MINYA
take that look from off your face
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
All around them is the heartbeat of revelry. It resounds in the thumping of feet, the rush of laughter and the crack of kindling in the fires. The Night Markets are the core of Denocte, where she is most alive, where her darkness is split in light and love and colours of such multitude that Minya cannot name them all.
She stands in their midst like a jewel amidst Denocte’s crown. She is small and slim. She should be so easily lost, yet like mortals look for gods, so Denocteans look and see her and clear a path about her. Her eyes lower, their starlight silver spilling to the ground as his feet. Feet that are bone white and dusted with less dirt than she might have imagined. Even Minya is more dirt covered than he. This is what dancing barefoot will get you. Her feet throb with the dance, her blood still sings and she wants to laugh at him when he speaks to claim he knows more of dancing than she might think.
Her lips draw into a smile, they part to let laughter pour out like a peel of mocking bells. But, he stops her laughter like the press of a finger to her lips. Minya does not laugh. Not when this stranger is telling her of snake charmers and ice dancers. Oh ice, ice! Already she can feel the creep of winter along her spine and how it sinks deep into her weary warm muscles. She wonders if lie would be easier to be a statue, so cold she cannot feel or think. It would be a just end to a girl like she - made of steel and all things that do not yield.
Yet this stranger has her yielding. He has lifted her eyes up, up from the dust bowl at their feet. Up, up to where his lips curl with their mysterious tales. He has her gaze blown wide with longing, soft with desire, glittering with jealousy. Ah, to see a new dance, to learn a new way to move to music…
He compliments her, still smiling, still looking at her like a boy who has just rolled in from the sea. She thinks he still smells of salt-water, the pale parts of him is still the froth of waves that will not yet release him.
But Minya does. She loosens her gaze from where it holds him. She lowers her lashes, dusted with gold and diamonds. Her cheeks brushed with silver glitter make her radiant and sharp in the night. Her laughter is sweet as sugar, warm as the donuts her friend gave her. This stranger has the Scarab girl drunk on stories, drunk on the things she has never seen. They are now promises within her soul. They are vows that she will one day see them and hear the way foot-blades skim across ice with a keening hiss.
He offers her a drink, this boy of bone and earth - starlight and comets. Minya moves to say no but all she says is, “yes.” It tumbles from her lips, startled it was ever spoken. But it should not be, not when this girl aches for stories of worlds better than hers. “White wine,” She tells him and thinks how rich and sweet its flavour will be upon her tongue.
Beneath the sweep of her fuschia fringe she studies him, the dance finally receding from her heart, her limbs. She feels loose and light - a lantern released and rising into the night. “I trained here with the travelling fire dancers.” The yearning in her voice is as deep as a well. It aches in her soul and in her mind she remembers what it is to lie beneath the stars beside the fire in the middle of nothingness and count the stars that glow. They were so many, like dust.
Oh how Minya wants and wants.
“What brings you to, Denocte, traveller?” The girl asks when she tumbles at last from her memories.
@Sterling| "speaks" | notes: eee <3
