pilate
/
walking round always mad reputation, leave a pretty girl sad reputation / this that what-we-do don't tell your mom shit, this that red cup all on the lawn shit / got a fresh cut straight out the salon bitch
In my dreams it’s always cold outside. In my dreams, I step out the door and into a desert capped with snow as it was on my birthday three years ago, when all the gods went mad. The rough-and-tumble protests of the streets drowned out by the soft rushing of wind, the shifting ripple of palm fronds not another layer of sound so much as a blanket over all the others, and my scales clinking against one another, rattled by the cold.
In my dreams there is no sound except the breeze and the kiss it makes against the cobblestones, stirring up sand and a fine layer of unnatural frost.
This is when I feel most rested. I know hazily I am asleep, but I stand with my eyes half-opened in the gray streets, the ringing in my head temporarily vanquished, my heart a soft thing, for once, chained to the bottom of the chest. All around me the world is empty. And for the first time in my life I am alone, alone, alone.
But every day I wake up to a world that is hot and busy and loud. Whether I have been dreaming or not, I am inevitably startled from sleep by one of my siblings practicing their instruments, or the servants banging pots and pans, or the song the gardeners sing as they pull up weeds. Our property is luxurious but not peaceful; it never has been; the Ieshans were always known for throwing the best parties. After five unfortunate years alive I have come to accept where there is gold, there cannot also be peace. And so I must shake off the dream-frost and head into the noise.
Today I am supposed to meet with a new silks merchant, but he will not arrive for a few hours (and even that is assuming he shows up on time). I have time to waste. The sun is blazing high and hot today, a fierce white eye that seems to bake the sand into glass and the leaves of our plants into charcoal, so I leave my cloak folded neatly on my desk and slip downstairs unadorned. A few servants give me quizzical looks; the rest of them know better, or simply don’t care. Maybe that’s the same thing.
Breakfast has already been served and cleaned—why the hell have I woken up so late?—but I don’t have the patience to wait for anything to be prepared, nor do I want to deal with the prodding questions and hovering of whoever it is that would serve it. Instead I slip from the too-tight embrace of the mansion out into the relative freedom of the courtyard, walking unhurriedly but with purpose toward the west wing. It is the least-planned corner of our estate, and for that reason perhaps the most perfect. There is always some pleasure to be found, I think, in its solitude and secret nature, a small square blocked off by linen curtains and over-populated with desert sage and marigold that bloom and multiply like bruises. I am sweating by the time I duck through the curtains, the sun sinking into me like fangs.
Oh. Speaking of.
I come to a slow stop.
Corradh has always been one of our strangest. But one of our most beautiful, too, and next to me I think he may have inherited the most of our mother—the dark skin, the thick hair, the hard and glowing eyes. (Solis only knows where the teeth came from.)
When he hears me coming, he does not turn his body toward me but insolently shifts his head over his shoulder, meeting my gaze without stopping the movement of his mouth, an unforgivably arduous process of chewing and pretending to swallow. I glance at the tree whose shade he stands under—dates. For fuck’s sake, I want to say.
My own brother asks me, to what do I owe the pleasure? and for a moment, the briefest moment, less a heartbeat than a flash of lightning, I feel—jilted. Sort of—gutted. My stomach sinks. I blink one, then twice, bewildered. Heat is building in my cheeks and across the back of my neck, though thankfully it doesn’t show up on my skin. For a moment nausea rises in me; then I come to my senses, and my lips twist up in a blue kind of smile.
“That’s a waste of time,” I point out softly, “And a waste of your teeth. Why not keep them sharp?’
Although, I think, if he does—he could certainly use them against me.
