[P] bite my tongue, bide my time

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

Truth be told I don't mind
'Cause her hell's my paradise
She can crush every hope
Got her heels stompin' down my throat

B

iz.

She looks surprised, even shocked. If the sick, crawling joy I had felt earlier was a splinter working its way through my skin then the sensation that hits me now is a spear that runs me straight through. I see the real her, for a moment, naked as the day she was born, all exposed nerves and frayed wires. I tip my chin down politely, smiling.

"Of course," I say, "I would trust no one else with the choice." It is only half of a lie.

I, alongside the shopkeep wrapped in thick winter wools, watch Isabella pick her way through the displays, carefully weighing each piece she examines as if it will answer some unspoken question I have not yet dared to ask-- her or myself. My tongue touches the back of my teeth again, in impatience. I almost ask her to hurry, in a way that would make her hurry, magic or no, but my teeth are clenched tight enough to be trapped there.

Moving would dispel the weight of the moment, I think. There is a certain joy in the impatience. It is absolutely not because I want-- no, need to know what she sees when she glances back at me.

I imagine she's me, scouring the shop with sweat on my neck, panning my way toward an answer. I already know that if I chose for her it would be the pillowed box to my right, a thick silver chain that glitters in the low light, its pendant a fire opal set in a bed of crushed pearls. Understated. Beautiful without really drawing the eye. I imagine it sitting high up on her throat, just at her pulse point, dark against the cream of her skin but almost white against the sharp black of her hair.

My mouth feels dry when she turns back to me, draping a thin golden chain across my forehead before securing it. I hear myself ask for a mirror but do not feel myself say it. I watch in a haze as the mirror is brought, and angled, and I am staring back at myself with an expression of mixed panic and something like hunger. I take a moment to school my features back into place before I really look.

It is beautiful, truly-- I would love to give myself the credit, that the blue is so blue because it is against the red of my face and the burning gold of my eyes, but the more I look the more I see it's not true. It isn't ostentatious, actually rather tasteful, nestled between the looping chains that frame my face and the spike on the bridge of my nose. A gift, the girl says. Sapphire, to remind you of Terrastella's oceans. Another spear of joy lodges itself in my gut.

My eyes shift to her, looking through the reflection. I see my smile crack into a grin. "Biz Foster," I say, "I was right to trust you, clearly." My reflection watches her speak with the shopkeep some more, before her eyes meet mind again through the mirror.

Take it with you, she says-- a demand. I turn to look at her, more than a little amused. When she tries to take it back I choke down another chuckle. "Thank you, truly. I will stare at it every day, as long as I live." 

"You should come." I say, a little conspiratorially, as I remove the jewelry and place it in the delicate box I am offered for transport. "To the party. So you can see it in action."

@Isabella