You wouldn't think it to look at Sophia, but she was just a coconut in a top hat. Everyone claimed it was eldritch magic, but she knew better. She was a spy, an international woman of mystery, and eldritch magic was just part of the cover story.
This story isn't about Sophia. Let her sit there in Prague, being fêted by financiers who longed to woo her but from whom she was stealing secrets and in return offering only vague promises of wild Caribbean nights. She may be the most interesting person in this story, for all that she is just a coconut in a top hat. But leave her there. We can't interrupt her.
This story is instead about the woman Sophia loved but could never be with. For all her globetrotting and espionage, Sophia could never overcome the traditions that bound her. She could never love a human. The coconuts wouldn't approve. And so Mimi, the shy pastry chef, could never know that she was loved. Sophia couldn't bring herself to tell anyone, least of all the object of her forbidden affections.
Mimi, the actual subject of this story, was deeply in love too. But she too couldn't tell anyone, not because they wouldn't approve, but because her love was an ancient wizard of great power who had placed a charm on Mimi forbidding her from ever telling anyone. And so Mimi suffered in silence.
The moral of the story is that sometimes you shouldn't tell people you love them if they're ancient and nigh-omniscient wizards.
Sophia looked at her watch (which she kept in her top hat), excused herself from the table, and five minutes later was rappelling down the side of the hotel toward the fourteenth floor to steal your secrets. Because she told you. Eldritch magic was just part of the cover story. Don't trust coconuts.
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