Listen, girl, there is nothing fragile about you.
Inside you rest a host of predators, waiting to be unleashed at your command.
Inside you rest a host of predators, waiting to be unleashed at your command.
The tigress looks first; blue buried in a cauldron of orange and black striping, pale brows and pale mouth, all turn down with displeasure at the appearance of another. Not just one, but two. Her tail slashes from side to side, discontentment growing, resentment a plague within her belly, gnawing as hounds on a corpse until all that is left are bones and damnation. Jealousy surges, and the tigress offers a warning growl to the child and his pest - for atop brown and gold dapples, nestled coyly among pale hair that twines around primate fingers, is a cream colored body with a dark face.
Neerja does not care who they are, only that they are trespassing.
Nearer still they draw, the boy calling out towards her cub happily, a twinkle in his young eyes. How young he is, unknowing of the world and the monster he could become. But of course, everything is either the hunter or the hunted to Neerja. Kept in polite society, she is still so untamed; wild and only barely held in check. Her cub's kind are not slaughtered by Neerja's paw, but were she not so bound, so tightly tied to the phoenix... who's to say it could not be so?
Pink nose turns toward orange and red skin, tapping roughly against pale white shoulder. Only when gold in a sea of black turns, coming from a fog to meet blue, does the tiger again growl. Harsher, colder, there is annoyance flickering on Neerja's face that only Moira knows to look for.
Ssk, ssk, the noise comes from dark lips that have frowned for so long now. A soft breath passes over the tigress' forehead and then she is up, tail slicing through the air with a snarl on her lips once more. Angrily the cat paced off, neither a glance nor hiss thrown back to the trio, and the wide eyes of the cocoa-maker and the baker left to stare after her.
Once her beloved retreated into the shadows, stalking the Night Markets, pouting and huffing and her hunger growing day by day, the Emissary turned to see the young charge. Something tickles her thoughts, and she thinks that there is a likeness to Katniss in this boy. Has she seen him wondering alongside her in the markets or through the Keep, she wonders? Lips purse, but they are pulled up and made to be merry for his sake.
So young, she thinks.
They are always so young - and her mind flies to another colt who writes to her from the North and sends her sweets. She cannot help but to smile, to look at the youth now and see a likeness to that boy, too. "I don't think I've met you, little warrior," she hums to him. Her voice is as soft as the marshmallows that melt in their drinks, rich gold eyes dancing, but just barely.
"I'll tell you a secret," and she grins like a conspirator, like the girl she once was when Estelle was by her side, some part of her still as wild and unchecked as Neerja. "This is one of my favorite places in all of Denocte. It's quiet, but they have the best cocoa," she agrees with a sagely nod, as though she's tried every stand and every shop in their corner of the world. It is, in fact, quite possible that the girl of stardust and sunsets had, in fact, done just that. There is a sweetness to her when children are around, a softness that comes out only for them.
It shows now.
Perhaps that will be her undoing, too.
"However," she chimes up again, like the tolling of a bell to bring the devout into their temples and others home to pray, "you can't go telling just everyone. How would we ever get our cocoa then?" The Tonnerre girl laughs then, soft as the stardust that freckles her nose. It is the same dancing torchlight that flickers to life so close to them. Should another look from afar, it seems as though fireflies flicker to life, dancing before the boy and his companion.
Oh, but she toys with those lights like waves lapping at a beach: leisurely, confidently. They buzz around the trio, they dance over the baker's stall and around the cocoa-maker's throat; they hum in his ear and sparkle in Saki's eyes. Winking gaily at the pair before her, the little lights are a constellation just for him.
"Are you the Champion's son?" She asks at last, his lightshow winking out in front of her golden eyes that devour him, that seek knowledge, that crave it almost as much as every cell in her body demands air. She could be wrong. Moira knows she has been wrong before, but she knows how to roll when she falls and get back up again.
All that matters is when you get back up and what you do afterward. That's what is remembered.
It is not the descent, it is every step before and after that will be sung and praised and judged.
Moira knows what it is to be judged. Not just by her family anymore, but the vastness of the world before her, too. So she waits, silence heavy between them once more, but she knows words will come. They are expected, and a smile sits upon the corner of her dark and sinful mouth.
