BEXLEY BRIAR
I look at you and it is like drinking cold water.
I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.
I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.
When Bexley hears the note, she wants to walk the other way, at first.
It sounds… morbid. A slow, dark whine that cuts through the cool air and twists like a knife in her brain. She winces. It reminds her too much (far, far too much) of the times she’s been here before—times when the scar didn’t ride her face like it does now, times that she had slipped over the mountains to see Acton, times she had been welcomed in the court of the old Kings, when the Crows still ran amok in the streets. These markets are a parody slightly changed of the Denocte that Bexley has come to know. If given the chance, she’d not havecome back. She’d have settled for those memories to be kept the same forever, for her image of the markets never to be sullied. But here she is. Exiled.
And with nothing better to do, she realizes, than find the source of the music.
The note has swelled; it doesn’t sound so sad now. The violin (it is a violin, isn’t it? a cello, maybe?) has started to hit a host of different notes. The pitch rises and falls and breaks the stillness of the air only to crash down again. Bexley’s head is starting to hurt, in a slightly different way. Her heart follows with it. Suddenly she is itching to move, itching with the desire to follow the waves that sink into her skin, pulling and tugging, pulling and tugging—without a second thought she slinks into the massive crowd and goes pushing up, up, up toward the sound.
Another somber drawl. It’s closer now, which relieves her somewhat; at least she’s going the right way. People are following. A crowd has formed up ahead, a circle. Bexley can see shadows born from bonfires moving like waves against the lantern-lit walls. Music rings feral through the air and shivers like a wild animal in the cold. Bexley’s pulse is starting to pick up speed, battering the inside of her chest. She raises her head to see above the crowd but can’t quite get tall enough. The ring around the fire is loose enough, though, that she manages to wiggle in.
A girl is dancing in the middle of the circle. Stunningly pretty, almost to the point that Bexley is unnerved by it. She’s swatched in opalescent shades of purple, twisting like so many sunsets in the changing light, and white hair (like Bexley’s) swirls around her in moving metal ribbons. Her horn grins in the light. Bexley watches, and with the wanting her eyes are dark, so dark. Something moves deep in her stomach. The glass violin is playing itself with the deft fingers of a ghostly composer, perfect to the last twinging note, but Bexley looks at it just for a second. It’s not quite what she wants to see more of.
She flips a little coin of light into the girl's path and waits patiently for her attention to turn.
