“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
There is a song that wants singing. It's in the notes of cracking fire, the whispered notes between hair and flesh, and the yelling merchant's treble twining like ink between the two. The song is laying itself slow over her skin somewhere between the promise of fire and the chill of sweat cooling in the blackness. She shivers at the feel of it, each note a slow-burn touch, and when he turns his eyes and the song beds down in the warmth of her marrow.
And maybe that song that wants singing wants something more too, something between that line of violence and love.
“I haven't heard that one yet.” She presses closer to him when another horse passes too close by her hip. When she tilts her head to watch his smile blaze like a solar flare her own eyes shine like a comet streaking through the sunrise. Their shoulders almost touch when she steps closer. If there is a heavy sigh from the line behind them she does not listen to it (although something god-like in her catches and roars). “But I'm glad I remind you of a story.” And it's there in her look, that she knows more than any young mare should, more than any god perched up high like a sun in the clouds. It's an ancient look and it's the way boys and girls have been looking at each other since the beginning of the mortal coil.
He doesn't look away towards the waiting merchant and she follows his lead. Her chains sing part of that song that still wants singing when she steps closer to the table, close enough that the lantern-light makes her gold seem like links of diamonds pulled down from the stars. The smile curling sickle bright through her lips darkens in that wavering light. “Surprise me.” If his voice has other things hidden in all that moon-silver rasping so does her.
But instead of things like anything, the curl of her voice sighs like a sword being pulled free. Maybe that's always been the song, the sigh of metal and flesh and wicked revels beneath the forgiving eyes of the constellations.
@August
