BEXLEY BRIAR
The night is hot and deep around her, and were Bexley paying more attention she would notice the promise that hums deep inside it - the promise of something dangerous, a tumult at best, a disaster at worse - but so preoccupied is she by her trek back to Solterra that she hardly notices the set of footsteps that starts up behind her, much less the subtle tick-tick-tick of a time bomb creating itself in the air at her side. In the space between her and the stranger. In the touch of her hooves to stone. In the black sky overhead, stippled with smoke and clouds, glowing with stars.
That sounds like one of Reichenbach’s.
Bex glances toward the voice, unsubtle, uncaring. In the dark, her blink is languid - silvery lashes curling, sweeping against the sharpest, highest rise of her cheek. Her step doesn’t slow, but she also doesn’t veer away. It isn’t, she says flatly, exhaustion limiting her interest in lies. The tune has faded out, but she continues it in her head: the few warm notes repeating themselves, a relic of her childhood, the many years she spent in Greer-Briar, taken care of by trees and streams. There is nothing like that here. Just patchwork stone and brick - brown rather than green.
It’s unsettling. Disturbing. And this strange, heated presence at her side is doing nothing to settle Bexley’s frazzled nerves.
Yin and yang, they continue down the slope, Bex listening with calculated disinterest, ears flickering to catch his words but never really registering. Wind rushes past them with the cool touch of humidity; starlight speckles the puddles at their feet. His voice is a hum that never reaches the gray matter of her brain. What use would it be anyway, listening to some stupid boy hand out his two-karat opinions?
If I’m a vulture, you’re a gods-damned rat. For once Bexley has lost her interest in playing nice, even in playing dirty. Her voice is low and smoky as it usually is, but it’s also cold, uncharacteristically flat. The gleam in those blue eyes is icier than it is inviting. There’s no way for him to know that her usual brand is preppy and cute and overtly flirtatious, but had Reich seen her, or Eden - anyone who’s ever met her - they would have known immediately that the night has brought out something terrible from her shadowed insides, something that roils and claws now at her yellow skin. You want me to say I’m scavenging, then, but I’m not. Her lips split into a hard, sharp smile. I’m hunting.
Solis help this poor boy. His bad timing and unfortunate luck.
@acton <3
