Maybe August is looking for wolves. Ever since the island, ever since something judged him not enough to win but not enough to die, it feels like he’s been waiting for teeth around his neck. Any noose would do, anything that made his heart kick a little quicker in his chest. The simple daily business of the Scarab (the simple daily business of living) had ceased to be enough. There was only boredom when he played his role, only hollowness each morning when he woke from fitful sleep, only worry that gnawed through his gut and up toward his heart when he looked at Aghavni, who every day seemed a little further away.
He still doesn’t know he’s found one now. Fire, sure - fire that echoed in his belly where that unnamed drink pooled, fire that licked up his skin like salt-cured waves devouring a golden beach. Fire he wanted more of, wanted to scald himself in, wanted to burn his fingerprints off and start over or be consumed entirely.
The music goes shivering higher, faster, frantic. The crowd follows, blurs into nothing but background noise. The clamor of the stranger’s chains makes August think of coins endlessly falling into a chest that’s never full and each piece of ringing gold cries more more more instead of less. There’s never enough of anything. And oh, he is tired of feeling that way.
I could lead forever, she says, and a glorious shiver wends down his back at that, and he dutifully follows (the way he always has), relishing the small-pain from the pull on his mane. The crowd welcomes them, skin and bone on all sides, a feast of it beneath the drums; there is almost no room to dance, only to sway and to step and most of all to press against each other like the pages of a closed book, unread and unending. It feels like melting, where they touch, like dissolving; he wonders what the base parts of himself are, what pure thing he might be made into, if this night, this dance, this consuming fire could last forever.
It is tempting (and he is tempted, and his teeth are at the base of her neck and they are not gentle, and his chest is against her chest but he can only feel his own heartbeat, fast and wanting enough to make him ache) but it isn’t any different, really, than the rest of his life. Always following. It doesn’t matter what decisions you make when they belong to someone else.
“I’m leaving,” he says then, his voice husky as bonfire smoke, “in the morning. I’m sailing away,” and he is surprised to find it certain and true, the first thing he has really chosen in his life. He does not think about the consequences when he leans in close to this woman of fire-and-gold whose name he doesn’t know, doesn’t really care to know. “Until then I’m yours,” he whispers into the cusp of her ear, and when he curves his head away his throat glistens, bare gold, like he’s begging her to seize it, and consume him to the bones.
He still doesn’t know he’s found one now. Fire, sure - fire that echoed in his belly where that unnamed drink pooled, fire that licked up his skin like salt-cured waves devouring a golden beach. Fire he wanted more of, wanted to scald himself in, wanted to burn his fingerprints off and start over or be consumed entirely.
The music goes shivering higher, faster, frantic. The crowd follows, blurs into nothing but background noise. The clamor of the stranger’s chains makes August think of coins endlessly falling into a chest that’s never full and each piece of ringing gold cries more more more instead of less. There’s never enough of anything. And oh, he is tired of feeling that way.
I could lead forever, she says, and a glorious shiver wends down his back at that, and he dutifully follows (the way he always has), relishing the small-pain from the pull on his mane. The crowd welcomes them, skin and bone on all sides, a feast of it beneath the drums; there is almost no room to dance, only to sway and to step and most of all to press against each other like the pages of a closed book, unread and unending. It feels like melting, where they touch, like dissolving; he wonders what the base parts of himself are, what pure thing he might be made into, if this night, this dance, this consuming fire could last forever.
It is tempting (and he is tempted, and his teeth are at the base of her neck and they are not gentle, and his chest is against her chest but he can only feel his own heartbeat, fast and wanting enough to make him ache) but it isn’t any different, really, than the rest of his life. Always following. It doesn’t matter what decisions you make when they belong to someone else.
“I’m leaving,” he says then, his voice husky as bonfire smoke, “in the morning. I’m sailing away,” and he is surprised to find it certain and true, the first thing he has really chosen in his life. He does not think about the consequences when he leans in close to this woman of fire-and-gold whose name he doesn’t know, doesn’t really care to know. “Until then I’m yours,” he whispers into the cusp of her ear, and when he curves his head away his throat glistens, bare gold, like he’s begging her to seize it, and consume him to the bones.
August - -
there's a lover in the story
but the story's still the same
but the story's still the same
