THEY STOOD UP STRAIGHT AND PURE ON THE STALK, GRIPPING THE DARK LIKE PROPHETS
AND HOWLING COLOSSAL INTIMACIES
FROM THE BACK OF THEIR FUSED THROATS
❀
Bexley is not quite sure what brings her to the island except that there is nothing left to do. She has watched the sky in Denocte turn from blue to pink to purple what feels like millions of times; still her dreams are these horrible, violent things that drain her more than they let her rest, and no manner of drugs or therapy has fixed her yet. The dreams would be incredible if they weren’t so terrifying — resplendent with pools of blue blood and incandescent fire, tattooed with the memory of death. Even when awake, they follow her as a hungry dog would: snarling, growling, slobbering as it trails a few steps behind, never tiring, never fading. There is never a moment where it does not haunt her.
His name has faded from her brain a little. Only because she forces it to - because she is tired of crying more than she is tired of not seeing him. There is some power in the strength of her will. Far and away the only power she has left.
She had seen the initial explosion from a high room in Denocte’s citadel. Over the ocean a blossom of black fire had risen high in the sky before flaring outwards, and she had watched it with huge, watery eyes, the acrid scent of the smoke clawing at her lungs even from miles away. Her heart had stopped completely in her chest, and she had gone flying down the steps like a bat out of hell. The citizens in the Denoctian market had been still as statues when she pushed through them, their heads turned to the sky, eyes like glass marbles reflecting the explosion. Totally catatonic. Not a single one had talked or moved. They were frozen perfectly still like the victims of Medusa — it was a ghost town, a Greek garden. But there had been no time. No time to stop, no time to ask. Just the terrible non-beat of her pulse dragging her toward the catastrophe like a dog on a leash.
She only vaguely remembers the journey there. By the time she reached the island the wall of ivy had already fallen apart, the bridge stretching openly over the ocean in a simple invitation, come. And she did. Come she did, and so had hundreds of others, swarming the leg of black lava like bugs on bad fruit. Murmurs passed through the crowd in ripples as they poured from every corner of Novus into the water and the white sand beaches. And though Bexley wasn’t sure what she’d expected, it wasn’t this — not Paradise — because the people of Novus didn’t deserve it.
Not when one of their own had killed Acton. Not when they stood silently and let Raum drain the life from Solterra. Not when each one of them, clawing their way toward the isles, was hiding the same horrible, self-centered sickness in their hearts, a sickness with teeth and claws and a lust for blood.
Anyway.
It could be summer, though she knows it isn’t. It’s hot. The sun casts its white shadow from overhead and bleaches the sand like a perfectly cleaned bone. Heat simmers over the bright-blue water and makes a mirage on the flat planes of the island; Bexley is boiling hot by the time she shoulders her way from the beach into the cool shelter of the jungle, the warmth coating her in a wild, incandescent glimmer. She is a shining bauble in the warm dark of the forest. Overhead, birds twitter and sing brightly. The howl of something feline that Bexley does not recognize caterwauls from various places deep in the trees. Fruits she has never has seen, never even heard of, hang ripe and dark from the bent boughs of trees. And though it is beautiful — the songs, the bright light, the lush green leaves — something deep in her chest still begs to be listened to when it says turn around, turn around.
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
It’s a strange group of feelings, as he explores the island - a mingling of excitement and fear, like betting at a high-stakes table and not knowing the next card that’s about to turn over. One that could just as easily kill you as win you everything.
August is not used to not knowing. Knowledge is his favorite currency, secrets his favorite coin; when they’d all stood on the bridge together, a little city of horses in a line, for every one he recognized he rolled their hidden wants and sins through his mind like a litany. It was a balm, in a way, a game to occupy his mind instead of working at this mystery like clumsy fingers at a knot.
He doesn’t trust this paradise. That’s the easiest thing about the situation, the distrust - why believe a hand that’s already seized you by the throat more than once, no matter how nicely it offers a gift? But he is still a boy who dreams of adventure (that is his own secret, never shared) and it doesn’t feel like fear, the way his heart races at each new discovery. Even the birds are strange, and not just their stones-for-eyes, their trailing fire, the way they must be a portent of something, some other world bleeding into Novus. No, it’s their singing that sticks with him, new and lovely, and it at last soothes away the sound of that dread heartbeat, a hundred thousand berries pounding and dying and dead.
He isn’t sure at what point he became alone. When the silence descended (at least, it felt like silence, though the wind blew and the waves licked up on the shore, and so on and so forth, a veritable chorus of noise) it had seemed to touch the horses, too, and many had wandered away in small groups, in pairs, and singly. At some point Minya had been beside him, and not long ago he had seen Boudika, and he knows this island is thick with those he knows - yet it might be deserted but for him, here in the thick jungle. The shadows are cool over his golden skin, and the pale skein of his hair is crusted with salt. August is usually beautiful, and intentionally so, but after days of waiting and milling and wondering he is near filthy now. It doesn’t bother him; it’s only for the Scarab he takes that kind of care.
Through the trees there is a flash of gold (darker and more burnished than his own) and pale hair. As he picks his way nearer - graceful and near-silent by nature, and not specific intent - his mind begins to place her, to catalogue her as he does everyone he comes across, because one day they may be useful. But before he quite can (before he can make out the scar, old but still livid down her cheek, or the wild-empty look in her eyes) something else catches his eye. A flock of birds, small and still and intent on the stranger. August doesn’t yet look too closely; he knows whatever he sees will make him uneasy with wonder.
Instead he clears his throat, steps forward through the tangling vines and caressing leaves. “You’re being watched,” he says easily, and his silver eyes move from the watchers to Bexley Briar.
THEY STOOD UP STRAIGHT AND PURE ON THE STALK, GRIPPING THE DARK LIKE PROPHETS
AND HOWLING COLOSSAL INTIMACIES
FROM THE BACK OF THEIR FUSED THROATS
❀
She hears him. Sort of. Not enough to tell what or who it is, but enough to know it is not the work of the island, for the sound and weight of his footsteps is the only natural thing in this cacophony of shrill singing birds and the murmur of rushing water. All the rest of it is overwhelming compared to the mild fear of a stranger. Her ears almost ring as she tries to absorb it. Everywhere she looks there is something new and captivating to the point that Bexley feels it buzzing in her head like a a swarm of honeybees, feels wonder bright and sugary in her throat as she watches the island with wide eyes.
And as she watches the island, it watches her.
A swarm of tiny dark birds crouch among the trees and weigh down the boughs. Their eyes — little jewels of fire opal and cool, bright titanium — swivel in their delicate heads. And they chirp high-pitched, unsettling melodies that shatter the humid air like glass from their roosts high in the jungle, as if they are trying to draw her in. It almost works. Bexley’s bone-white head lifts toward their noise, as if she is going to seek them out, as if she is about to question; her step slows and she wavers for a moment, debating a turn from her path toward them, then turns back. Focus, focus, focus.
But where is she supposed to focus, what path is she supposed to follow?
And before she can think about it too hard or get too wrapped up in her own misery the stranger clears his throat from a dark place behind her, and Bexley closes her eyes for a brief moment — focus, focus — before turning to face him, hooves slipping in the soft dirt.
She smiles briefly when she sees him. They could be mirror images, one of each other from parallel lines of existence; each burnished in gold and white, the stranger is sooty where she is clean, dark where she is perfectly bright. The silver of his eyes is unnervingly clean. It reminds her a little of the skin of the moon. Her eyes drop, and Bexley notes the set of pure white socks that adorn each one of his feet with a wry look. Cute.
“Yeah,” she responds. ”By you, apparently.” Her voice is rough, maybe from disuse or the salt in the air, and somehow a little amused. In the dappled light she glows faintly, incandescence shimmering over her skin like a glittering veil. She could be a goddess — only of vengeance, though, only of the most painful kind of love. Ethereal but not as in heavenly.
And then she offers dryly, “Cute piercing, fighter bull.”
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
The birds’ melodies sound more like something that might drift and tremble high on the bonfire-smoke of Denocte, aimless and vivid as a thrown spark, and all at once fall back to silence. More than that, constant as the now-dead heartbeat of the wall, is a livewire hum that he seems to catch only on the backs of his teeth or the cords of his throat. It is magic, it must be, but the boy in him is surprised to find it is no pleasant feeling. No fairy tale described this, the way dread mingles with beauty.
He should be less naive, by now.
Her smile catches him the same way, beauty and dread, because he recognizes her as soon as she turns. Bexley Briar, exiled Regent of Solterra, lover of a dead man. August hadn’t known Acton, but like most of Denocte he’d known of him - he’d eaten up stories of the Crows’ exploits like bread, as a boy. Them and their roguish king, back in the brief glory days when the stars might just have been another set of diamonds for the stealing. How darkly their story had ended. And here before him the last remnant of it, save for the killer himself. Finding her feels like its own treasure, though the thought sinks and settles in his belly heavy as sin.
“By me,” he allows, with a little dip of his chin. “Alas, I am far less interesting, and likely less dangerous, than everything else on this island.” All the while he watches her, eyes as silver as the backs of mirrors, as cool as his skin beneath shadows. But not you, that gaze says, and try as he might the boy can’t feel guilty for his sharp curiosity. Knowledge is one of the few things he allows himself to both want and have.
He wants to grin at her comment, her easy wryness, but at first he only lifts a brow. “I’m told it makes me look more dashing,” he answers, and the line of his mouth curls somewhere between demure and impish. It is no lie - he had been told that, once, and had pretended to be well-pleased instead of rolling his eyes - but in truth the piercing had been the result of too many drinks and a dare in the back rooms of the Scarab one evening, years ago. “Though it’s got nothing on that scar of yours.” For a moment his breath catches, holds, a fluttering thing behind his teeth as he wonders whether her expression will turn sour or sad or angry, and he is surprised by how much he hopes it doesn’t.
Then August steps forward through the undergrowth, ferns brushing soft against his belly and legs, into the orbit of her unearthly glow.
THEY STOOD UP STRAIGHT AND PURE ON THE STALK, GRIPPING THE DARK LIKE PROPHETS
AND HOWLING COLOSSAL INTIMACIES
FROM THE BACK OF THEIR FUSED THROATS
❀
Oh, he knows her. Sometimes Bexley forgets that she is someone here — that she has made a name for herself, that more often than not, her introductions are useless, for even strangers know her.
Or think they know her. Pretty regent, girl with the scar. Solterra’s golden girl. (Not anymore!) Anyway, that doesn’t matter; they see only the celebrity side of her that goes smiling from court to court, singing the praises of Solis and acting as though everything is fine, dead girl glowing while she walks, doing what she’s supposed to do. But Bexley is not any of that. Not anymore. Solterra’s golden girl does not belong in Solterra anymore, and she is no regent, only a disaster. Everything has changed.
Except her scar, the defining marker of a life well lived. And that is all they would ever need to recognize her.
She cannot know that August belongs in Denocte or knows of Acton. Perhaps it is better that way — perhaps, if she knew, she would want to ask questions. She would want to know. (Did you see him, before he died? Did you talk to him? Who took his things, and his body, I want them back —) Oh, if she knew this would all be so different, she would not see him at all, simply an open doorway in the shape of him. But she does not know. Cannot know. And so when she looks at him she only smiles, heart caught on the silver-blonde of his hair and the ring in his nose.
“Don’t discredit yourself,” she drawls. “I’m sure you can find a way to be interesting.” Her eyes are unmoving from his. He is interesting already, but then he knows that, they both do. He is only playing coy (which she can appreciate). It is nothing that can be denied. They have set a game in motion, and oh, Bexley does not like to lose.
She snorts at his next quip, somewhat irritated, mostly amused. The ferns split around him. (She tries not to read too much into the way he moves toward her — soft and slick like some strange, pretty snake.) Bexley watches and watches and watches: the dull shine of his skin in the sun against the green of the island, the waves of his hair, and — huh — the dark burnish of a tattoo saddling the muscle of his shoulder. Her eyes narrow as she focuses in on it. A cross? A set of scales? No, a beetle.
Strange.
No matter. Bexley tilts her head to the side, and a shower of golden sparks sloughs from her mane. “You have no idea how much I hear that.” A little smirk pulls at her lips. For a moment she stands quietly, looking over him, as if she is not quite sure what to say — but Bexley has never gone speechless for long, and today will be no different. “Do I get your name, or do I have to ask the birds for it?”
Still they twitter overhead, but Bexley can almost block them out now.
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
She plays the game well - he wonders if she can play it better than he does, layering words and tone to build layers of meaning, compliment, dare, double entendre. Likely she can; how else would she have climbed so high? But August is competitive too, golden boy he is, everything coming easy to him -
Well. Almost everything.
“I’ll do my best,” he says grandly, and only smiles at her snort. Her unearthly glow (he ought to know what her magic is, but his focus has been sliding, lately) shields it a little, but closer up he can see how worn thin she is. Hunger and travel have made her lean, or maybe it’s grief; he knows what too much love can make you, when you lose it. It is a weapon like any feeling too strong, and one that can be turned too easily on yourself.
When her eyes go to the tattoo on his shoulder he says nothing, though his smile curls broader as her gaze narrows. August does not give his secrets away for free; let her wonder, let her ask.
He inclines his head a fraction at her next comment, though he doesn’t drop his eyes - too busy watching that spill of gold that hisses as it hits the dirt. He wonders if it burns against the skin, if it could catch in the dark ferns and burn the island down, if she wanted. August wonders what it is she wants here at all, if it is the Relic or if, like him, she isn’t yet sure. “I’ll bet. In that case, I’m happy to compliment any other feature you care to pick. Hardly fair for one to get all the glory.”
They are near enough one another now that the stretch of a muzzle could see them touching, but August keeps to himself. He’s mindful of that shower of sparks, content to be near enough to test the warmth of her, measure the blue of her eyes, note the band around her throat. At her question he glances back at the birds in question, still eerily watchful - he almost wants to shoo them off, see how they respond to a threat. But the risk isn’t worth it, not when he still knows so little.
“I’d be curious to hear what they say,” he answers idly, and turns his grin back on Bexley. “But my name is August. And what should I call you?” The question is cool, polite, mild enough it might be honest ignorance - but his silver eyes suggest otherwise. I know, it says, but I’ll pretend anything you want.
THEY STOOD UP STRAIGHT AND PURE ON THE STALK, GRIPPING THE DARK LIKE PROPHETS
AND HOWLING COLOSSAL INTIMACIES
FROM THE BACK OF THEIR FUSED THROATS
❀
Overhead, the breeze in the trees sings a sweet, cool song. It blesses the burning-hot gold of Bexley’ skin and cools her just slightly enough that she does not boil. No matter the danger around them — and oh, there is danger, humming through the ground dark and easy as a heartbeat — there is something to be said for the island’s beauty, its almost-silence, its unexpected lacquer of peace. The way promise rings through it like a bell. Even with teeth sharp as knives it knows how to smile pretty.
Like her.
And like August, it’s obvious. Bexley is still looking hard at the tattoo burnt into his skin, and after a few long moments her brows raise and she blinks in some combination of realization and surprise. The Black Scarab. In the stories it’d always seemed like the kind of place Bexley would have gotten along well in — dark and secret, filled with terrible opportunity. She’s heard of its hallowed halls, the floors filled with lush carpets, she’s heard of the girl with the knives in her hair, but not of this man. Not of his white-blonde hair or the way he looks at her like a piece of art. And so she has to wonder — what does he do?
Is he the bleak messenger, sharp and fearful? Does he kill those patrons with the nerve to cheat at cards? Perhaps he is someone with less sway, merely the boy who stamps the envelopes before they’re sent out. Oh, it doesn’t matter. She’ll take him any way.
They are too close now to ignore the way the air is hot between them, the way Bexley’s skin is melting into sloughs of pure gold, or how intently her eyes are fixed on the silver of August’s. Ah, they are so similar and yet so far removed. “Getting to pick which part you compliment seems like a cop-out on your part.” The world is now and briefly still; with hooded eyes she notes the boy’s white lashes and the fact that they are nearly perfectly matched in height. Her gaze moves to the sparrow behind August’s head, how it watches them in shades of red. Like an omen. Like a promise.
Then she meets his gaze again, bright blue-and-gray, and her nostrils flare when she breaks into an arid smile. “Bexley,” she offers, and for the first time in weeks, admitting it is not difficult. The ex-regent cocks a back hoof and leans her weight onto it with an air of perfect casualty. “But you knew that, hmm, smart boy —“ and it might have been acrid on anyone else, but her tone is light and her pale lips turned into a smirk, and the dryness of her voice lends itself well to that kind of flattery that sometimes does not sound like flattery at all. “Why’re you here, then?”
Bexley is not sure what answer she is looking for. The relic is too obvious, “adventure” too cliche. What’s left? Love? Fame?
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
She’s a small sun, hidden away beneath the canopy, and he wonders if all the creatures of the island find her strange and unknowable. Like she’s the magic, savage thing, and not them. Though this then makes him wonder if all the horses are viewed as invaders, and may yet be treated as such - gods know they’re ill-prepared for an organized attack, so far from shore, thrown together in a foreign land.
Best not to think about it. If this was Tempus’ doing, and He wanted them dead, then there wasn’t much use in worrying.
August observes the moment when his tattoo clicks in her mind, and though he smiles - a Cheshire kind of smile - neither of them say anything. When their eyes meet again he arches a brow, curls his smile into a little grin at what she says. As she looks past him (at what? his imagination conjures a thousand things, perching behind him in the undergrowth, but her expression suggests nothing dire) his lambent gaze touches once more along her, as though her body is a map that might tell him where she’s been. He thinks, unbidden, of Anghavni informing him of Raum’s upcoming visit to the Scarab. What might Bexley Briar do, if she knew?
“You have lovely shoulders,” he says, airily. “Like the first dunes of the Mors.” Golden and smooth-sloping, perfectly unmarked. He might have reached out to touch one, a new dare, if she hadn’t chosen that moment to meet his gaze again, and when she leans back he echoes the movement. August barely bats an eye at the giving of her name (and the compliment after), but he admires her for not pretending.
At her question his gaze strays away, touching light and swift as a dragonfly over all the oddities around them. If you didn’t focus on a singular part, nothing seemed terribly out of order. It wasn’t until you started paying attention that things got…unusual. “What, stay home and miss all this?” There’s a hint of wryness, in his tone, but August means it true enough; there has always been a part of him begging for adventure, and a part that reminds himself that the Scarab is enough of one. Every day a new problem to solve, a dozen situations like the heads of a hydra that need stamped out, another net to cast and line to test. Enough to keep him occupied, enough to keep him happy - but he still can’t drown it, the boy inside him who wants the open ocean, who wants a sword fight, who wants mysteries met with steel and wits.
But these things he keeps shut away, where they can’t betray him.
It’s a different kind of honesty he opts for, when he turns back to her and rolls a shoulder in a shrug. “When the eruption began, I thought it might be it - the end. Might as well go to meet it.” Better to go out and meet your death than have it set on you on the road; better to make an adventure of it than cower and wait and always wonder what was happening just over the crease of the horizon.
Had he (does he) really believed that this island was an extinction? Standing here with her, it seems laughable. But August does not laugh, only regards her, and feels the heat roll between them like trapped sunlight, like a tremor under the sea. “Your turn.”
THEY STOOD UP STRAIGHT AND PURE ON THE STALK, GRIPPING THE DARK LIKE PROPHETS
AND HOWLING COLOSSAL INTIMACIES
FROM THE BACK OF THEIR FUSED THROATS
❀
Lovely shoulders. Bexley snorts, but she smiles, too, and rolls the aforementioned shoulder as if noticing them for the first time since they appeared below her neck. There is no such thing as a “first dune”, she wants to say, but doesn’t, because even she is not that excited to ruin a moment gold like this one. Gold in the way her skin glitters, like a thousand pearls. Gold in the way sunlight streams down in a kiss. Gold somehow even in the way his silver eyes follow the map of her body (desert shoulders to spine to hips to—) and return again in a full, perfect circle.
He is an alchemist, then, to be making gold out of silver the way she thinks he is. But she won’t flatter him with that kind of accusation.
“Meet the end,” Bexley repeats, She can’t quite tell if he’s serious or not. It could be a bad sign, or a perfect one, depending on how you look at it—it’s stupid to run toward death, but she has only ever fallen in love with dangerous things, dangerous places. (Dangerous men.) She wavers, for a moment, between agreeing and criticizing: she had not thought it was the apocalypse, not in the least. She’s almost sure she would’ve turned the other way if it had occurred to her it was the complete End-of-All-Things. Solterra’s golden n girl turns towards danger, without a doubt—the scar on her cheek could as easily attest to that without vocalization—but not toward certain death. So August is either very fatalistic or simply very stupid. Either way, she is almost sure she could find a way to excuse it.
Time seems to be moving unnaturally slow. Like sugar. Like tree-sap. Whatever part of her had doubted his sincerity (little, but there) disappears when the moment passes and he does not laugh. No, this…Night boy, Denoctian scarab, he does not laugh. Does not even smile at the absurdity of everything about them, of everything around them. She laments it. She thinks he would look good smiling. “My turn,” she says, “Okay, where to start. Your dapples are quite cute—“
Of course it’s the wrong question to be answering, but she can’t imagine that he’ll mind. Especially when she reaches out and brushes her lips light as a burst of perfume against a patch of particularly prominent said dapples, along his shoulder.
“And I already told you I like your piercing, so.” Her dished head pulls back, but they are still—unreasonably close, so close that she can pick out the individual lashes that are so stark against his silver eyes. She raises her chin; the open part of her throat glitters with gold from inside and out. “What do you think I should take note of, August?”
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
He had, of course, been expecting the snort. Such a foolish, bad-poetry compliment is its own kind of subtle weapon, another way to put her off guard. A little flirting that says oh, I’m harmless, I’m nothing at all - a grin and a wink. Now, tell me about yourself. August can do this kind of bartering all day, and enjoy it ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
Never mind that he’s still not sure what he wants out of this - the whole world or a pocketful of gold. He’s always been willing to meander a little, if the path is interesting enough.
She repeats him and he arches a brow at her, his moonlight-on-pavement gaze saying only see? What else was there to do - wait for someone else to find the riches, discover the secrets, build the new world? Wait for whatever flavor of doom to slouch to your door? Sometimes, August is fatalistic. Sometimes - probably - he is stupid. But let it never be said that he is not a man of inaction.
Except it is Bexley that then surprises him. Except it is his turn to laugh, bright as a bell, that smile she’d wanted it. But before he can shake his head - no, no, I meant the world - she touches him and August is reminded that he’s not the only one playing a game.
He begins to wonder if there’s a way for both of them to win.
The golden boy goes still beneath her touch as though it were a felling blow and not the brush of a butterfly wing. For a moment there is only his breathing, and the smile curling further along his lips, and the way the light falls through the blue of her eyes like shallow water at the edge of the world. August always makes himself forget how good it feels to be touched, but his body cannot be so coerced. He’s hungry for it, the way he always is - the desire to take and give, until he’s satisfied, until he’s exhausted, until he forgets what it’s like to live alone inside his skin. And then, almost immediately: starving again.
August is not so stupid to not know what he feeds himself is all empty calories. Not even golden straw can be spun into grass. It never stops him from wanting to eat his fill.
His white lashes lower as he regards her for the space of a breath, and then he’s touching that smile to the place where her throat meets her neck, tracing a line from her jaw to the jewelry she wears to the curve of her shoulder, warm as a dune beneath the sun. She is dappled, too, by the light through the crowded canopy; they must look, to the watching birds, like moving treasure, discarded wealth. He still hasn’t answered her question.
“Bexley Briar,” he says at last, to buy himself time, to say her name in a way that feels like claiming because she had done the same with his. He can feel his pulse running quicker, the way it does before every spar. Even in a pause only long enough for her name he wants to be touching her again. “You should take note that I’m a terrible loser, but a very good friend.”
August doesn’t usually give himself away for nothing, but Bexley Briar is hardly that. And anyway, the world might still be ending; who the hell wants to die alone?
