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" BEXLEY BRIAR "
How long has she wandered Solterra like a shut-in, lazy in the heat, sun-blind and proud? The summer has made her complacent, overly happy, overly pleased. Bexley is ashamed of herself for being so easily gratified; it is as if she’s lost her edge, her bitterness, her bloodlust, and without that she is nothing more than a puppet, gluttonous and overconfident. It turns her back into the girl of her childhood, and Solis help anyone who has to deal with that, especially Bexley herself. The only way to remedy this is a reality check. A dip in cold water. And so Herculean effort she’s left the dreamy desert to visit her old friend Reichenbach, and this is how she finds herself at the Night Court’s border with her legs aching and brain turned to mush, startled and electrified by the world that now surrounds her.
It smells of jasmine and smoke, leftover bonfires, dew still bristling over the grass on cold mornings; Bexley enters with a timid step, awed by the strangeness of the walls that touch the sky just ahead of her, time-worn walls cut in some places by windows and dull torchlight, with flickering shadows and silhouettes visible through doorways and arches. Her hooves click-click-click on the floor as she moves, a leisurely exploration of the oppressive hallways and many empty rooms. It’s so dark. She should have expected that, and she did, kind of, but no thought could have prepared her for the absolute lack of light, windows blacked out, ceilings double-shut, only the weak wash of fire in sconces lighting her steps.
No one comments on the smell of rose and sunlight that follows her, the fact that her skin practically glows in this darkness; the unfamiliar faces merely pass in a whoosh of motion and are gone again, leaving strange scents behind them, the clinking of jewelry, whorls of hair that are the last thing to disappear around the corners. They must notice her, yet they pass suspicious looks and deign to say nothing.Mystified by her new anonymity, Bexley comes to a slow stop in one of the bigger rooms and calls out, Reich?, hoping the court is small enough that he’ll somehow find her.
Hello, your Majesty, there’s a girl here, different from the rest of us, stranger and sunnier, and she has a golden necklace… Yeah, he’ll find her.
@reichenbach & interested others!
