MINYA
take that look from off your face
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
The last time she had fled like this was the night she slipped free of the trader’s shackles and slipped out into the night. Then, the only trauma had been the bruises about her fetlocks. But now, now blood ran in rivulets down her face. It gathered in the wells above her eyes and the grooves about her lips. The heat of the sun dried the oozing blood swiftly, until it seemed to run like great rivers of tar. They were black against the dark of her skin and polluted with the sand the desert breeze blew up into her face.
But nothing would slow Minya this day. Not the grit in her eyes nor the way her lashes clumped with the sorrowful flow of her blood. Her limbs are scratched and dirtied, there is no part of her that seems to bear resemblance to the Scarab’s most famed dancer. No, Minya could pass only for a slave girl, one who has fled the clutches of her captor only to fall foul of their punishment. How ironic that her life should seem to turn, full circle.
Minya stumbles as she runs, her sides heaving and the few gems unstained by violence gleaming dissonantly in the sunlight. In her mind she still sees the her antlers twisted and wrong upon the ground. They seemed jagged as they lay. Each one a ribcage broken open and contorted each rib adorned with lavish jewelry. Wasted, pointless they seemed now. But oh how she had valued them!
The cobbles of the street are hard and rough beneath her feet as she flees down winding street after winding street. She knows where she is going, she hopes August might still be there. Her hair moves, it falls across her face and blocks her sight of the street names. She keeps throwing her head back. Her hair moved strangely now her antlers were removed. Now only their bases remained, broken and sharp like the trunks of trees left after their top halves were broken clean away. They each point like jagged daggers up to the sky.
Wretched, dirty and inelegant she bangs upon the door and cries his name in a way she has never cried out before. It is a haunted noise, it is so full of tears and a broken voice. Tears track through the dirt on her cheeks, they wash sand into her eyes and she rubs the sand away, her eyes made raw, their soft skin stinging. “August!” She pleads, her breath a raking gasp. The wood of the door does not budge and a sob escapes her.
Oh Minya, how far you have fallen.
@August | "speaks" | notes: <3
