Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
Gold burns and burns and burns. It marks her as different among her kin during the daylight hours. Light sets her aflame, unfurls its fingers down her spine, stretches easily and makes its home in riotous dark hair and waves and curls without regard to anything the phoenix might wish for.
Life is easier under the moon.
It is the moon that sighs into her ear and pours silver on her so easily, making her into a true Tonnerre, marking her as one of them - something they did and did not consider her still.
It is not love that settled first upon her skin, but shame.
The phoenix awakens in the hours before dusk, when gold still lines the rooftops of Denocte and sleepy vendors begin their trek into the Markets for the night. Already delicious scents of herbal teas and salted legumes waft up toward the Keep. Moira is quick to fix her hair into the loose knots upon her neck, bangs artfully scattered over her brow until they rim her kohl-lined eyes. Darkness within darkness stares back at her, only the barest hints of gold visible from the shadow of ebony fringe.
From further below, lips part and she huffs.
There is too much to do. Already, there is a golden body under the setting sun, casting a larger-than-life shadow upon the road toward the markets even when her skin is painted in purple and pink and red. Moira remembers what it was to run her lips upon that gold, to almost taste sweet cake at a festival so long ago with laughing blue eyes.
Then, they had been so different.
Now, she is a errant Emissary who is in desperate need of doing her job, rushing through corridors with half-hearted apologies as she hurtles past the bakers and maids and early birds. A flash of red on the great and beautiful stonework, and then the doors are flung open in her passing. The resounding *thud* of wood falling back into place would haunt her if she were not so focused.
Near breathless, Moira reaches the market. Two cups of cocoa trail obediently beside her, hastily picked up with a peck to the other girl's cheek at her favorite stand. An inquiry here, a few wrong shops there, and then she's in the entranceway of the mercantile shop specializing in bedroom attire. Great swaths of cloth hung from walls in colors both exotic and wild, divans and settees and tables to decorate the most intimate or formal of chambers are littered about. Some corners have examples of the wares put to work, others are simply riotous masses of color.
Quietly the Emissary draws up to the Warrior's side, lips pursed as she shakes her head with white puffs of air floating from her lips. A cocoa floats before Bexley in offering as Moira picks up a cream pillow and rich blue blanket. Carefully, she holds it to Bexley's side and takes a sip of her cocoa. "Let me help," she whispers with a smile, eyes twinkling, hope a pining thing in her heart, always trailing after something she can never have.
