MINYA
take that look from off your face
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Salt clings to her lashes, making them tacky and salt-slick. They gather as if painted with the darkest mascara, though the diamonds there gleam, caught by the moonlight.
Each movement of her body is a symphony of sound. The jewels that hang from her antlers glitter like fairies and chime like musical instruments. Every step of her dancer’s limbs is the beat of a drum – an accompaniment to her voice, her heart, her symphony of dance.
If she is the grace of dance, the softness of undulating flame, he is the sharp of a finely honed blade. Her eyes trail, bright as starlight, up, up up to the sharpened tips of his pronged antlers. The reach up like weapons, set to pierce the stars, to cast the sun down from its perch. No part of Minya is carved for fighting, every inch of her is the softness of silk, the gleam of gossamer. She is the dew strung spider’s web, beautiful, beautiful, a trap, a trap.
Her eyes rest upon the gems that hang like rain soaked blades of grass. Like gathering raindrops they bead and glitter from the cradle of his antlers. Ever the magpie her silver eyes hold them, wonderingly, consideringly. But then she turns – for what does Minya need of his gems when her own antlers are a tree overladen with the fruit of glittering trinkets and jewels. Each one is a gift, each one sent to her in adoration of the Scarab girl able to dance with fire.
Her tail reaches for him as she moves ahead. Ah the wind howls, stealing away the sound of his chattering teeth, stealing away the breath that ripples in a silver plume from her glossy lips. She does not look to him, does not hold him in the silk of her spider’s web gaze. Rather she cuts a path down the mountain, stepping with grace, dancing like the stones that skip and skitter before her – heralds for the girl who deigns to descend her mountain.
Her hair is wild whips. Its tendrils rise in the wind, serpents ready to strike and like a whip the descend to crack across her cheek, her throat. In pink threads they tangle in her lashes and between their dance, beneath the wild sway of her hair, she finally glances back as his voice carries to her at last.
Her name. Her name. He asks her for her name.
Minya slows, like the moon before the sun. She waits for him to draw level, though her eyes are far from his, from the boy who fell out of the sky and is plain where she is lavish. At last she turns to him, this boy of forest brown and canopy green. She wonders where he shed his leaves – were they in the gems that hang brightly from the boughs of his reaching antlers. He is the whip of a branch, the soft of grasses and she smiles at him, the beauty of a doe, the venom of a spider.
But oh, aren’t all spiders just trying to survive?
What name to give? That of the wealthy Lord who took her in as his daughter or the mother she killed? No, no, it was not Minya who plotted and schemed, but it was she who gave them the poison to drink. Her mouth is dry, but how schooled she now is in becoming the serpent all fangs and venom and wicked-wonderful smiles. She hides the soft of her, the ache of her soul and the ravages of her heart. She conceals them and breathes and says, “Tannous. Miss Tannous.”
That fire burns a little brighter, it starts as a spark reflected within her quicksilver gaze and grows brighter, brighter. The flames laugh and spit, she can hear their voices carried upon the wind. They are close, but the wind is closer and she moves beside the sky borne stranger. She lets the warmth of their bodies meld and heat their windswept skin. “Before I let you by the fire, you should tell me your name too.”
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@Boudika| "speaks" | notes: eee <3
