[P] [FALL] Boogaloo

[Anandi]

It happens that a hunger can live on in a room unpeopled like an open mouth, like a soundless gasp

Anandi walks slowly through the crowded streets. Threading herself into the tapestry of this thing they call Night Court, swaying to and fro and wherever the fabric guides her. A fish, so to speak, out of water. If there were ever a fish so lovely.

Except the crowd is strangely like water in the way it bends and ripples around everything in its path. And as she move it parts around her; these land walkers intuitively step aside, out of her way. Perhaps it is the instinct of creatures of prey, perhaps it is because she oozes untouchable. Either way, it makes her feel superior. And, if she thinks about it too much, it makes her feel a little lonely.

Her features are pensive and distant as she moves serpentine through the sweaty, drunken, festive sea. What a wonderful bounty there is here. There is much to see, smell, touch (and taste, taste, taste, wouldn't you like to?) but, buoyed by the flow of the crowd, she does not stop walking. Not until she reaches one of the bonfires. They are like nothing she's ever seen before, this stage of heat and light, this little sun dancing like sea grass to unseen currents. She stops and watches with a wonder that might seem like lunacy.


The fire and the moon paint her face light and shadow, silver-orange and navy blue. Sharp features drawn to a point-- cheekbones, nose, brow. Delicate ears rising from a silky waterfall of forelock. She stares into the flames until the smoke burns her eyes and the heat draws a trail ofsweat from behind her ears. When she finally turns her head away, the fire is burned into her vision. She can see a man standing there, but when she looks at him directly all she sees is white fire. She's pretty sure he's staring. Some part of her hopes he is.

"What?" Anandi sneers, strangely made even more beautiful by the ugly expression. Anouk, in the form of a small globe of water, hovers in the air around her face. In him, the world reflected upside down.

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@Sterling ;D

☽ | ✩

[Sterling]

WHAT IF DEATH IS JUST ANOTHER
PAIR OF HANDCUFFS

It’s with no particular destination that Sterling strolls the alleys of the marketplace, his senses pleasantly full of music and dancing light. Long hours have passed since he took his first swig of harvest wine, long enough that he’s found his way nearly back to sobriety. He’s felt the temper of the festival shifting over the course of the day: the building excitement throughout the afternoon; the first, almost childlike pleasures of the evening; the increasingly wild indulgences as evening surrendered into night.

Now, at this late hour (or rather, he thinks, a very early one), the celebrations have eased back into an equilibrium of sorts. It’s not a lull, precisely, but the festival seems somehow softer around the edges, the noisy drunkenness and revelry replaced by quiet conversations and drifting strains of song.

It’s an almost... private side of the Night Court, and Sterling feels something of an outsider, winding by himself through the midnight streets. Everywhere he looks, horses stand in clusters, talking, laughing, sharing autumn pastries and horns of ale.

Everyone seems to know someone. No one else is alone.

But he knows, logically, that this cannot be true, and now that he’s looking it takes only a few minutes to notice the mare, gray and solitary. Beautiful, he thinks, and then, Dangerous. His pulse quickens, a heady pressure within his ears. He does not mean, at first, to follow her, but she carves an effortless path through the crowd, and it is easy to slip into her shadow, to ride in her wake.

The mare stops before one of the great festival bonfires, the firelight seeming almost to swim over her body, liquid and silvery. Sterling does not know how long he stands there, watching her watch the flames.

At last she turns, and sees him. “What?” she asks, her voice cool with disdain, and in response he reaches to pluck free the stray autumn leaf that had nested itself into the seafoam of her hair. He is not sure if she will let him (reach, touch), but the gesture is instinctive. A deadly instinct, maybe.

“You look...” Lovely, he wants to say. Wild. “New.” And she does. Not new as he is new, here, but new in the way of Aphrodite, risen from the surf on the ragged curve of an enormous shell—glistening and otherworldly, with her extravagant coral crown.

But there is something ancient about her, too, in the gleam of her eye, in the haughty arch of her neck. In the predatory flare of her nostrils. Sterling cannot help himself: he steps closer. “You smell of the sea.”

AND MAYBE GOD IS JUST A COP
THAT WE CAN FAST TALK

@Anandi <3

[Anandi]

It happens that a hunger can live on in a room unpeopled like an open mouth, like a soundless gasp

He plucks the leaf from her hair and her only response is to stare with jade eyes carved sharp as blades, attention pressed sweetly to his throat. Watching his heart beat at the jugular, wondering at all the heat and glory behind the rhythmic tap-tap tap-tap of his pulse. Feeling a little like dancing to that beat. The only way a predator knows how.

Anandi growls softly, so almost-imperceptibly softly, at the gentle brush of his touch. It’s one of those touches so soft it immediately exists only in memory. She only breaks her stare to watch the leaf float lazily to the ground.

“You look… new.” She raises a brow, unimpressed, wondering if there was something else he wanted to say. He steps closer (bold. good.) and says “you smell like the sea.”

Anandi could be nice. She should be nice. The alternative was loneliness, which didn’t suit her. So she lets herself laugh, and maybe it’s slightly at his expense but it’s sweet and genuine and he could not ask for much more, not from her. She laughs and she thaws, and the light suddenly seems much warmer, much richer on her sleek silver-grey skin. "You’re right. On both counts, clever boy." Her voice rings with dry amusement.

"Place like this, I'm sure we could find you a fitting prize." As they stand there, she's starting to sweat beneath the fire's hot touch. It is a curious sensation, not one she particularly likes. And the sweat itself, it makes her smell like the rest of them. Like meat, but… maybe a little sweeter. She looks at him with eyes that wonder can you smell my sweetness too? or are your senses too dull, poor clever land boy.

And she smiles, lazy and catlike, tightening the noose. (what noose? Well, when there’s a boy, he always comes with a noose around his neck.) "Care to show me around?" The young mare begins to walk down the gemstone-cobbled streets, stopping after a few feet to look behind her with head tilted expectantly. Not in the practice of waiting, at least not on terms that did not suit her. "I'd love to hear whatever else you can tell me about myself." She smiles so very sweetly.


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@Sterling <3

☽ | ✩