take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
The last time she had fled like this was the night she slipped free of the trader’s shackles and slipped out into the night. Then, the only trauma had been the bruises about her fetlocks. But now, now blood ran in rivulets down her face. It gathered in the wells above her eyes and the grooves about her lips. The heat of the sun dried the oozing blood swiftly, until it seemed to run like great rivers of tar. They were black against the dark of her skin and polluted with the sand the desert breeze blew up into her face.
But nothing would slow Minya this day. Not the grit in her eyes nor the way her lashes clumped with the sorrowful flow of her blood. Her limbs are scratched and dirtied, there is no part of her that seems to bear resemblance to the Scarab’s most famed dancer. No, Minya could pass only for a slave girl, one who has fled the clutches of her captor only to fall foul of their punishment. How ironic that her life should seem to turn, full circle.
Minya stumbles as she runs, her sides heaving and the few gems unstained by violence gleaming dissonantly in the sunlight. In her mind she still sees the her antlers twisted and wrong upon the ground. They seemed jagged as they lay. Each one a ribcage broken open and contorted each rib adorned with lavish jewelry. Wasted, pointless they seemed now. But oh how she had valued them!
The cobbles of the street are hard and rough beneath her feet as she flees down winding street after winding street. She knows where she is going, she hopes August might still be there. Her hair moves, it falls across her face and blocks her sight of the street names. She keeps throwing her head back. Her hair moved strangely now her antlers were removed. Now only their bases remained, broken and sharp like the trunks of trees left after their top halves were broken clean away. They each point like jagged daggers up to the sky.
Wretched, dirty and inelegant she bangs upon the door and cries his name in a way she has never cried out before. It is a haunted noise, it is so full of tears and a broken voice. Tears track through the dirt on her cheeks, they wash sand into her eyes and she rubs the sand away, her eyes made raw, their soft skin stinging. “August!” She pleads, her breath a raking gasp. The wood of the door does not budge and a sob escapes her.
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
For most of his life August had kept going by never giving himself enough time to think.
From dawn until moonset, from his daily training with the sword to his nights with strangers to the countless witching hours spent with an eye on the tables and the floor, the palomino had stuffed himself with duty, scheduled himself with work. It wasn’t the idle hands he worried about, devil be damned, but his idle mind. His thoughts, sharp-toothed and always hungry, loved best to turn inward.
And for years it had worked. But too much had changed (when had it begun? Raum? The island and the relic? The day of Aghavni’s departure?), and he was not changing, and August could bear it no longer. He had left the Scarab and the little misfortune-born family he’d made there, and Denocte, and the continent altogether. But that adventure had soured, too, and now the only thing he had to his name was too much time.
August, who clung to duty, told himself that Aghavni needed him to stay - to protect her as he swore as a boy to her father he would do. After all, he had seen her attacked, in daylight, in public (the sneering, snobbish part of him was not surprised it had happened, here in Solterra). But in the deep, locked-box part of his heart he knew it was only to give himself the excuse of meaning.
The princess didn’t need him. Nobody did. And August didn’t know who to be when it was only up to himself.
This mood held him him like a cloak, more stifling than the sun, darker than the kohl-rimmed eyes that watched him in the marketplace. And in the small house he rented by the week it took up space like an unwelcome visitor. That is why, when his door shudders with a bang, his heart leaps at any promise of distraction, of action, however ill it may be. It isn’t until he hears his name in a voice he can’t recognize (he has never heard her sob, never heard her throat so wrung) that worry seizes him like a cold wave. Who, he thinks, and swings wide the door.
It takes him a beat to recognize Minya. Not because of the antlers, or their loss, but for the wretched expression she wears, the way it changes the contours of her face, the red that streaks her hair and skin and the red that rims her silver eyes.
“Come inside,” he says, more command than suggestion, and he scans the street for pursuers and finds none before closing the door behind them, bolting the thick iron latch, and turning to face her.
“Minya-“ His mirror-silver eyes scan her, the broken roots of her antlers, the grime and the blood, searching for other signs of injury. “You’re safe now. Are you hurt?” August keeps his voice calm, matter-of-fact, but his mind races with questions and his heart with worry, a staccato that flutters the pulse below his jaw.
Who? demands his thoughts, and it is a terrible relief to turn their clamor for violence outward.
take that look from off your face you ain't gunna burn my heart out
It is strange how seconds can seem to draw out like hours. She feels the pause of time, like breath in her lungs, a fist holding her chest tight, delaying the breath. It releases when the door at last opens, when she feels a part of herself begin to sleep, to die of desperation.
Minya has never given much thought to the tale of Icarus. But when the door opens, when August stands, gilded like the sun, Minya knows a part of her is melting and she is falling, tumbling, down, down. All that rises up to meet her is a sea of grief.
August stands, representing everything she had put importance in. He stands, a vision of the Scar`ab, yet both of them are far, far from the Night Court. They are both sand dusted, and worn thin. There are lines upon August’s face, lines he never had at the Scarab. Minya had never thought she really looked at him, until she realises all the ways he looks different now.
But despite these new lines, dark and grim as they are, he is everything she remembers. He is home. And she has treated her home so terribly. He orders her in - as if she would do anything else! Hre breath, now freed, rattles in her rips, still full of terror and tears as she steps through the door. There is no grace in the way she enters his home, no haughty regard for its place in the city, for how he keeps it, or who he invites here. No, Minya is so far fallen, every part of the Scarab queen is gone. And maybe that is why she throws herself against him, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. The last time she embraced, truly, was when her mother held her. It was too long ago, frighteningly so. Every touch since had felt too intimate, too… comforting. She was not worthy.
Yet today she takes because it feels as though she has nothing left.
The embrace was short yet even in that time she could smell the sandalwood, the smell of smoke from candles and the dust of the cobbled streets upon his skin. It is a far cry from the luxury fragrances that clung to their bodies at the Scarab. Minya steps away, just as her mind begins to catch up, as it feels the creeping unease of an embrace, as the horror and grief ebbs before it flows once again.
He is looking over her and even in her shame she lifts up her chin and meets his gaze through blood and dust and broken antler shards. Minya breathes slow, slow, yet her breath is ragged, her heart a startled bird.
You are safe now.
Minya closes her eyes, whether to hold those words tightly within her, or block the comfort of them out, she does not know. But grief is rising within her again and she fears it will be a sob, or a scream.
Does it hurt? He asks and she smiles a mere bitter shadow of the cruel smiles she once offered him. “Yes.” her voice trembles.
She gasps, remembering, grieving. “They, they broke them,” shock fills every word until they are brimful and overflowing. This was her punishment, for her cold cruelty. Minya takes a breath (each one is a gasp into surprised lungs). “I am sorry,” she tell August and she means for everything.
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
Her embrace startles him, because in all the years they’ve known each other it has never happened before. Oh, they’ve always been fond enough of each other - at least he has, and he assumes she feels the same, though their language is one of teasing quips and barbed compliments. Never anything earnest, and never has he seen Minya act like she needs anything from anyone.
But the way she folds into him now speaks of nothing but necessity. It grows his worry tenfold, even as he holds her back as best he can, running a soothing touch along her hair. They should be better at comforting one another, these orphans who grew up crooked but strong, a twisted rosebush bursting with blooms and thorns just beneath. They should be, but before he can even murmur wordless sounds of comfort she is stepping away again, composing herself, leaving some of her blood smeared against his golden skin and pale hair. For a moment their eyes meet, silver to silver.
Yes, she answers, but Minya had misheard the question. Are you hurt, he’d asked, not does it, and her affirmative has his pulse fluttering frantic, his gaze hunting again over her slender figure, but her coat is too dark and the light too poor to diagnose her. “Where?” he asks softly, but despite the way he shapes it it’s more demand than request.
When she gasps he starts forward again, ready to catch her, and it takes him a moment to decipher her words through the quaver in her voice. But it is her apology that has him reaching to embrace her again, his chin over the arch of her neck, her chest warm against his own. “Shhh,” he murmurs into her ear. “You have no reason to apologize. Just tell me what you need right now.”
