated to see what happened to the people she grew close to. Hated to see how they shriveled after such a short time together.

Perhaps she would find what she was looking for elsewhere. Perhaps the beckoning gaze from the next stall over could help. So quietly, she abandoned the bright, cheery charms for the smaller stall.

Now was not the time for apprehension. And besides, the smaller stall didn't look nearly as busy. The magic seemed... pluripotent, in an odd way, different potential and different power. Darker, but not malevolent. Perhaps this shopkeeper could help her.

"Do you have anything for curses?" she asked, bold as brass, red eyes almost glowing out of her shadowed face. "Specifically a curse you were born with, not something somebody specific did to you. More of a curse lifter than a curse breaker, if you know what I mean. The stall next door- their charms are nice, but..." She shrugged, her loose violet stole slipping a little. "I don't need nice." She rarely needed nice. She needed solid, sturdy, not afraid to push back.

Esraa inclined her head as she bowed slightly forward, making an apologetic gesture at the woman standing before her. Now that they were closer, it was clear to her that the woman across from her was shorter than she had initially expected. "I'm sorry to say, I don't sell premade spells or charms here. I provide materials for all manner of charms and workings, gathered from restless spirits, and organized by their demands, if any, for how they should be treated." She opened a case gently, showing a collection of feathers, claws, tagged and labelled tufts of fur taped to photographs of pelts, and myriad bones.

"I've also been licensed to sell samples of gravedirt, lichens and moss, rust and runoff water for the more... abstractly-inclined spellmakers."

"But," The word came after a moment's pause, with a powerful bit of cheer behind it, "I know the sellers around here fairly well, and if we don't have something here, I'm usually fairly good at figuring out what sort of people you'd need to approach to get a custom working done, and I know what sorts of things they tend to work with, if they use physical materia in their craft." She leaned forward in her creaky, comfortable folding chair as she stood, and sidled her way along one of the side tables, grabbing a few paper carnival bracelets with her, and winding them around the handles of the boxes that weren't already locked, roughly pressing down the adhesive before popping up a sign illustrated with a phone number and a promise she'd return.

"What sort of curse do you think you're working with, and are you sure it's specifically a curse? If not, I'd try to avoid using terms we're not super sure of, just so we don't get caught with the wrong set of assumptions. It makes it harder to find the right expert early-on."

"Oh, I knew I'd found somebody who knew what they're talking about!" She smiled, revealing sharp teeth, gleaming more than they probably should. "Even if you don't sell completed piece, you might know something about... well, I had to admit it. But it's death magic, in a sense. It's... something I was born with. It's tragic, truly, but everyone I'm close to..." She blushed, she always did when talking about it. It was embarrassing, really, that someone like her would just drain the life out of somebody. "Well. It's like... I touch them, and they start to fade. Not at first! They're always beautiful and vital and oh-so-alive, but after being with me for a while- as soon as I truly start to understand, as soon as I start to... you know, fall for them, as soon as I think maybe this is it for us, that fate's going to be kind-" She stopped mid-sentence, looking away. "I'm sorry, it's so desperate of me, to assume a stranger is willing to hear any of this! But I truly am a desperate, pathetic creature. Every single one of my lovers has suffered a tragic fading-away. I'm the nexus, the hub, the center of their doom, and I'm here, in this seaside escape, to find a way to stop it." She gazed downard through long lashes. "Nobody in my family has been willing to help; they claim it's a gift. But what sort of gift would turn a poor girl into a predator? Certainly not one I want! Have you ever heard of such a thing?" There was a great pleading in her voice as she stared out from under the hat. "My magic hurts people, and I don't know how to stop it. That's what I'm trying to solve here."

The local witch nodded, listening to the other woman's plight, but mentally got stuck on the first thing her new companion said. It was lurid, it was dramatic, and it seemed totally, utterly incompatible with everything Esraa had ever learned about the sort of workings that involved the dying, dead, and those who had moved on. Either that, or she'd skipped some very, incredibly important details as she explained things.

"Death magic... well, mmm. Death magic generally kills the victims, so if I can ask you plainly... how... how many of them have passed away?"

"That's the thing, I don't know! Definitely two of them. But the others... it always goes the same way. We meet, we date, the curse takes hold, they start to fade, and then... well, then I insist they leave. For their own good. And they go, but it doesn't always work." Her eyes got a little bit misty, thinking about it. "Like I said- two of them died, cut down in the prime of their lives by my fatal kiss."

Esraa was struck by the choice of words her new acquaintance chose. This woman was clearly very, very extra... but that didn't mean she was necessarily wrong about her concerns. Melodrama didn't indicate a loose tether on reality, simply a high level of intensity of emotion.

"Mmm. Well, in that case... what specifically do you think the trigger is? How long does it take for symptoms to present, and when they did show up, did they occur in a specific order?" she asked the other woman. Her eyes flickered over Nerea's form, pausing on her lips, her eyes, her hands. Certainly a breakup with someone like her would be a difficult pill to swallow for most people, particularly if the woman was as wealthy as her choice of attire would seem to indicate.

Still it wouldn't do for her to get distracted. She flicked her gaze towards the other woman as she waited for a response.