BEXLEY BRIAR
Summer blazes through Terrastella, and it does not leave anything untouched. Flowers bend in the heat; white light refracts itself off glass and silver; warmth shimmers like quicksilver over the fields and cliffs, and the world is calm. The sun is gentle overhead. Birds chirp and fall silent, swooping through the balmy air. Even as the grasses fall away to cobblestone and brick, a sense of peace blankets the Dusk Court. As she wanders through the gates Bexley hears the mutters of the commonwealth complaining of the heat, their good-natured gripes, and smiles quietly to herself in pleasant disbelief. To her the weather is almost-cool, the breeze that comes with it an unexpected luxury, and she hums something happy and tranquil as she moves toward the center of the Court.
There is a moment, casual and momentous, in which she feels at peace with her anonymity. It comes in the easy step of her hooves over cobblestone, the breeze that washes over her like water. The chain heavy around her neck. The weak sun overhead, her own brain and body. All of it comes into clarity, then ebbs away again, unendingly peaceful. It is a feeling which has not come to her for quite a while, and it’s absolutely relieving.
It lasts for only a moment.
Some Terrastellan youth whips past her with his friends, and as much as he’s careful to wait until their paths have diverged, it’s impossible for Bexley not to hear the tail end of his phrase: “Gods, look at that scar.“ Her heart plummets inside her chest. By the time she registers it the boy is long gone, disappeared around a corner, but the sting of it still puts Bexley out of breath. Her lungs constrict, pulsing involuntarily. She stumbles on an upturned cobblestone. Look at that scar. As if given a life of its own, she feels new pain pulse along the rift that splits her face in two.
Look at that scar -
She pulls her head down to her chest. Shifts the lace of white hair to cover her face. Pushes forward against a nauseating wave of unease. Now Terrastella’s court flashes by in a blur of stone and glass, blurred by the speed at which Bexley forces herself to walk, the sting of tears which collect involuntarily in her already glassy gaze. Focus. Focus. Buildings rise and fall away on each side, and none of it matters, not really.
She’s not here for much. A moment with Florentine, a conversation that doesn’t cripple. From the beginning her options were limited. Vaguely, she thought about visiting Rhoswen, or even Reich, but those ideas were discarded as quickly as the came, and really - who else is there? The days of Bexley’s involuntary popularity have long left her, and as sickening as it is to admit, she is here to search for, quite possibly, the only friend she has left. Friend. There are so many things wrong with this situation, and she names them off in her head one by one: My only friend. The people I live with are not my friends. Florentine is - just a friend.
Perhaps, at last, her sins have caught up to her, and this is to be her punishment. A world devoid of friendly faces. The salt of pain inside her bones.
Suddenly, the door of the citadel looms overhead. Bexley’s heart catches in her throat - bang bang bang. To the guard that stands still against the gray walls, head bowed to his chest, she asks almost nervously, Is Florentine here?
A beat passes, one that sets all Bexley’s nerves to sparks, practically turns her brain inside out. Is she taking visitors?
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