take that look from off your face
you ain't gunna burn my heart out

Her breath is tight within her lungs.


She aches to dance this night to step beneath the lights and dance to forget. But the more Minya thinks of it, the more she realises that not even dance will rid her of this horror.


Her skin, soft like silk, feels as coarse as sand within her. Maybe that is just what she is - filled with sand. Did she become buried in the island too? Is that why her limbs feel so heavy?


No, no. Minya is not just sand. She cannot be. Not when her nerves ache and her stomach roils with this horror. The Scarab dancer cannot close her eyes for that girl from the island is waiting for her there. She cannot stand the silence of her changing room, for through that deep quiet cuts the girls screams, her pleas…


Minya gasps, she rakes air into her lungs and lowers her gaze away from the mirror, away from anything that might reflect the creature she is back to her. She knows the patrons of the Scarab do not see it. Not when they adore her and continue to throw her roses and gems. Not when they watch her move with wonder in their eyes.


Maybe they might know if they saw how she wept after her performance. Maybe they would begin to question if they saw how her knees trembled and her stomach churned. How she would lie upon the cold stone and weep and pray that she could crawl out of her skin and leave this shell, this awful creature that she has become, far, far behind.


Is this what guilt is? Is this how shame eats away at the inside of you? Minya is a desolate waste inside. She roils within her skin and cannot stand herself. She cannot stand the looks of the girl who begs to be saved, who Minya pushed from her. Was her life worth saving over that other mare? Did the island laugh as it felled horses and watched the moral dilemmas play out?


Ah Minya pushes through her changing room, and throws open the balcony doors. She gasps, surfacing from her mind and its sea of questions that clutch her and drown her with their accusations. This is guilt. Oh this is guilt and it is so much more than when she was a child! It is so much more visceral... or maybe it is only that now she knows how awful this life can be, how grey and smudged the line of morality truly is?


Below her Denocte thrums and patrons laugh and upon Minya’s tongue are piling furious shouts that she clings to and does not let loose. But oh how she longs to shout at them. How can you be so merry when so many have died on the island! How dare you!


But Minya does not speak. No, she clings to the rail and gasps and breathes and feels her chest constrict tight. She can hear Aghavni laughing - how amused she would be to see what minya has become. How horrified to learn of what she did upon that crumbling spit of land.


Minya turns and steps back inside, for cool air does not help her. She leaves her room, the moves down into the Scarab. Through gilt corridors and vibrant halls for gambling and out into the luscious, decadent lounges. She does not stop until she reaches the bar and asks for their strongest liquor. 


On that walk she had already composed herself. She has already smoothed down the silk of her mane that lies along her back sheer and stunning. In her antlers chime her jewels like faerie laughter. Across her lashes are black diamonds, glittering like night. Minya is so utterly beautiful as even in her guilt she will not let herself slip. Not until the liquor is placed before her and she tips it back. It slides down her throat in a burning, shocking oblivion.


@Mesnyi