I’d tear to pieces
It feels like a gift, like a privilege, when Anandi learns she has been given Apolonia's real name. It is a certain kind of power, one she holds tight and dear. She wishes, suddenly, that she had a secret name to give Apolonia. Or a bouquet of flowers. Or anything else to give the girl who is full of presents. She wishes she could do something more than take, and take, and take.
"Don't feel bad," Boudika said to her once. "It's in your nature." So Anandi smiles, sly and beautiful, and gives in to her nature without guilt. Apolonia says "I'm sure they will," and (all hushed like prayer, like confession, even though she slings it over her shoulder casual-cool like a shrug) "I will."
"You're too sweet," Anandi appears to bat the compliment away with husky laughter and a wicked smile. Really she's drinking it in like wine. It makes her feel a little flushed, a little dizzy, a lot like the edge of a razor blade searching for something to sink into.
She feels so very alive here, in the space where tension makes the water thick as air. Here in this space where want waxes, melts, takes the shape of need. Here where the electric darkness is made salt-water buoyant by starlight."Maybe I can show you some day. The ocean. How deep it is." The offer is not made lightly. It is a grave thing, to make another of her kind. To show them her world. She counts her teeth. Then she counts her heartbeat on her tongue as Apolonia smiles shyly, reaches out, and--
Cicadas erupt into song. Anandi steps into her companion. She lingers there for a moment cheek to cheek, awed and delighted by the heat of Apolonia's skin. The smell of it, thick and sweat and visceral as sinking your teeth into an apple. Eels rustle in her belly, dangerous, hungry, needing. "I went to Night Court and watched them dance by the fire." Her breath is hitched, she doesn't bother to hide the way her very words flush with excitement. "It looked easy to learn, hard to master."
Anandi takes another step forward so they are shoulder to shoulder. Her eyes are bloodshot, her vision a bleary silver-red haze.She sidesteps into the other girl, pushing a little harder than she needs to. Guiding her roughly into the first steps of the dance. She steps again, one girl's shoulder to another, and they sway closer and closer to the dark secret heart of the night. Her lips suddenly press into the soft curve of Apolonia's spine. "Follow me," the heat of her breath erupts across that satin skin, sinks its way into the marrow. Anandi, grown emboldened by moonlight and flesh, does not ask. She commands.
was an estuary you could never survive inside.
A N A N D I
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
