stars hide your fires
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The skull mask is pearl upon her face. Its teeth sharp as they curl about her slim nose (that emerges like a tongue from the mask’s bone maw). The skull is alabaster to her obsidian skin. All across its smooth surface painted and carved stars and moons gleam in gold and black. The mask is night, the mask is bone and its skull is fierce. Feathers plume like a spiked crown from its poll and beads hang to clack and clink with the rhythm of her steps. The sounds they make are the snap of jaws unseen.
Each step is slow, as Leto drinks in the court. There is nothing about this girl that belongs here. She is a creature of the fringes, one born to sleep with stars as her roof and trees as her walls. She makes her beds in swamps and upon mountains. She dances to the beat of animal skin drums and the music of stars. Chants are upon her tongue all the night long. The stars and the earth are her gods.
Leto is not made for the silk and glitter of a ball. All that adorns her is earth born and sky fallen. Pearls gleam within the twines of her ebony mane. Their light dances across gold painted leaves that lie like daggers against the soft of her throat. Across her skin is a ritual display of litanies and blessings. Each is drawn in gold by Ilati hand, they curl like shining serpents and silver stars scratch their fires into the very substance of her obsidian skin.
Leto is the shadow of the night, her black is the endless, falling spaces between stars. She is the black star, the darkness that pulls you in, in, in. And she stands upon the edges of the vibrant ballroom, both ancient and young. She is as endless as the stars, as old as the earth. She is knit together with stardust and ancient magic.
From the black orbits of her skull mask her eyes gleam, silver and bright. Those eyes are starfire burning, bright and fierce. Galaxies twist and turn within that gaze and nebulae gleam with light as old as time. Starfire roars in Leto’s ears and in her blood. Her heartbeat is a tattoo against the curve of her breastbone, beating ivory blood about her body harder and harder still.
The violin music tugs and begs and weaves like ribbons about her slender torso and just, just when she may succumb to this softer sound (softer than drums and the shattering of stars), Leto looks up, up, up. Feathers arch back with grace to touch along the curve of her spine. The tattoos weave up her throat, her jaw and on they go, endless and bright and savage. But none are as savage as her eyes that light the ceilings and watch the window that draws in Denocte’s night and stars.
Upon her lips is a chant, fearsome and wonderful, soft as song, terrible as supernovas. But suddenly she turns, pressing, weaving and dancing into the throng. Her limbs are the drums of the deep, her bones the rattle of percussion, her blood the keening of starfire. The violins will do, but for tonight alone, for above, so very high above, the stars are shifting.
@Asterion - finally! i get to write someone else with him - i think its always been Flora! (bc Raum would just be disgustingly mean to him lbh)
