❦
please linger near the door uncomfortably
instead of just leaving.
please linger near the door uncomfortably
instead of just leaving.
She'd gotten the order wrong. Camphor in the tip of the beak, packed in plump like a stuffed hen, before drawing the crumpled leather specimen over her eyes like an opaque funeral shroud.
The mask was far too large for her. Medieval plague masks hadn't been designed to be worn by wraith-slim girls hanging halfway over the threshold of Adolescence, two limbs pinwheeling above the platform of Womanhood. But, as she caught her reflection in the dingy puddle by her hooves, a shiver trailed deliciously down her spine.
The leather of the black mask had begun to rot, the edges of its bugged out eye sockets ravaged by rats and damp basements. Somewhere in its illustrious lifetime, a wearer had thought to sew a real bird's beak atop the leather one - and done a shoddy job of it. Aghavni's embroidery work had always been horrendous, but her stitches would be near surgical compared to the tangled nest of thread binding hollow bone to cracked leather. Teetering atop her neck like a buoy, she looked as if she'd had her head lopped off and replaced with a monstrous raven's, three sizes too big.
She looked terrifying. Like Pestilence ought. The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
Heaving a sigh (that failed to express the depth of her boredom), Aghavni tucked herself back into the cornstalks as a clopping of hoofbeats resounded down the shadowy path. She tried to tell if the rhythm was even or not - were they timid hoofbeats, or overly confident ones? Visitors were assured at the door by a cheery attendant that the haunted corn maze was only in "good fun," its frights contained to those that wouldn't, not at all, madam, make you hurl up your supper.
What she wanted to know was how a maze held at Harvest Festival could be marketed as "good fun" if it didn't.
A firefly alighted upon the beak of her mask. She waved it off, gently, before it could attract a horde of its glowing brethren, and watched it flitter away into the night. She'd politely declined being outfitted with a costume after signing up for the late evening shift, insisting that she'd furnish her own. When the moon had risen above the woodsmoke haze of the Night Markets, shining as brilliant as a silver coin, she'd slipped past the droning role call to find her way into the heart of the maze.
Because, on the last day of Harvest, the Scarab was due to commence its first Night of Hallowed Sin. After catching word of a maze being paved in the Prairie, the opportunity to test Pestilence's costume on a herd of unsuspecting lambs was too tempting to pass up.
She'd thrown herself mercilessly into her work after passing through Solterra's flames, and finding herself standing at the foot of a cold throne, with the echoes of a lion's roar and Solis' laughter chiming across her flushed, furious cheeks. Did you think me so easily gotten rid of?
She hadn't stopped to greet the new king. Instead, she'd walked quietly back through the empty corridors, past the doors of her old room, Mother's room, Zolin's room, until she'd emerged black-eyed and broiling in the frigid Solterran night. The words 'I will return. I will return to my birthplace, Solis, and I will wait for you.' stained upon her tongue.
She couldn't remember how long she walked for, only that she must've fainted near the alleyway leading to the Scarab, because she'd awoken aching and filthy, tangled in the sheets of her bed.
A stack of black playing cards fresh off the press lay warming the bottom of her satchel. She lifted one out, admired the embossed design, and pushed the sockets of her mask back into alignment with her eyes.
The sharp tang of camphor wafted from her neck as she stepped soundlessly out from the corn, and pressed her beak against a warm shoulder.
"You are approached by Doctor Pestilence." Her breath smoked out in ribbons from beneath her mask. "What shall you do?"
open to any! "speaks"
