BEXLEY BRIAR
my carnivore heart comes out after dark -
At first she thinks she is dreaming, when she sees him. She thinks he is her.
Bexley draws to a sharp, startled stop. Her eyes are wide. In the lapping golden tongue of the sunlight streaming down from overhead, he is bright and perfect as false gold, just like her; his hair is stark, shining bone white, just like hers; he looks tired. Just like her. And the blue of the scarf bound against his neck is as deep and icy, she knows, as the blue of her own eyes.
The market is empty. Baked by sun, the stalls sit whistling-quiet, and the vendors doze off under what little shade slips off the rafters. Bexley’s skin dazzles under the light like so much incandescent glitter; her lashes beat hard against the glare. And warmth seeps into her like water through fine silk. She breathes slow, calm, deep. Hoofsteps and laughter and the faintest suggestion of music ring through the streets. It feels like… home. Almost. If home were calm. If it even still existed.
Gingerly she steps forward. The meeting of her hooves against the stone sends a shiver all the way up her spine, though it shouldn’t, and her lips curl down, though they have no reason to. This is strange, too strange. One Bexley has caused enough trouble, enough hysteria, enough catastrophe. Why in Solis’ name (or Caligo’s, for that matter) would anyone want another?
Cinnamon and vanilla waft through the air, singeing the insides of Bexley’s nostrils. She’s passed enough bakeries in her time to know the signs when they come to her. And a brief, sad kind of smile curls her lips as she thinks about it—what her life might have been like if she weren’t doomed from the star, what her life could have been if she settled down, married a baker, had a child with the normal number of eyes.
No use.
“May I?” Her voice is soft, and unusually pleasant; her eyes are cast demurely down to the small stretch of cobblestone that separates them, as if sheepish about really watching him. But oh, the streets are warm, and a nap sounds awfully enticing.
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