one good honest kiss, to feel alright
Miss? sounds the voice from over the hill, and Bexley’s eyes snap toward it like she is expecting her name to come from the mouth of a knife: given recent events, it is more reasonable than not.
They burn with a hot, dark desperation, totally uncaring, nothing more than empty and disinterested. Pure blue sea glass -- pretty as it is useless. It is impossible to know whether she sees the girl or not. Her gaze slips right past the stranger so that it remains perfectly fixed on the place where the mountain slopes down, down down into Denocte, even as she crawls toward the girl, and Bexley is half there and half not, walking one way and watching another as if she is straddling the thin line between two overlapping universes.
The sun at her side flickers once, then booms. A flash of sickening white light cracks over the rock, then disappears as immediately as it came into sight, shattering into a million tiny pieces that are then swallowed by the cold air. If Bexley notices the sharp cracking sound it makes at least she does not flinch. Still her eyes are fixed on the middle distance, bloodshot and with vicious intensity: it has been years since she was here, or at least that’s what it feels like —
When did she become old? When did the years start passing like minutes? The first time she came to visit she was no more than a teenager, and Reichenbach had ruled, king of Crows and night and starlight. She was no more than a teenager, utterly vicious, and the chain around her neck had still been perfectly polished. She was no more than a teenager and not even the most practiced of seers could have predicted she would end up like this. She was magic-less: she had not met Acton. Nothing is the same.
Finally she snaps to attention. When her eyes finally meet the girl’s, they are unnervingly focused, as though Bexley can see right past her swallowed sneer and into her tiny bird-bones. “Ianthe.” Her voice is rough with a combination of anger and disuse. If it came down to it, Bexley thinks she might still win in a fight; her magic sizzles inside her like a fever, itching to be released, and if anything she’ll fight dirty because she has nothing left to lose.
But they can hope it doesn’t come to that.
“Bexley,” she offers, voice flat, and draws to a stop. “Where is Moira Tonnerre.”
It is not a question but a demand. Moira's name is a prayer in her mouth. With Solterra still in ruins and Acton's corpse still melting into the dirt, Moira might be the very last person on earth she would trust to -- well, to do anything at all to her. She will find Moira by sight or smell or divine intervention, with or without Ianthe’s help. But with can’t possibly hurt.
