b e x l e y
WE LAUGH, & IT PITS THE WORLD AGAINST US.
She is looking for him in the sea of people like a drowning man looks for air underwater - but what else is new?
The desperation she feels like a little knot in her chest is so familiar she almost doesn’t mind it. It’s stupid, it’s embarrassing, she hates it a little, in the half-hearted kind of way someone wants to hate something they need, but it’s hers. That is more than Bexley can say of almost anything. Even Apolonia.
Above her the vaulted ceiling twinkles with a thousand little lights, dark against the brick, like stars; an orchestra playing in the other room filters in through tiny spaces in the wall and the door, easy and quiet. Bexley cannot decide if it is beautiful or terrifying. She stands close to the wall, stalking the corners of the room like a predator, swishing that bright-white tail in uncontained agitation. Maybe it’s the press of bodies, maybe it’s the fact that she doesn’t know any of them. But something gnaws anxiety deep into her stomach.
She wears a mask made of gold and bone, which would be awfully morbid if it didn’t fit her as well it does, literally and metaphorically. The skull of some long-dead thing with sharp teeth, bleached pure white now from soap and sun, lays across the bridge of her face and covers everything but her eyes; the cracks in the bone are repaired with an inlay of gold, so that thing aureate threads go twisting and turning everywhere like a thousand streams criss-crossing a field. It is an almost-perfect mimicry of the circlet around Bexley's throat and the pale white marking that stretches over her face.
Some part of her, as always, begs to be recognized.
The orchestra picks up and the wail of a string instrument pierces through the walls. Bexley thinks she might know the song, but can’t think too much on it; she’s distracted immediately by a familiar flash of orange across the room and fixates on it with an instant grin.
@acton <3
