b e x l e y
the merry girl who became lot's bride, the happy woman who loved her wicked city;
B
exley watches from the sidelines with a gaze that is less-blue and more-flame. The salt-lick bonfires that climb into the sky and touch the sooty clouds shine like a mirror against the dark of her gaze; the yellow light and its opposite shadows climb her skin like vines, like rivers. In half-shadow she stands and looks. The market roils with the movement of bodies and the din of conversation. They all look like shadow puppets—the jerky way they move, how dark they stand against the lit bricks, their shadows rippling like disturbed water. Against it all she is the only bright and shiny thing, the only suggestion of gold in a world striped with black and silver.(If Acton were here, she thinks, it would have been different. Not necessarily less sad or less nausea-inducing. But they had been so alike. So terribly two-of-a-kind. And now, no matter how close Bexley stands to the moving swarm in the streets, she feels… alone.)
Her skin burns hot under the fire-breath that spreads from the middle of the cobbled streets. When it grows too bright to bear, she finally shies away from the tumbling flames and wiggles like a fish through the crush of bodies, upstream to the deepest, darkest heart of the markets. She glances only vaguely at the stalls as she passes them. They are mostly the same—slimy vendors passing off thin alloy as real gold necklaces, cones of high-piled spices with scents thick enough to singe her nostrils, weapons in pretty, embroidered scabbards. None of it catches her eye. She has had enough of material possessions to last a lifetime. Now she is possessed by the desire for things more valuable and harder to find, things she does not exactly want to admit.
At the very end of the road, another fire booms into existence. (Gods, how many do they need?) But this one smells different. more sage than salt. And the smoke, when it hits the air, curls up like so many snakes, pretty-winding, full of teeth. They make flowers in the still, cold air. Slowly, she pulls toward it, like a moth drawn to a lantern. Her breath slows and yet deepens. Against the bright prinpicks of the stars, the smoke makes new clouds, a mockery of blackened dusk flooding the cobbled horizons.
Just as she breaks into the circle, stretching cautiously to see into the pit, someone rushes into her.
“For fuck’s sake,” Bexley mutters, not loud enough to reach anyone’s ears but her own. She grinds to an abrupt halt. Her gaze snaps up to meet Minya’s with some measure of coldness, if not pure disdain. Some of her irritation slips away, though, as their gazes meet. The idiot is pretty, pretty like her (which is to say, too pretty for her own good). Silver eyes, rivers of pink hair, and oh, Bexley does not miss the serpents that crawl up her legs—she smiles at them, sharp and warm, and tilts her head like a dog.
Bexley has always been as cute as she is hungry.
“I’ll try my best to be more careful next time,” she purrs, “Although I can’t say I regret it entirely—“ and there is no way to pretend that the way her gaze rakes over Minya is anything less than suggestive, nor even a little ashamed. Bexley leans her weight back a little with supreme casualty. “I assume you’re expecting me to buy you a new cake. Shall we?”
And she nods with a drawling smile to the vendor to the side of them, who is trying not to burn the goods she’s baking while she watches the two of them with rapt attention.
@Minya | "speaks" | notes: <3
