take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Her smile is wicked wild as smoke peels from her tongue like a dragon. It unfurls reaching for the sky like a black specter. Fire swells along her flank bright and fierce. It rises like a serpent around her limbs as she dances, climbing up from metal jewelry that winds like a serpent around her limbs. “Serpents.” Amun said as he gave her the gilt twisted armlets by the light of the camp fire. “Just like you.” He had quipped with a dangerous smirk.
Now she wore them boldly, ever ready to be the serpent everyone said she was. Fine chains hand like spidersilk between her antlers each link a reminder for every time they have called her a spider, a widow.
She smiles like a goddess as she swallows the flames, as she breathes them brighter than Denocte’s dragons into the air. The tattoo, high, high up on the inside of her thigh blinks bone white as she dances through smoke and flame.
Bells chime and jewels glitter and feathers drift whimsically as she dances. She has perfected seduction, she is the magician of illusion – though no magic sings in her blood and how fiercely proud that makes her! She smiles like a drug. She smiles like a knife. Never has she carried a blade, her weapon is her body and fighting is for barbarians.
Her dance ends and the crowd circling her erupts. Salt is thrown upon the bonfires that flare and hiss and flames leap into the skies. All the markets are wild this night as the summer solstice prowls like a lion through the wild markets.
Laughter pours like champagne from her lips, it purrs leonine as she stalks silver cold, ember bright out from the middle of the circle. No trinkets are left this night and Minya does not expect them. For this is not a Scarab night, this is a night for travelling performers, for gypsies and pilgrims. Her nerves are alight, memories flooding this girl who once was content to be a travelling girl, who performed on the Denocte streets and in the dust bowl of Solterra. Until she remembered, until she remembered she was a noble’s daughter and jewels and money meant everything. Until she remembered her poisoned mother lying dead from a nobles greed. Then she returned to money and glory. There she hated herself, there she could not look in the mirror at the girl of lavish luxury and remember her mother who died.
So this night is special. So this night is one to forget the Scarab and the betrayals and the knives and the court games. Here she laughs with liquor on her lips and plucks honey cakes from vendors stalls and pays them in diamond necklaces. Her she – collides with a creature of gold, her honey cake knocked from her grasp and falling into the dust.
“Careful.” She hisses to the stranger and the serpents climbing her limbs gleam wickedly in the firelight. Incense and smoke plume from her skin as her ears crumble into the pink silk of her mane.
the merry girl who became lot's bride, the happy woman who loved her wicked city;
B
exley watches from the sidelines with a gaze that is less-blue and more-flame. The salt-lick bonfires that climb into the sky and touch the sooty clouds shine like a mirror against the dark of her gaze; the yellow light and its opposite shadows climb her skin like vines, like rivers. In half-shadow she stands and looks. The market roils with the movement of bodies and the din of conversation. They all look like shadow puppets—the jerky way they move, how dark they stand against the lit bricks, their shadows rippling like disturbed water. Against it all she is the only bright and shiny thing, the only suggestion of gold in a world striped with black and silver.
(If Acton were here, she thinks, it would have been different. Not necessarily less sad or less nausea-inducing. But they had been so alike. So terribly two-of-a-kind. And now, no matter how close Bexley stands to the moving swarm in the streets, she feels… alone.)
Her skin burns hot under the fire-breath that spreads from the middle of the cobbled streets. When it grows too bright to bear, she finally shies away from the tumbling flames and wiggles like a fish through the crush of bodies, upstream to the deepest, darkest heart of the markets. She glances only vaguely at the stalls as she passes them. They are mostly the same—slimy vendors passing off thin alloy as real gold necklaces, cones of high-piled spices with scents thick enough to singe her nostrils, weapons in pretty, embroidered scabbards. None of it catches her eye. She has had enough of material possessions to last a lifetime. Now she is possessed by the desire for things more valuable and harder to find, things she does not exactly want to admit.
At the very end of the road, another fire booms into existence. (Gods, how many do they need?) But this one smells different. more sage than salt. And the smoke, when it hits the air, curls up like so many snakes, pretty-winding, full of teeth. They make flowers in the still, cold air. Slowly, she pulls toward it, like a moth drawn to a lantern. Her breath slows and yet deepens. Against the bright prinpicks of the stars, the smoke makes new clouds, a mockery of blackened dusk flooding the cobbled horizons.
Just as she breaks into the circle, stretching cautiously to see into the pit, someone rushes into her.
“For fuck’s sake,” Bexley mutters, not loud enough to reach anyone’s ears but her own. She grinds to an abrupt halt. Her gaze snaps up to meet Minya’s with some measure of coldness, if not pure disdain. Some of her irritation slips away, though, as their gazes meet. The idiot is pretty, pretty like her (which is to say, too pretty for her own good). Silver eyes, rivers of pink hair, and oh, Bexley does not miss the serpents that crawl up her legs—she smiles at them, sharp and warm, and tilts her head like a dog.
Bexley has always been as cute as she is hungry.
“I’ll try my best to be more careful next time,” she purrs, “Although I can’t say I regret it entirely—“ and there is no way to pretend that the way her gaze rakes over Minya is anything less than suggestive, nor even a little ashamed. Bexley leans her weight back a little with supreme casualty. “I assume you’re expecting me to buy you a new cake. Shall we?”
And she nods with a drawling smile to the vendor to the side of them, who is trying not to burn the goods she’s baking while she watches the two of them with rapt attention.
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
The girl is gold. Gold like the sun. Gold like her most lavish jewelry. Yet Minya’s eyes do not linger, not when her cake is gone, trampled under dancing feet. Serpents twists and twine as ire seeps like morphine into her blood. Her ears fall flat, flat upon her skull. Her lips part, so say more, to chastise this girl for her foolishness, for not looking where she was going. But, the stranger is looking at her. Hunger darkens her gaze like a shadow, it settles feline upon Minya and how she knows the touch of that look. It is what has placed the gems upon her body and lined her room with more gold than any of the other Scarab employees.
Lust. Lust burns bright and hot and Minya is ever the fire girl to heat such desire.
There is no part of Minya that Bexley does not watch. She feels that gaze of silver-blue upon her every inch. A smile softens the line of her glistening, stee-dark lips. Where a scowl once gashed across the elegant lines of her face, so now a knowing smile tips. It is warm, seductive, aloof. Her lashes lower, the diamonds dusted across her lashes glitter gold in the moonlight and shadows breathe khol along her eyes. Heavy, heavy is the gaze Minya rests upon Bexley Briar. It is the same gaze she affords every creature who watches her dance with desire in their heart. Minya knows the price of this look, it is a look honed to entice and entrance, it is worth diamonds and rubies.
“As you should.” Minya says with a voice of liquor – warm and golden, intoxicating. The wind blows and the silk of their manes brush, cream upon strawberries, strawberries upon cream. The fires hiss, they gleam along Bexley Briar’s skin, the crawl across Minya, they douse her in smoke and frankincense. The serpent pieces slither in gold, animated by the dancing light.
The gems glitter and shine as her skull tilts. Minya casts a long look beneath her lashes. Laughter bubbles from her lips, she knows how she is being watched – by the vendor, by that wanton dark in the sun girl’s eyes. Her skin is sunset and honey, sweet and wild, hot and feral. Minya has never been feral, but she has been a street girl with gems in her hair.
The tattoo on her inside thigh gleams brilliant white upon the dark steel of her skin. It is enough to remind her that this girl is an act, that all of her is a performance: of fire, of magic, desire and luxury. “No.” She breathes, still enchanting with her smile, “Don’t worry about the cake.”
Oh but then Minya turns like a sigh, her hair drifting like a song. Their shoulders brush, slow, slow static and Minya looks back, beneath her glittering lashes that lie low, heavy, wanton. Her smile is tantalizing. A laugh is peeling from her lips, less a melody than a spell. Then, as she turns from the day-girl, her lips draw back into a line and she moves through the crowd, like ice, like wicked, wicked ice.
the merry girl who became lot's bride, the happy woman who loved her wicked city;
B
exley has never been an easy scare, and this is no different. It’s a competition more than any real challenge.The girl’s scowl and the flat press of her ears are no real opponent to the Solterran’s charm; she has no doubts that by the end of this conversation this pink-haired girl will be wrapped around her finger, just like everyone else. No doubts at all. She can see from miles away that they are on equal footing, her and this little witch, and that makes for the best kind of night.
Minya’s smile is a wild thing; it is as clear and recognizable as Bexley’s own smirk, shining from the cleanest mirror. She finds herself even a little impressed at the way that her pink hair and bright smile manages to spark something in Bexley’s stomach for the first time in a while. Now the night is closing in around them, and it is both a blessing and a curse to feel the weight of that darkness settling like a blanket of her shoulder. She is not totally in her element. If she needed to use her magic, or wanted to, it would be significantly more difficult now than it would’ve been a few hours ago. The light is low, her powers are sleeping.
And yet she isn’t particularly upset about it. She gets the feeling that Minya isn’t the kind of dangerous that would (could) be quelled by violence. Worst comes to worst, Bexley has experience in the field of carnal warfare—more than this girl, she’s guessing, though it’s impossible to be sure—and she’ll go down kicking and screaming if things don’t go her way, just as God intended. No need to worry ahead of time.
Don’t worry about the cake, the girl says. Bexley smiles, though it is something of a drawl; the lazy, nearly patronizing curve of it responds I wasn’t planning on it, though she doesn’t bother saying as much out loud. Her eyes drop. For a moment she wants to tense—
At the sight of the bright-white tattoo inside the girl’s thigh, an almost pure carving of a scarab that shines like a lantern from the dark slate of her skin. Bexley’s blood runs a degree hotter. She does not flinch, does not shudder, does not even let her eyes rest there too long, but while she turns her eyes back up to Minya her brain is turning in circles. The same tattoo August wore on his shoulder. What is it supposed to tell her? What does it mean, if anything, that theirs are marked in different places? Curiosity pushes up against the back of her teeth.
The girl is already bored, already turning away. Bexley can’t blame her. But it’s satisfying, too—now she sees just how in tune they are, and she is not in the least surprised at the way Minya purposefully drags their shoulders together as she turns, skin hitting skin, burning hotter than ever. There is no flinch, no shudder, but Bexley’s nostrils flare and her smirk widens. “Leaving so soon?”
She does not move from where she stands. Even when her shoulder bumps against Minya’s hip, even when the crowd thickens around them, even as the distance between them widens. She has never been a chaser. And she does not think that today will be the day she starts—not when she has seen the way Minya’s lashes lower when she looks at her.
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
The girl is caramel and her smile is the sticky-sweet of honeyed fingers after a cake. For a moment Minya wonders what such a smile might taste like. Her lips draw idly over that girls lips, they draw up and up and up the lines of her face, trailing like a fingertip over the sharp of her cheekbones, the soft of her cheek more gossamer than flesh.
They are fae girls, Minya and Bexley. Fea girls spun from gold and silver and rich, wonderful things. Their lips are enchantments, the curves of their bodies siren calls. Minya moves like a dream, she stalks like a wasp. Her tongue is viperous but oh she is a masterpiece to behold.
She turns that divine face of hers. She drinks in the coy of Bexley’s lips. So confident. Self assurance is a perfume that oozes from this Day girl’s gilded skin. Minya drinks it in, her match met.
Her slim body weaves into the dark throng, her silk hair trailing none dare step upon it. They treat it like a bridal veil, they treat her like a bride – the most beautiful, treasured girl within, not just the Scarab, but Denocte.
Leaving so soon? That girl’s voice sings. It is a breath within Minya’s ear, a promise, a whisper of something more and she turns. Bodies pressing against hers, brushing, caressing as if to lay just a finger upon such a creature.
Beneath her jeweled lashes (that gleam and glitter gold in the firelight) the dancer gazes at the sunlight girl. “And what do you have that might make me wish to stay?” Minya purrs, like the cat Boudika is. Like the lion Minya is becoming.
Her smile is small and as wicked as a fae girl with a knife for a tongue. Her hair cascades like a veil, silk and soft, a sheet, a ribbon. It flows in the wind and pools at her feet. She does not step toward Bexley Briar, but she does wait. Her eyes trail over the girl wondering what part of her might convince her enough to stay.
“I have bedded kings and queens and gods and goddesses…” She whispers as she slinks back toward Bexley, more a hunter than a girl made to dance in the flames. But even flames will eat and eat and eat. “So what do you have for me?” She breathes in a whisper, for even in the firelight and dark, with music and revelry, Minya is enough to be heard. She commands to be heard, even in her whispering. Slowly her gaze trails white hot over ever inch of the gold girl’s skin before rising to let silver eyes sink into blue.
the merry girl who became lot's bride, the happy woman who loved her wicked city;
T
hey stand so close and so far apart in the crowd—utterly stubborn, one and the same, as so many throngs of bodies move in between them like water. Bexley tilts her head up and watches with eyes warm and dark, like so much drowning in a wine-dark sea. The air is thick with warmth and the ashy smell of incense that pools inside her nostrils and burns deep into her throat.
She grins when Minya turns to meet her gaze. Grins with shark teeth, grins with a predator’s self-assurance. There is nothing that surprises her about the fact that she’s successfully persuaded the stranger to stay. At least for now.
Minya’s hair floats in the wind, so many silver ribbons. Her eyes shine quicksilver in the dim, dim light. The distance between them closes oh-so-slowly, and Bexley’s eyes follow her steps—the way she moves like a snake, the soft sway of her hips, how she dips her head and looks up at the Solterran girl with a gaze that smolders hotter than any fire. A shiver rides up her spine with almost painful intensity. And in the pit of her stomach heat begins to pool, sizzling deep-down into her bones.
So what do you have for me?
And oh, Bexley smirks, so terribly confident, so infuriatingly beautiful. Her whole face turns into a marker of that smile—eyes gleaming, teeth shining, cheeks stricken with the suggestion of dimples. She can nearly feel Minya’s breath warm on her cheek; the smell of their perfume mingles in the air between them, soft as a cloud. Jasmine and nightsmoke and dark tears of myrrh. Her heart pounds.
“I have everything.” Her eyes glow-dark. Gold seeps from the corners of her mouth. Under the dark carpet of lashes, her gaze never wavers from Minya’s, divinely intense. “For I am all of those—queen, goddess, witch—and more. You may have had them all, but not at once.”
Her lazy smile deepens, a noise like a purr builds in the back of her throat. Slowly she reaches forward, and her breath gusts over Minya’s neck, oh-so-lightly, as if it were only an accident.
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Undulating smoke peels up from her skin. It rises like an echo of her dance, seductive and transcendent. Bodies press and push, friction burns along her skin as merchants and revelers push past her, but her eyes are only set upon the gilded girl before her.
Oh, Bexley Briar. Minya laughs at her. She laughs louder and more beautiful still as the Daylight girl replies in a breath that runs like a caress across her skin. “That is a bold claim.” The Scarab girl purrs as she moves, the silk of her costume sliding across the satin of her skin, long legs exposed beneath the slipping fabric. Eyes wander across the exposed skin of Novus’ finest dancer. If the jewels upon Minya’s skin are valuable, it is nothing compared to the girl that wears them. She is a jewel to be coveted, her admirers place her upon a pedestal and from there she surveys the kingdom of desire they make for her.
Minya leans in as Bexley does. In and in and in until they are gold upon steel. Until their skin rubs with blistering friction, until the air aches with the heat of their bodies. “Forgive me if I question your bold claim.” Minya whispers, her lips reaching to graze the shell of Bexley’s ear. Slowly the Scarab dancer circles the Solterran girl and never once does she let their skin part, never once does she let Bexley forget how their bodies feel as they touch and move together. Never once does she let Bexley’s mind wander from the seduction of her caress.
As Minya steps, the firelight catches upon the ivory tattoo that blinks white inside her thigh. The golden serpents banding about her slender forelimbs seem to slither in the dancing light. Slowly they appear to twine up her leg, as if to reach for the gilded girl they are made to circle.
“What makes you think you are all of those things?” Minya lets her touch roam across every inch of Bexley’s skin. She lets the Day girl feel that touch as it surveys her. She reveals nothing of her thoughts, though the darkness sweeps and draws and makes itself a mask across the delicate lines and shape of Minya’s fine face.
The Scarab girl knows how they both appear in this crowd – fine pieces of art to be adored and admired. Into the night she laughs like a bell and does not lift her gaze from Bexley. “I do not take a girl’s word for it. We are always prone to overestimation.” Minya’s smile is serpentine. It is sharp fangs that gleam in the light and promise of the agony of her biting words. “You shall have to make me believe you,” the girl breathes in a whisper that writes itself in a kiss across Bexley’s skin.
the merry girl who became lot's bride, the happy woman who loved her wicked city;
T
Minya’s laugh is a beautiful thing, beautiful as any other part of her, but makes Bexley’s skin crawl.
Her proud heart howls and protests—I’m right, I’m right. And she is, she must be, but now the knowledge is slipping away from her and with every passing second Bexley finds herself more and more irked by Minya’s disregard. Foolish girl! She is nothing more than a harlot, this woman with her bright hair and brighter eyes, and when Bexley remembers the sight of the white-flashing tattoo inside her thigh, she has to smile. A knowing, self-satisfied kind of smile.
Company call girl. What a mouth, especially on someone like that. What a mouth on anyone who has the gall to dismiss Solterra’s golden girl. (She will never stop thinking of herself that way. That will always be her title—Solterra’s girl. It is one of few things they can never take away from her.)
The distance between them closes yet again, the infinite rope folding in half. Bexley does not move. Does not acknowledge her with a long blink or even the flick of one ear. When Minya reaches out, something like amusement sparkles dark and derogatory in her blue eyes; if any kind of shiver erupts from the touch of lips against her ear, it’s impossible well-hidden in the placid expression on her face and the easy slope of her shoulders.
What makes you think you are all of those things?
Bexley might’ve snarled if she were feeling less patient. Gone for the fight, gods know she needs one. Could have snapped: I know, because I am God. Instead she lets the acid anger that bubbles from her stomach flow through her and surface only in the sharp, derogatory curve of her smile. Graceful as a wing-sweep, she pulls her head away from the girl’s touch, and the air there sizzles anew.
“It amuses me,” she says, though the rich, dark tone in her voice implies that it doesn’t amuse her at all—“That you think I am the one with something to prove. That you think your stupid question deserves the time it would take me to respond. Or that you are special enough to warrant my attention.” Her grin deepens until it could be a shark’s, made ever-brighter by the flames that move around them. “Say hi to August for me.”
With an delicate bump of her hip against Minya’s she disappears into the crowd.
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Bexley pulls away, as sharply as the final shards of light are extinguished by the night. Minya does not follow her, though she feels the warmth where the girl was is now replaced by bitter cold. Her skin tingles, her skin aches. Her heart thumps and twinges as if tied tight and twisted. Maybe that is what she is, twisted, for her lips tip into a smile as Bexley protests.
This was easier wasn’t it? To have the girl furious with her, to hurt another so she cannot be hurt.. Yet for all she feels the relief that is it not her hurting, that it is her hurt shared, still she feels that bitter throb of compassion and guilt. She cannot stand herself, she will not let herself rest long enough to see the girl she has become - a creature her mother might barely recognise. Once Minya was a girl covered in soot and flourishing within a mother’s love in spite of her shackles of servitude.
But then death came to her door and she was lifted from the dust and the dirt and turned into a noble’s daughter. It was then she knew the most cruelty and the sins of people. She turned wicked in turn, for to survive was to slither like a serpent. To survive was to make all around her shrink to little more than ants at her feet.
And so she does. And so she smiles as Bexley recoils as Bexley’s ire blooms from her hurt. The Day girl’s words drag Minya down into the worthless mud with the poor and she smiles, for there is nothing worthless about her. Minya brings in the greatest revenue for the Scarab, she is adored and treasured - coveted. Are Bexley’s words anything that Minya has to heard before? They scold with the fire the golden girl incites, Minya feels the poison of them, the vehemence, the loathing. Each word is conveys a woman hurt, a woman scrabbling for some way to offend as she has been offended and beneath it Minya glows. She smiles dark and hurtful and inside the turns away from herself.
Bexley leaves with a dismissive bump of their hips, a fleeting touch that drags a sigh from Minya’s lips, that loosens the tense muscles woven tight within her body. She stands, relieved for the lack of intimacy, relieved that she is again alone - despite the way she twinges. Then Minya turns too and disappears into the crowd ignoring the words of others who reach out to her as Bexley Briar had.
