You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
Such a severed soul. And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she picks up the pieces of herself. Sews them back together; knocks torment, like cobwebs, from her soul. One day, perhaps, she will be free, completely, from the dirty, linen wraps that bound her to an eyeless, lifeless abeyance. Until then, she seeks distraction in whatever she can find, wherever she can find. Once, it might have been the easy curves of her scimitar, feeling the weight of the sharpened blade and the balance of the gilt, jewelled hilt and handle; cutting wide arches in the air with it. The feeling of give and take as it collides with a sparring dummy, splitting open the woven faux-skin and spilling stuffing, like entrails, on the golden sand.
Once, it might have been with her brothers and sisters, sharing war stories, politics, hymnals to the sun-god and inside jokes.
It might have been Zayir, passing the time in nostalgia, picking at the different ways they each remembered the same childhood experience.
But she is a loose ray of a dead order, buried and made obsolete with time. Forgotten, by the world and by Soleterra, and by each other. And the curved weapon that had served as her protector and kin, it too has been lost to the charnel house, laid somewhere in a dusty corner of that stygian crypt, wasting away without the nourishment of blood and battle.
Losing its glint.
So, she preoccupies herself with the crawling streets, though it goes against the distant and arrogant nature of her bones. The company, the many skins and breaths that press against her as she shifts into the crowd, scowling and unapproachable, is welcome. Welcome in as much as she surrounds herself with it for the noise it makes and the smells it has, so different from the sepulchral quiet and stagnant redolence of stone. Used for the liveliness that serves only a reminder that she is no longer buried, but surfaced.
She drinks from a small bottle of fruity wine, sharp, acid and lightly sweet at the end. She stands, leaning against a sandstone wall, watching the bustle of the market-streets with hard, warning eyes.
The busyness means everything becomes as one to her. One big, moving mass of flesh. Like a filthy, ignoble monster with a hundred pairs of eyes and legs; a hundred voices, none of which win over the other, so it is an incoherent cacophony. Sound. Simply sound. Until he approaches the merchant to her left and her languid, venomous gaze falls on him, a distraction among many. She watches him revel in his own finesse. The lulling, golden song of his tongue that turns the woman’s attention long enough to find herself strangely bemused. Cyrra’s brow raises, as she watches him slip away.
Taking the last drink of her bottle, she leaves it on the step.
She does not mean to find him again, but as she weaves along the margins of the crowd, ducking in and out to look at something, or avoid something else, they find each other somewhere in the middle. She tucks her ecru wings tight against her body and comes to walk beside him, eyeing him with iron curiosity, the tight, straight line in her lips revealing nothing behind the stony exterior. “Silver-tongued,” she grunts, “given enough time, she might have just given it to you, you know?” Cyrra possess nothing like that. Her charisma and charm are all martial, pride and dry humour.
Nothing about her is easy.
Well, almost nothing about her is easy.
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
