some of us have gone so long hungry,
the idea of being full feels worse than the affliction.
the idea of being full feels worse than the affliction.
S
he watches as the Scarab’s floating candles cast their shadows across the woman’s shiny hair. Gold, bronze, gold, bronze. Never quite darkening into dark. Never quite lightening into light. Triangles of gold and bronze flit across her yellow curls, Aghavni thinks, like the dancing dragonflies merchant children chased on soggy summer nights. She’d caught one of them, once. Plucked it right up by its quivering windowpane wings. It had landed on her basket of fruit, a tiny intruder too busily sucking on oozing fruit syrup to notice the curious green eyes watching it like a chameleon. The tongue (her telekinesis) had leaped out (reached) and snatched it from its afternoon drink. Held it up to the baking sun, careful not to crush those delicate, delicate panes, and stared wonderingly into its bugging blue eyes.
The dragonfly had twitched unhappily in its captor’s invisible grasp. Twitched so much it almost ripped one of its wings off, before Aghavni noticed and released it, distraught by the dragonfly’s lack of self-preservation. Did it not care? Was freedom that important?
Freedom over windowpane wings?
As a child, after one of her aunts had pouted to her about how much she missed the taste of freedom (“kept in this mansion like birds in a birdcage, we are! don’t you agree, little love?”) Aghavni had wondered to herself how delicious freedom must taste for rebellions to be rallied in its sake.
For castles to be burned in its honor.
For wings to be torn in pursuit.
The taste of freedom. Finicky, finicky freedom.
Her lashes flutter together like ghostly moths, lured out from the dark by the lighting of a flame. “Ah, then you had better teach it to restrain itself.” The flame of the woman’s lovely, lyrical voice.
“Someday they shall learn to mind their manners around silk,” she says, with a breathy sigh. Amethyst eyes, prettier than dusk, peer wondrously wide into her own. Amethyst flowers, prettier than spring, drift down to the floor. Aghavni has never seen anyone so beautiful. Who is the golden goddess’ lover? (Is he mortal? Goddesses married gods, didn't they, like in her stories. But she is much too old to listen to stories.) Where is he, if not by his fair lady's side?
If she had such a beautiful lover, she thinks, she certainly wouldn’t be so careless. (Was that why she didn’t have one? Questions, questions.)
The knocking of the dice and the laughing of the guests leash her wandering thoughts back to her mortal body.
And back to the hole in her silk. Frowning, she passes a conscious invisible hand over it again. Like worrying over a scar.
“Florentine,” she repeats. Even her name is beautiful. Lovely and lyrical. “I am Aghavni. A pleasure, my lady.” Silk whispers against carpet when she sinks into a server’s perfect curtsy. All she is missing is the jingling pouch of coins tied to her front leg, but the clinking of her hair spikes more than make up for missing jingle. “And to answer your question…” she trails off, biting down on her lips as she chooses from her bevy of prepared answers like a florist judging a bouquet. When the right flower is chosen —
Her voice lowers to a velvet hush. Lips lift into a secret smile. “My father owns the place. Truthfully, I am not supposed to be here, donned in server’s silks, but how else am I going to meet our patrons?” How else? Charon couldn’t keep her from the Floor forever. He couldn’t keep threatening her with monstrous stacks of paperwork.
She straightens her spine and smiles down at the glittering pile of coins Rasvan deposits (meekly, eyes tilted away) in front of fair Florentine. Double the amount she started with, as promised.
“Like you, Lady Florentine. Now that you’ve won, would you like for me to give you a tour?”
@Florentine | "speaks" | flora is making aghavni all heart eyes <3
