You can lay words of love on a page But you can’t lock her love in a cage
S
he didn’t have to be familiar with a place to know how to hustle in it. A little information helped, yes, such as the attitude or certain customs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Knowing Delumine like the back of her hoof meant she set up right in the center of Denocte’s Night Market with next to no concern for what might happen. Traveling there had been a pain; she might as well get something good out of it. With her she had brought her glass violin, a lacquered bowl into which she would collect her donations, and a few pieces of rather long silk, each from a different place she had visited. If there was something she could use, she would take it (purchase, preferably, but…)
Mesnyi was rather lucky to have an instrument that could cut through a crowd with a note, but she didn’t think about it much anymore. It was sharp and sudden, enough to turn a few heads in the immediate vicinity, but it would be the visuals that captured the crowd. You had to get their attention first, in order for them to listen.
She had to be good. She still needed a place to stay tonight.
Performance came with its own anxieties, always, but good was her mediocre, so she worried about it as much as she did her self-playing violin.
Telekinesis aided greatly in her dances now; being so common in Novus meant she did not need to fear a magic trick in public. The scarves swam around her like silvery waves, parting to reveal The Unicorn, The One, The Most Beautiful, Most Benevolent, Most Mercurial…
And she danced.
People needed a little beauty in times like these, and oh, did they come. They watched, they paid, they ogled the violin and the mare alike. The mare watched back, ever searching for the right kind of man to bring her home these next few nights - or maybe even just this one. She liked to find him before she got tired, because she already knew what he would want, of course, there was no doubting it…one always had to pay for services rendered, some way or another.
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
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I look at you and it is like drinking cold water.
I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.
When Bexley hears the note, she wants to walk the other way, at first.
It sounds… morbid. A slow, dark whine that cuts through the cool air and twists like a knife in her brain. She winces. It reminds her too much (far, far too much) of the times she’s been here before—times when the scar didn’t ride her face like it does now, times that she had slipped over the mountains to see Acton, times she had been welcomed in the court of the old Kings, when the Crows still ran amok in the streets. These markets are a parody slightly changed of the Denocte that Bexley has come to know. If given the chance, she’d not havecome back. She’d have settled for those memories to be kept the same forever, for her image of the markets never to be sullied. But here she is. Exiled.
And with nothing better to do, she realizes, than find the source of the music.
The note has swelled; it doesn’t sound so sad now. The violin (it is a violin, isn’t it? a cello, maybe?) has started to hit a host of different notes. The pitch rises and falls and breaks the stillness of the air only to crash down again. Bexley’s head is starting to hurt, in a slightly different way. Her heart follows with it. Suddenly she is itching to move, itching with the desire to follow the waves that sink into her skin, pulling and tugging, pulling and tugging—without a second thought she slinks into the massive crowd and goes pushing up, up, up toward the sound.
Another somber drawl. It’s closer now, which relieves her somewhat; at least she’s going the right way. People are following. A crowd has formed up ahead, a circle. Bexley can see shadows born from bonfires moving like waves against the lantern-lit walls. Music rings feral through the air and shivers like a wild animal in the cold. Bexley’s pulse is starting to pick up speed, battering the inside of her chest. She raises her head to see above the crowd but can’t quite get tall enough. The ring around the fire is loose enough, though, that she manages to wiggle in.
A girl is dancing in the middle of the circle. Stunningly pretty, almost to the point that Bexley is unnerved by it. She’s swatched in opalescent shades of purple, twisting like so many sunsets in the changing light, and white hair (like Bexley’s) swirls around her in moving metal ribbons. Her horn grins in the light. Bexley watches, and with the wanting her eyes are dark, so dark. Something moves deep in her stomach. The glass violin is playing itself with the deft fingers of a ghostly composer, perfect to the last twinging note, but Bexley looks at it just for a second. It’s not quite what she wants to see more of.
She flips a little coin of light into the girl's path and waits patiently for her attention to turn.
as the sun goes down don't know what I'd do without my golden one
N
obody tries to touch her. That’s a good sign, she thinks, though it isn’t always telling of the nature of those she is to sleep beside…but the basic respect, or fear, - perhaps fear that they will break her, or stop her, and she will never dance again - that is always good to see. Of course, the Benevolent dance skin to skin with anyone, but these are not Benevolent and she is not home. The road has done its whispering for now; she has traveled and now she dances somewhere new.
A golden mare slithers between onlookers, notes sliding serpentine from the violin in response. Mesnyi smiles sweetly as a golden coin crosses her, winking. More than one stranger beside this mare appear to think it is directed at them. The lavender mare drifts towards Bexley, silks floating around her as if underwater, brushing against the golden mare’s chest and drawing away, back to the center, to the next person to throw a coin.
For some time she continues this way, offering no more special attentions to the mare but watching her always. Mesnyi recognizes that hunger better than anything, and, frankly, the men aren’t looking so hot tonight. If she must, she will. Such is the way of those who dance for a roof.
Sweat beads on lilac flesh; Mesnyi elects to take a break with a bow. ”The dance will resume in a moment, but one must drink.” Her silks flutter flirtatiously at the audience, the dancer graciously accepting a bottle of wine from an onlooker. She offers him a bit of conversation in exchange, but her gaze wanders to the golden girl here and there, trailing up the canyon of her scar and back to the chattering man. He has little to say of interest but so much of it to spew. Mesnyi floats from the painful situation with a tickle of her silk and a grin. She finds Bexley.
”Benevolent write songs about scars like that,” she says. ”’On women like you,’ I could add, but we know the minds of men, don’t we?” She winks and sips her wine, offering it to the stranger. ”I am Mesnyi. Might I ask your name, golden one?”
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
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I look at you and it is like drinking cold water.
I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.
In her stomach, a faint rumble, close to hunger but not quite. It shakes her to the bones. It is a tight, familiar grip. In the dark corners of the market, Bexley watches with her lashes low, her mouth twisted, and she wears the velvet-dark expression of someone puppeted by her desires.
It is common for her, this kind of look. Watchful. Somewhat satisfied, but never fully. When the girl chooses to take a break—stepping down from her little podium to take a swig from a bottle of wine offered by a man much less enticing than Bexley—the golden girl feels something like jealousy but not quite turn over in her chest. A key in the ignition.
Maybe it’s the smoke. Maybe it’s the darkness; maybe it’s the alcohol. But Bexley’s nerves are simmering under her skin like a just-contained wildfire, and she ratchets ever-hotter as that strange, spectral blue gaze meets her eyes, clear and spectral as a snowstorm even across the crowd that separates them.
Bexley tilts her head, and she smiles a dark, drawling smile.
The smell of jasmine swirls in her nostrils, thick as any bottled perfume, and it only grows stronger as the dancer sidles toward her. Her coat shifts in the faint light like a jewel Bexley has never seen. When she pauses, the distance between them closed almost completely, Solterra’s ex-regent does not make the slightest attempt to contain her staring as she looks over the fine lines, the pale lashes, the doe eye, the starry dapples.
They match each other, in the way of all beautiful, unholy things.
“Bexley.” She takes a sip of wine. “But feel free to keep calling me golden one, if you want.” I wouldn’t complain is what comes through in the sly curve of her smirk, in the lowering of her lashes.
Women weren’t bad, really; Mesnyi admittedly had a primary interest in men but truth be told women were less…well, offensive. They also didn’t have any seeds to sow in her fields, you could say, and while they weren’t always respectful or kind, they were, overwhelmingly, more interested in all parties having fun.
So, she reasoned, to go home with Bexley wouldn’t be so terrible.
”Well, alright, golden one. It’s just another syllable, isn’t it?” She glanced around the crowd; many were watching her, still, but some were chatting idly or impatiently. She took another sip of wine. ”I’ve had better, but it’s alright,” she said, eyes sparkling. Bexley was…beautiful, in a striking way, like a thunderbolt or a crown with very sharp tines. Good enough for Mesnyi’s image, then - collector of beautiful things, the scar ruled out the collecting but the rest of her remained worthy. Many of the men whose roofs she slept under were…less than handsome, to put it nicely, and so beside Mesnyi they looked exactly as they were; a patron for a very beautiful woman. Beside Mesnyi, Bexley looked…like an equal. It was a nice change of pace, woman or no.
”The crowd is getting restless, golden one, but if you’ll wait for me…the dance may go on after hours.” She winked and slipped back into the center of the circle, her silks rising up and pushing aside any stray members of the audience. The glass violin struck suddenly against its strings to announce her, shocking the crowd into silence. The unicorn bowed.
Again, she took up a dance, the violin pouring forth something a little slower, more romantic, though tragedy ran in veins beneath it, like all good romances. Her silks gathered together to form a dancer partner of many colors, a second Mesnyi, as it were, though something in the waves of the silks implied masculinity, a broader frame, perhaps, though her gaze made its way to Bexley now and then. It was not a particularly long song, and even Mesnyi could not quite place where she’d heard it before - she must’ve, though, musn’t she? The violin had limits, she assumed, when it was under her control, but it certainly got up to trouble when she left it alone to play…
There went another song, and another, until Mesnyi was satisfied with her earnings. The violin decrescendoed to silence, and Mesnyi dipped in a great sweeping bow, her silks flowing out beside her as a dawn cloud. ”I thank you for you patronage. May we see each other another lovely night.” The crowd departed and she made for Bexley.
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
tracker plotter
please tag the proper character for replies
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