Abiteth, the huge female black mamba slid across the polished floorboards, smooth scales soundless. Erika stretched her raised leg against the dance barre, leaning hard against her thigh to stretch out her calve muscles. She swung her leg off of the barre and lowered it to the floor, turning to peer out of the huge, wall-length window at the slowly waking city below. Abiteth rose and curled around her leg, pulling her heavy body up her young human's frame in thick, oily black coils.
Erika held the barre with one hand to steady herself, the other hand rising to stroke fondly over the smooth crown and jaw.
It was a beautiful day outside - it looked like it would be the perfect weather for her very first day at school, after all.
She chewed her lip silently for a moment - the only show of nervousness - and turned around slowly at the sound of her bedroom door opening. Her second cousin Xara exited the bedroom, her head buried in her book. Neither girl greeted each other - they were forced into one another's presence on a regular basis, whenever Xara's parents of Erika's were away for a long period of the time, meaning one another's homes. Xara's parents were away for business again, leaving Xara in Erika's house.
Abiteth pulled away from Erika's hand to curl back in an angry 'S' with an unhappy hiss when Xara's large barasingha stag, Caedman, followed behind his preoccupied human. The buck pawed at the ground with cloven hooves and snorted hot air, but neither girl paid the fierce creatures any attention. The familiars had never liked each other - couldn't be near one another without being in a huff - but this morning was particularly bad, down to their nervousness. Erika didn't care much for her cousin, which showed in her snake's cold attitude, but they gave each other all the space they wanted, and that was enough for Erika.
With no morning greeting shared between the two six-year-old girls, the long haired blone turned back to her morning view, and the shorter haired girl passed behind, absorbed in her book even as she and her stag moved into the kitchen, the clip-clip-clip of his hooves on the hardwood floor echoing between them.
Erika was nervou about school, but she would hide it. If Xara was managing to act like usual, then she would, too.
