WHAT IF DEATH IS JUST ANOTHER
PAIR OF HANDCUFFS
PAIR OF HANDCUFFS
It’s with no particular destination that Sterling strolls the alleys of the marketplace, his senses pleasantly full of music and dancing light. Long hours have passed since he took his first swig of harvest wine, long enough that he’s found his way nearly back to sobriety. He’s felt the temper of the festival shifting over the course of the day: the building excitement throughout the afternoon; the first, almost childlike pleasures of the evening; the increasingly wild indulgences as evening surrendered into night.
Now, at this late hour (or rather, he thinks, a very early one), the celebrations have eased back into an equilibrium of sorts. It’s not a lull, precisely, but the festival seems somehow softer around the edges, the noisy drunkenness and revelry replaced by quiet conversations and drifting strains of song.
It’s an almost... private side of the Night Court, and Sterling feels something of an outsider, winding by himself through the midnight streets. Everywhere he looks, horses stand in clusters, talking, laughing, sharing autumn pastries and horns of ale.
Everyone seems to know someone. No one else is alone.
But he knows, logically, that this cannot be true, and now that he’s looking it takes only a few minutes to notice the mare, gray and solitary. Beautiful, he thinks, and then, Dangerous. His pulse quickens, a heady pressure within his ears. He does not mean, at first, to follow her, but she carves an effortless path through the crowd, and it is easy to slip into her shadow, to ride in her wake.
The mare stops before one of the great festival bonfires, the firelight seeming almost to swim over her body, liquid and silvery. Sterling does not know how long he stands there, watching her watch the flames.
At last she turns, and sees him. “What?” she asks, her voice cool with disdain, and in response he reaches to pluck free the stray autumn leaf that had nested itself into the seafoam of her hair. He is not sure if she will let him (reach, touch), but the gesture is instinctive. A deadly instinct, maybe.
“You look...” Lovely, he wants to say. Wild. “New.” And she does. Not new as he is new, here, but new in the way of Aphrodite, risen from the surf on the ragged curve of an enormous shell—glistening and otherworldly, with her extravagant coral crown.
But there is something ancient about her, too, in the gleam of her eye, in the haughty arch of her neck. In the predatory flare of her nostrils. Sterling cannot help himself: he steps closer. “You smell of the sea.”
Now, at this late hour (or rather, he thinks, a very early one), the celebrations have eased back into an equilibrium of sorts. It’s not a lull, precisely, but the festival seems somehow softer around the edges, the noisy drunkenness and revelry replaced by quiet conversations and drifting strains of song.
It’s an almost... private side of the Night Court, and Sterling feels something of an outsider, winding by himself through the midnight streets. Everywhere he looks, horses stand in clusters, talking, laughing, sharing autumn pastries and horns of ale.
Everyone seems to know someone. No one else is alone.
But he knows, logically, that this cannot be true, and now that he’s looking it takes only a few minutes to notice the mare, gray and solitary. Beautiful, he thinks, and then, Dangerous. His pulse quickens, a heady pressure within his ears. He does not mean, at first, to follow her, but she carves an effortless path through the crowd, and it is easy to slip into her shadow, to ride in her wake.
The mare stops before one of the great festival bonfires, the firelight seeming almost to swim over her body, liquid and silvery. Sterling does not know how long he stands there, watching her watch the flames.
At last she turns, and sees him. “What?” she asks, her voice cool with disdain, and in response he reaches to pluck free the stray autumn leaf that had nested itself into the seafoam of her hair. He is not sure if she will let him (reach, touch), but the gesture is instinctive. A deadly instinct, maybe.
“You look...” Lovely, he wants to say. Wild. “New.” And she does. Not new as he is new, here, but new in the way of Aphrodite, risen from the surf on the ragged curve of an enormous shell—glistening and otherworldly, with her extravagant coral crown.
But there is something ancient about her, too, in the gleam of her eye, in the haughty arch of her neck. In the predatory flare of her nostrils. Sterling cannot help himself: he steps closer. “You smell of the sea.”
AND MAYBE GOD IS JUST A COP
THAT WE CAN FAST TALK
THAT WE CAN FAST TALK
@
