MINYA
take that look from off your face
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
It is strange how seconds can seem to draw out like hours. She feels the pause of time, like breath in her lungs, a fist holding her chest tight, delaying the breath. It releases when the door at last opens, when she feels a part of herself begin to sleep, to die of desperation.
Minya has never given much thought to the tale of Icarus. But when the door opens, when August stands, gilded like the sun, Minya knows a part of her is melting and she is falling, tumbling, down, down. All that rises up to meet her is a sea of grief.
August stands, representing everything she had put importance in. He stands, a vision of the Scar`ab, yet both of them are far, far from the Night Court. They are both sand dusted, and worn thin. There are lines upon August’s face, lines he never had at the Scarab. Minya had never thought she really looked at him, until she realises all the ways he looks different now.
But despite these new lines, dark and grim as they are, he is everything she remembers. He is home. And she has treated her home so terribly. He orders her in - as if she would do anything else! Hre breath, now freed, rattles in her rips, still full of terror and tears as she steps through the door. There is no grace in the way she enters his home, no haughty regard for its place in the city, for how he keeps it, or who he invites here. No, Minya is so far fallen, every part of the Scarab queen is gone. And maybe that is why she throws herself against him, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. The last time she embraced, truly, was when her mother held her. It was too long ago, frighteningly so. Every touch since had felt too intimate, too… comforting. She was not worthy.
Yet today she takes because it feels as though she has nothing left.
The embrace was short yet even in that time she could smell the sandalwood, the smell of smoke from candles and the dust of the cobbled streets upon his skin. It is a far cry from the luxury fragrances that clung to their bodies at the Scarab. Minya steps away, just as her mind begins to catch up, as it feels the creeping unease of an embrace, as the horror and grief ebbs before it flows once again.
He is looking over her and even in her shame she lifts up her chin and meets his gaze through blood and dust and broken antler shards. Minya breathes slow, slow, yet her breath is ragged, her heart a startled bird.
You are safe now.
Minya closes her eyes, whether to hold those words tightly within her, or block the comfort of them out, she does not know. But grief is rising within her again and she fears it will be a sob, or a scream.
Does it hurt? He asks and she smiles a mere bitter shadow of the cruel smiles she once offered him. “Yes.” her voice trembles.
She gasps, remembering, grieving. “They, they broke them,” shock fills every word until they are brimful and overflowing. This was her punishment, for her cold cruelty. Minya takes a breath (each one is a gasp into surprised lungs). “I am sorry,” she tell August and she means for everything.
@August | "speaks" | notes: <3
