From the Vault: Mendi

I could go into the lovely soreness at the back of my throat and the utter doneness I feel slumped in front of this computer at 3:38 CST, but instead I will simply post an old snippet I wrote for a friend and describe Karaoke Night tomorrow.

He is inconspicuous. At the table of the Gods, he is in the background, the silent one sipping wine, radiating disinterest in any and all. Those who pay him any attention quickly stop doing so, and that is when he smiles.

His teeth are gorgeous white, spiking out past his lips on the top and jutting up from the bottom, but there is falseness there, the faint scent of bleach and urea; he has colored these teeth, colored and recolored, and if one were to break one off one would see the ring of crimson he's tried so hard to hide.

For he is Mendi, the Dragon God of Lies, and his every move is falsity. He finesses through the world, sidling past everything, his body long and lithe. His scales are a dull silver, but like a chameleon's. It's rare they light up, and when they do, you may as well close your eyes for as well as you can see him. Those times he is colored are the spectacularly engineered lies, the deceptions that fuel wars and peace. They momentarily fill him with beauty and delight, making him one with the world around him, and his pearly claws--those, too, concealing ages of blood and deceit--clench into the minds they can reach, spreading more of him.

Spies, theives, con artists, kings, paupers, any who decieve to control, answer to him. The truly gifted liars, the silver-tongues, the controllers of nations and worlds, are absorbed into his being at their passing; when the lie breaks and the hard, dark truth forces through the cracks in their tapestries, he is there to take them.