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

There is a heaviness in her chest. It feels as heavy as the world as it settles on the sinews of her heart. Each breath is laboured, her lungs as solid with grief as iron. 


Where has the prideful girl gone? She is a shadow of her former self. Minya walks as if she has lost something - which she has. An emptiness fills her up and splits her open. Her heart feels raw, her lungs fibrosed. It is her pride she lacks, that thing that gave her beauty and horridness.


She is vacant now. An empty house that is falling to rack and ruin. It begins at her poll, where her once great antlers stood. Now there is only two sharp shards, broken like splinters of wood. 


They rise like devils horns and she is sure that some might laugh at the girl who has become the manifestation of her hateful personality. 


Slowly Minya weaves through the crowds, keeping to its edges, keeping her chin up where none could brush the wounded splinters of her antlers - oh how they ache. Even the sigh of the wind is enough to electrify her with pain. The broken nerves are raw and frayed. Every piece of her feels as raw as her poll. Every piece of her feels sharp with shame.


She buys a loaf from a merchant. The exchange is meek and it is mild. There is no haughty twist to her lips, no clutching gaze that forces hi, to look at her and know that she is a prize. No, now her gaze raw with humbleness, evades his, her words mumbled and soft and broken.


Minya moves on through the crowd, limping, not dancing as she once would have. She takes a bite of the bread, just one because it tastes like ash in her mouth. Then she passes the loaf on to a pauper and presses on, no longer hungry, forever empty. 


It is time to return home, she is desperate to. But how could she ever return to Scarab when their most popular dancer now looks as she does?


She takes a breath and refuses to weep.

-anyone and everyone is welcome! <3-