[AW] Dance of the Wayward Flame

[Fever]

 

This is what you get for trying to extend your kindness, Fever.

Languidly, she would blink her speckled eyelids, molten irises briefly capturing the gaze of the opposite's jade green. But the woman had retreated further into the shadows of the tents, and so most details of her expression and posture were concealed by the shadows that she wished to make her den in. 

So, Fever could only analyze her voice: the cadence of her timbre, the words the stranger cherry picked from her mind and placed on her tongue to be digested by Fever's eager eardrums.  

And yet, the longer Swahili spoke, the swifter apathy begins to settle on Fever's face, a familiar bitterness in the slight downturn of her lips, her body rigid as she listened to the dark-dweller's tirade.

Never once had Fever mentioned saving her - at least, aloud - yet she appreciated her concern, announcing it like Fever had heroism strapped to her like a cape. Prattling about prettier pictures -
 
It felt like a self-righteous lecture.

Which made Fever's freckled skin tickle with anger.

"Keep your sorry. The only thing I'm disappointed in is myself for assuming we were cut from the same cloth." She was curt - how quickly the honey of her voice had changed into the swarm of wasps protecting it. 

"My mistake."

There was something primal in the way Swahili had danced when she knew no one was watching, and initially, Fever had believed in kinship - the ways of her women and people passing down the knowledge of their artful movements, or how she was taught to braid her hair so that it would hold her secrets, or secrets like the slaves that would crush and milk limestone into a salve that would take away your scars; perhaps it was a longing for that commodity that briefly blinded her, convinced her to step down from her pyre in the first place.

What she did know, was that whatever could have been forged and nurtured was now set on fire and hastily abandoned.

"Enjoy your digging"

The minx doesn't spare another moment of her warmth or time, she does not dip her head in departure or give Swahili a lingering gaze that suggests fair tidings, she snakes her way back to the circle of light - back to the sitar player, the spice of incense, and the comforts of her tent.




@Swahili closing this thread! : )

inspirational piece for the music played at Fever's tent

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