IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME -
the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse.
When the man took a seat beside of her, Locust spared him a glance, but little more; he was massive and horned and dark, and there was something to the look of his glossy black eyes that suggested any kind of engagement with him would be more trouble than it would be worth. She doesn’t know what it is. Those eyes are too blank for her, in their void-blackness, as uncomfortably empty as they were full of something she did not understand or recognize. When he looked at her, she could feel his stare. She didn’t much care for it.
It wasn’t enough to make her move, though. Locust – small, delicate, silver-bright Locust – had rubbed shoulders with the lowest of the low for her entire life, and she spent her time hunting down hungry, fanged water-monsters that would devour her quite happily if she gave them half a chance. (She was not in the habit of giving them half a chance.) Even if she weren’t virtually impossible to intimidate, with Jeremy right there, her pride wouldn’t allow her to skulk off.
They were two strangers in a bar. There was nothing unusual in that.
And it wouldn’t have become unusual, had the man not sat there in blank, unnatural silence, those river-stones of eyes trained on Jeremy, who fidgeted, occasionally, under the growing weight of his stare. The man did not speak. Jeremy could not work. The minutes dragged on, almost unbearably long and awkward, with neither man opting to break the silence. Locust looked down the counter, out the window, back at the other patrons in the bar, unwilling to insert herself into whatever this was; she had no interest in trouble tonight.
A prickle, honed in on the side of her neck, suggests that it might not be her decision to make.
Jeremy was looking at her, now, and the glint in his eyes tells her that she has one of two options – deal with the man at the counter or pay for whatever kind of (most certainly expensive) concoction he was mixing for her. Locust does not want to deal with the man at the counter, who is easily three hands taller than her, considerably more bulky, and in possession of a rather demonic set of horns…but she has dealt with worse, and she’d prefer not to deal with whatever outrageous fee Jeremy was bound to force upon her if she left him out to dry.
Oh, hell.
Locust turned, her eyes the dangerous undertone of the sea at storm, and she flashes a grin at the man; it is all teeth. (This is, she thinks, one of the few occasions where she envies her cannibalistic prey.) “You planning to order something?” she inquires, and it isn’t quite a threat – but there is a hard edge to her voice, like being pressed up against a brick wall.
So much, she thinks, for a simple night off…but this too can serve as a distraction, so she wonders if she is qualified to complain about it. Anything to take her mind off the sea.
@
"Speech!" ||
