BEXLEY BRIAR
baby's breath, machine guns -
The heart remembers things that the body does not want. Violence, for example, and love.
Bexley is attacked by both as she sleeps. The silver bruise of her body heaves and sweats in sleep, and deep in the corner of her dark, listless brain, memories rise of what the heart cannot forget.
The cool, consistent weight of gold tugging down at the back of her neck; a bone-saw, sharp and serrated, inlaid with pearl to nick at each joint; cake and pastries that become guilt and sawdust in the mouth; the collarbone country, dead yellow grass, something that has forgotten it once was beautiful, which the sun cracks and dusts and makes red with blood. Blood, and the utter magic of it. Blood in droplets and rivers, blood staining the black dirt, blood within the body, blood outside the body, seeping from a wound to water the earth, showing fluorescent against the stark white of a naked skull which has never before seen light it did not make itself. All of this and more lives in the back of Bexley’s head, and it haunts her as she sleeps.
Pretty on by, says the devil in the backdrop of each dream. Just pretty on by, princess, and don’t worry about anyone else. This is wrong. This feels very, very wrong. Unconsciously, Bexley’s ear flicks at the muted sound of screams floating through her frost-glass window. Pretty on by, and what good has that ever done her. A breath hitches in her throat. The devil tries harder to keep her sated. Opal? Diamond? What do you want? Good drugs? Porcelain? I’ll make it happen, baby.
And faintly, there is the smell of smoke, wafting under the doorway, and Bexley’s mouth twitches.
A wedding. A funeral. A bottle of liquor. A God? A lover? A -
And unmuted becomes the smell of blood, and the iron courses onto her tongue, and the smoke thickens, leaving corpse-smell in those almost white curls, and then it is too much, in concert, to ignore: Bexley slams to wakefulness, petrified and confused.
The cacophonous sound of war comes like unpracticed music through the sandstone walls. Metal against metal, skin against skin, hoof to bone, teeth to flesh. And the interrupted screaming, and sounds of pain, smattering what used to be clean air. Bexley’s ears flatten to her head. Despite the bruises on her side and the stinging, still-crusting gash across her face, she is awake and alert in a matter of seconds, not bothering for a moment to gather her wits before she takes off streaking down the tower steps toward the sounds and smells of gore.
As soon as she steps foot into the courtyard, the pain that courses through her body is immediately forgotten.
The apocalypse is descended. Ichor salts the earth; red light floods over broken sandstone; bodies stir and flail and finally go still in the sand. Bexley’s breath hitches in the curve of her throat. There is a season for everything, she realizes, even dying - and in Solterra, every season is for dying. Her heart stutters, flickers, screams electricity. A young soldier crashes to the ground not ten yards away from her, and Bex flinches hard until she realizes he’s a Davke, his mouth covered with the blood of her friends and family, his silver eyes wild with the lust for anger, and rage pools into each corner of her body, violent and overwhelming.
Bexley trembles with absolute fury. Blackness seeps into the edges of her vision, knifes deep into her heart. With elegant, leonine strides, she moves across the blood-stained sand, so quickly she becomes just an aureate flash, standing within moments over the bruise-battered face of the Davke, who’s still scrambling to get to his feet. She presses the curve of an ivory hoof to his cheek, pins him down. She can see the way he struggles for breath - nostrils flaring, chest heaving, teeth grit inside his jaw - armor cleaved like butter across the side of his neck. Heat overwhelms every inch of her skin, burns a hole into the front of her brain. The boy is squirming now, his blood seeping from her hoof print, desperate to wriggle away, almost looks as if he’s going to beg, but he doesn’t, and Bexley hates him for it.
Why don’t you beg? she coos, leaning close enough that she can see the whites of his eyes, the sweat that gleams on his brow. He smells like fear. And drying blood. Little boy. Yet she can’t be much older than he is.
Long live the Davke, the boy snarls back at her, and Bexley bares her teeth at him, lifts her head away, and in one fell stroke she brings her hoof down into the ivory dip of his skull so cleanly, so heavily, that he does not even have time to scream. Blood and gold, head ringing with gut-lust and war, Bexley turns away from the mutilated corpse and goes streaking into the midst of the fray, passing bodies she knows, bodies she doesn’t, and letting loose an untamed scream of grief.
Long live Solterra. And fuck the rest.
