Some people are meant to be pruned and prodded, groomed day and night, placed upon a pedestal and left to become some pagan idol, some fantastic icon that is partially out of this world and too great to fully comprehend. But they are vapid underneath. They are hollow shells of men and women who were almost enough, almost more than life itself. Dalmatia is never meant to be something stunning, something to be stared at and wooed. She is far more sharp, like broken glass than the average blade in any kitchen drawer. Most, not all, but most, are only butter knives beside her scalpel. Precision, focus, determination. They all rest in her beating breast, humming and thrumming with life, with the vitality that only years can try and try to drain and fail over and over again.
Tonight, at the Ieshan party, she is no different than a candle flickering on the wall. While someone, somewhere, painted her body with swirling clouds of gold, with watery waves of red, and outlined her eyes in kohl so that she is as soft as she is fierce, Dalmatia is not here for pleasure, and honestly, she cannot tell you the last time she lived just to live and experience the world. Purpose has become a much more present thing in her life, and it lives, oh it thrives, alongside that simmering rage threatening to turn into a roaring inferno at any given moment.
Cicero. The word that is a name. A man who ruins lives. It is the beat of her heart. Cicero. She thinks as she moves through the bodies; throngs of people don't care if they stand in the way. No one cares. Not anymore.
She works to hide a snarl and fails at keeping away a frown. It matches the coolness of her holly eyes, it mirrors the tension in her muscles.
Nothing about her is soft, or pretty, or anything like the Ieshan that is the least like the other Ieshans, it seems.
Even Ruth, in the center of it all as some dusty goddess, some earthen beacon, is much lovelier than the magpie girl would ever be. You can shine a window all you want, but you cannot make it any less painful when it shatters.
It is to the girl of brown and red that Dalmatia now goes. Away from the crowds. Away from hands against her hips and men with curious eyes plucking at her ribs. Once, perhaps, Dalmatia could have loved another. Now...now there is no time for love. There is no time for anything, really, other than Cicero. Tonight, there is a chance that he could be here. Marisol still has no leads, but she has two children that all of Terrastella is buzzing about. Unable to stay, the ex-vicarious left and walked, and walked, and flew, and walked more until the sand burned her skin, until the city in the sun, Solis' very own desert jewel, lay sprawled before her.
"You're bored?" Dalmatia inquires of Ruth, watching the way the other woman watches the world: detached, uninterested... Perhaps she is more stone than she would appear, but even rocks have eyes in this city.
Beware: I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.
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