BEXLEY BRIAR
my carnivore heart comes out after dark -
They are strange. Especially together. Gold-and-gold, two glittering, swirling suns in the cloudy gloom of Denocte, in streets marked with silver crescent and half-moons Bexley still finds herself suspicious of.
They are strange. They do not belong here. (Right? Perhaps that is only her wish. A childish desire to know she has found someone else like her, someone who does not belong but wants to. Or pretends he does…)
If things were different—if she were someone else, maybe, looking down on this instead of out from it—they could be a painting. Shiny as the satin of a Rococo, like the statue of Solis on top of the mountain, like Bexley’s chain, cold and bright in the cloudy dark.
The smell of cinnamon is still hot and sharp in the air. Steam swirls up from the teacup between them; it casts a veil which is warm like a dream. Bexley lets out a breath and watches it turn the vapors into a plume like dragon-smoke. Something about it is poetic. A thing like fire reduced to a little cloud, rising from the surface of a lake of tea.
His stare does not bother her, though she does find his concern almost endearing—weighted gazes like his she is more than used to being the subject of. When he smiles, she smiles back. It is the easiest thing she has done in many days.
And it feels good. Like falling asleep dead-tired on a mattress stuffed with feathers. Like a bracingly warm drink. Like a heart that knows when to beat, and how hard, and how fast. “Because people tell me so,” Bexley admits.
Suddenly she is a little shy; when did she learn to listen to anyone but herself?
“Besides, if you’ve heard of me, you must have heard of the trouble I’ve caused.”
Not death. Not despair, not passion, not crime nor punishment. Trouble, only, because there is no word specific enough for the fanged, deep-black part of her which causes
all this
trouble.
@
