January by the numbers continues (now two days off~)!
From kelkyag‘s prompt “Poise;” a ficlet.

This one turned out a little weird~~

🍹

It means weight.

Well, it doesn’t mean weight, but it’s all about weight.

Poise. When I was little, I thought “being poised to” was the same as “being poisoned” and I thought if someone was poised to, say, leap, it was because someone had poisoned their mind.

(Speaking of leaps, I made quite a few strange ones when I was young)

Turns out a poison is a potion, and not necessarily a weighty one.

Turns out a potion, if you mix it just properly, can actually stand in for proper poise.

Or not mixed with much care at all: a libation (meaning a sacrificial wine, poured out for a deity, or, I suppose, for one’s fallen friends) can do the same, albeit only if ingested in small amounts.

But back to poise. I needed some. I am a small woman and one without much weight to my manner; people underestimate me, they under-value me, and they often undermine me, because I have so little weight.

So I indulged in a small libation, poured a tithe out for those who hadn’t made it this far, and climbed the thirty-seven flights up to the witch’s apartment.

It might have been a potion; it might have been a poison. I watched her mix it with far too little interest in which.

From underestimated to under-taken was not really where I wanted to go; I wanted to be under-writ. But at that moment, I found I had far too little concern for which way it went.

That happens, I’ve been told, when one is under a great weight (and so we return, again, to weight).

I drank down the thing the witch had brewed for me, hoping for poise. Hoping for enough weight, enough gravitas (which actually means seriousness, nothing to do with weight, but hey), to do what needed to be done.

Poised. I was poised to talk to the big bosses. Now the question was… was I also poisoned?

🍹

Next: Poise-oned – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1256733.html

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