❦
I got my red dress on tonight
dancin' in the dark in the pale moonlight
I got my red dress on tonight
dancin' in the dark in the pale moonlight
She startles a bit, hearing her name invoked in the sanctum of the maze. Inexplicably it makes her feel almost guilty, like she were a foal caught with her nose in a grain bag (or, and her mouth quirks at the memory: like she were a hair-in-curlers waif caught with her ankles weighed down by Hajakhan mother-of-pearl).
A breath of wind pierces through the hedgerows and wicks away heat from Aghavni's forehead. It wicks away surprise, too, and by the time her mane settles along her neck like a golden cloud, her lips have pressed together into a pink pout.
"What gave me away?" she asks wryly, as she lowers into an ostensible and sweeping bow. As she straightens she picks up the felled mask and brushes dirt off its beak, though her eyes are trained nowhere near it. Instead, they gleam cat-like as she peers up at the red dots lining the elegant swoop of Antiope's cheekbones.
She has always found the Regent exquisitely beautiful, almost to a fault; Aunt Marianna had once said that the gods punished those they’d made too beautiful by giving them thrice their share of tragedy. Her head tilts as she looks sidelong at Antiope, and wonders what tragedies hide beneath eyes as blue as heartbreak.
He whom the gods love dies young.
Aghavni prays she will never be loved by a god.
"If you had not asked, I would have done so anyway,” she chirps. Dead leaves crumble as she spins on her hooves and begins walking, leisurely, down a path she'd chosen on a lark. It had looked more dubious than the others: more saturated with shadows, the hedge askew around the edges, barely wider than her shoulders. Practically an invitation.
"Late?" A protruding twig bends skywards as Aghavni wriggles her way under it, leering bird-beak mask trailing gloomily after her. She throws a sly grin over her shoulder: a crescent moon in the vacant night.
"Why, fair Antiope, the night has only just begun." A breeze carrying the scent of sea salt and sweet caramel combs through the hedges and makes them shiver, as if in anticipation.
@Antiope "speaks"
