D U N E
- ☾ -
S
omeone brought a child to the party.Dune is at the bar, about to knock back a drink alongside some hungry-eyed noble with one too many golden baubles. Piercings on piercings, with golden chains strung between them... at what point does decoration become a burden? Perhaps such a point does not exist if everything is made of gold- it would not surprise Dune if this stranger put a gilded bit beneath his tongue and called it fashion.
But he’s... he’s tipsy, and losing track of the story. Focus. The story is: he is at the bar, about to knock back a(nother) drink- no, he’s knocking it back, the pale golden liquid at the back of his throat, when he glances across the room and sees the child.
Dune chokes, coughs. The decadent stranger pats his back reassuringly with a wing… the gesture is performed with far too much eagerness, and the bay (still sputtering) recoils from the touch and begins to claw his way through the crowd toward the girl. One side of his body is covered in intricate golden paint. It is smudged in places but still mostly distinguishable as some kind of art and not just a smear of gold. As he bumps into strangers the patterns melt together more and more until they look like flames. Until he looks, if you squint your eyes, like Midas on fire.
He reaches the child just as a laughing stranger is passing her a drink. A crystalline voice oozes “You’re so cute!” when Dune barges in with a glare, ears pinned to his skull. “Don’t drink that,” he advises the girl as he snatches the glass away.
(for a moment, he considers drinking it himself, but the logical part of his mind, as faraway as it is right now, murmurs sagely to him that this would appear hypocritical.)
He pours the sweet-smelling drink into a potted plant nearby. The generous stranger pouts and shuffles away, and Dune sighs heavily as he turns to the young stranger. She didn’t have the look of an orphan- and Dune knew that look well- so her parents must be close by, but the young stallion felt protective of the girl nonetheless. Someone had to. His voice softens considerably as he exhales: “Where's your mom and dad?”
And what on earth are dreams if not our only way of speaking?
