“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
Tonight, the eve of the harvest, is for being wild. It has been since the dawn of time. And so, because her soul knows how to be as wild as the reeds by the sea, Al'Zahra gives herself over to the savage night with abandon.
There is moonlight pooling liquid silver in her chains until she looks as blessed as anything else in the court of stars. All the firelight burnishes her skin until she's nothing more than a ember pulled free from a flame and given something close to a heart. Around her the other girls are dancing and around them the soldiers are watching with hungry, protective eyes as if there is danger on the outskirts of all of them. She smiles, oh she smiles, and it's like a wolf smiling at sheep as she twists around them and calls herself wind.
Music carries her body onward through the crowd and for a moment, only a moment, she loses herself in the ringing of a bell and the touch of someones lips upon her shoulder. She tells herself she's like jasmine smoke, lovely and soft and dangerous to breathe. And part of her, that savage ancient part, wants them all to choke on it. She's about to press back against those lips against her skin. Between her smile her teeth ache to answer back with violence and gold. Her heart snarls in her chest like a caged thing and the wild, brutal music drives it onward.
There is a flash of yellow at the edge of the crowd, back where the soldiers are watching the sheep dance. Something in her trembles like a nymph begging for the chase, eager to feel the forest sweep her away into hiding. When she turns and dances closer it's still there in her eyes, that hunger and wanting. In the echo of the silver moonlight catching on her skin it looks a little like ferociousness.
The crowd clings to her even as she pulls away, like they all know dancing feels more like freedom when she's twisting between their shadows. Even the firelight doesn't want to let her go for it still pools molten and golden across the last summer shine of her skin. When her teeth flash between her smile the firelight turns them into a pale echo of gold like stars warring against the dawn. “Was your hunt successful then?” She turns her eyes to those golden wolf eyes in the darkness something in her voice seems to suggest that she hopes the answer is no.
Because when she curls her neck like a nymph dawning her flower crown every inch of her body seems to sing in the wild, savage night. It's singing, have you come to hunt me too?
@Morrighan
