b e x l e y
I'LL BE YOUR SLAUGHTERHOUSE, YOUR KILLING FLOOR
Less than a second into her tirade, Bexley realizes her miscalculation.
The girl looks back at her with eyes that simmer molten gold, not unlike her own when she could tap into her magic, and as Bex watches her - the sloping shoulders, the ivory eyelashes, the bright-yellow lures - she thinks she recognizes something in the stranger, the same since-forgotten nobility that runs inside her own blood. She has to pause abruptly, curb her tongue. Almost a feeling of embarrassment comes over her. Maybe she’s spent too long in the desert - maybe it’s sanded down her fine edges and royal manners and left her as common and rough as the next native Solterran, wearing bone piercings and face-paint made from ash.
But that’s only a maybe. Maybe, she thinks, it’s still this girl’s fault for standing in the middle of the street.
The Regent leans back onto a cocked hoof, unselfconsciously winds a stray curl back behind her ear. Those blue eyes linger on Mantis watchfully. She’s surprised to see the stranger’s only reaction is a nod: almost every newcomer can be caught in a state of obnoxious arrogance or complete panic, depending on how well they know the desert, how willing they are to fight, and how little they believe in their own mortality. Almost every newcomer is wild-eyed and unhinged, but this one rests on the axis of casualness and complete, bone-freezing chill. Bexley wonders how much of it is a facade, a serious attempt to gain the upper hand in a land that expects her to lay down, roll over, and take it - and if it is a facade, how far she’ll go to keep it up.
Solterra breeds its own kind of desperation. Under the hot white eye of the sun, there’s room for very little else.
I’m Bexley, she continues, raises a dark-gold brow against the dimming light. It's a strange thing, to have to introduce herself, when she's been in Novus so long, settled in so deeply, that half her new conversations don't require an exchange of names - when most strangers have already passed around whispers speculating what blade cleaved her face in two, why she wasn't smited for raging at her own gods. Nice to meet you. And you are-?
@mantis
