There was a mouse. There was a mouse on her gods named shoe!. It was literally touching her! Its little mouse paws on her feet skittering and clinging. Dafni’s shrill scream pierced the buzz of the Central Plateia like the cry of a baby at an orgy. Or so she assumed, because that would just be awkward.



She had first noticed the dastardly vermin when something soft had brushed her leg, and she had just known. Known that something dirty was touching her. That something unspeakable was happening. She had just known that an unworthy thing was daring to braver her illustrious presence.



She had almost been too scared to look down, but the pinch of its tiny claws against her skin as it attempted to climb her GODS DAMNED LEG had finally punched through her momentary denial.



And that is when she screamed, a full on, auditorily distressing sound, that was almost unearthly in its pitch and power. But, this was Dafni we were talking about, she was rather unearthly in general (and not particularly in a good way).



Then had come the thrashing, the twirling and whirling and writhing of her overtly feminine form against her unseen enemy. Her handmaiden standing off to the side, frozen with a look of such utter shock and resignation, any normal person may have cried for the poor woman’s plight. Or laughed. Depending on their disposition.



This was neither the first, nor would it be the last, of Dafni’s infamous public debacles. But her brain was so full of revulsion at the moment that any future, or past, reprimands were the farthest thing from her mind. So uncalled for and sudden was her reaction to the creature nobody else could see, that nearly everyone who was in range of her crazy stopped what they were doing to stare. It was a sight few would ever forget… a well bred Nobel like herself absolutely losing their shit in the middle of the Central Plateia. Father would not be pleased (to say the least).



Dafni’s attendants were not quick enough to action, and overcome with urgency, she latched onto the nearest person for help. He was a relatively lean fellow with the brilliant blue eyes made predatory by the wolfish face that framed them. He was taller than herself by a healthy margin, and far from the type of man she would ever have interacted with normally; if his distinctly non Noble-esque roughness and dress were any indication (why, he even had a scar on his face, the barbarian). But he was there, and that was all that mattered to Dafni’s fear-addled brain. Taking hold of the front of his clothing in a fierce grip that could very well indecently displace a garment of lesser design, she shook him.



“GET IT OFF ME!” The banshee screamed once more.