[P] go quietly [fall]

[Mesnyi]

Go quietly; a dream
When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
Across the dreamer’s face.

I think I would like some pearl wings, myself. Maybe not to fly with, I think, at first, but what are wings good for if not flying, and why could they not be both pearl and sinew and feather? There must be a way to do such things. Someone hidden deep in the underground markets - perhaps in Denocte, or Solterra - who could make me wings of pearl. It might hurt, but ah, what doesn’t? Drink does, in the end, and so does too much dancing, and not enough love. I have done well performing here and there, but steady coin (or perhaps the motivation, the desire?) has escaped me, and to buy such a thing - well, I imagine I would pay more dearly than I would like to. 

Great things come at great costs.

The statues, of course, are of excellent craftsmanship and mysterious origin. The now-famed stallion gives me pause, as I, like others, wonder who he could have been, and feel a stirring within me. No one can name it. Not even I. It is the tables of things that I find myself standing before, wondering if it would be rude to push aside this or that and observe what lay beneath. Some are more brazen than I, but it seems wrong; were they not all artistically and intrinsically placed? Is their movement by others, effectively, a natural result of their being there? I resolve that it is not my place to decide and so I do not touch them, but peek over shoulders and around necks to see what others have revealed or brought. Bits of material, stones and cloth and the like, and bones - of what I do not know - make up most of the pile, as do the baskets of tools beneath. Someone places a mask from Isra’s masquerade, yellowed and dusty and stained. Someone else - an adult - places a girl’s doll. 

It is one of those things that inexplicably gives you pause and leaves you with very little control over its effect upon your countenance. My throat tightens, and my lips tremble. Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. The gesture was simple, innocent. I cannot say if it is love, or vulnerability, or the infinitely possible stories that lead me to this reaction on such occasions. The doll could have been hers. It could have been her daughter’s, or sister’s, or grandmother’s. It might belong to someone who passed on - her own child, the storyteller in me insists. She is gone by now, of course, and I must look away from the doll to prevent myself from bursting into tears. Hours or even days later, I will think upon this, and my reaction will be the same. If I saw that doll here again, my reaction would be just as visceral. I do not hope to sing of this. It cannot be described. The violin's wail may do a better job than any words of mine. 


"Speaking."
@Aghavni || If You Should Go

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[Aghavni]

green is the planet from the eyes of a turtle dove / 'til it runs red, runs red with blood

W

hen she sees the doll placed on top of the table littered with throwaway possessions, Aghavni decides that she, alone, must have it.

It has been a long time since she has felt this way, this quickly, about an object. There is always the rush of nerves that tingles up her spine, little cat paws skipping up the vertebrae and layers of skin, followed by the swell of satisfaction, deep as an ocean, when the object is swallowed up by the silk folds of her scarf.

She likes the first part best, though—the actual taking, that shot of electric adrenaline, comes a close second. Only because the first feeling, the first rush, is always the most thrilling.

The doll has a porcelain face and a cloth body, its cheeks as red as apples, its eyes cornflower blue and dotted with white varnish. It is not the finest doll in the world (seven of those sit elegantly on Aghavni's shelves in the Scarab, dusted by a maid every night, untouched ever since she had received them as gifts from Father, one for every visitation he missed) but still it strikes her, because it had clearly been loved, and oh! 

How she aches to have it.

And then a girl walks up to the table and Aghavni's eyes flit towards her, callous at first, until they stick. Through pale, milky lashes she marvels at the girl who has waltzed out of the woodsmoke like a music-box ballerina. She is lavender and cream, as pretty as a perfume bottle with a thousand facets—prettier, Aghavni corrects, as her eyes trace the spirals of the horn gracing her dainty head, a goddess' blessing, draped in winking sapphires. 

She is like a doll herself, Aghavni thinks. Petite, beautiful, loved.

Aghavni is almost sorry that this doll, living, gazes so dolefully at that doll, cloth and dabs of paint, sitting crookedly on the grimy tabletop. She is almost sorry because she is still going to take the doll (cloth) even if the doll (lavender and cream) wanted it too.

First, though, she needs a distraction.

"Hello," she calls out, to the merchant who is barely out of boyhood tending the stall. He looks too sullen to be here by choice—more likely his mother threatened him, and because he was still just a boy, he pretended not to listen but did anyway.

She likes the ones like him the best. They were the easiest to fool. Smiling, Aghavni looks carefully over the rest of the abandoned belongings until she finds a brooch in the shape of a rose, its gold clasp (painted pyrite) carved with rough vines, and nods towards it. "I'd like that. Would a copper do?"

A copper was too generous for a brooch like that. She knew it, and the boy knows it too. Yet who is he to barter down? So he grunts, slides the copper piece towards him, and turns to fiddle with the ledger his mother told him to list all purchases on, done in his best handwriting.

Aghavni stretches out her neck towards the brooch. As her emerald scarf flutters gently over the tabletop, the cloth doll slips like a sigh into its silken folds.

When she straightens up again, she pins the brooch to her mane, catches the lavender girl's pale, silver eyes, and winks.

Once, secretive, daring.

{ @Mesnyi "speaks" notes: Aghavni being the klepto I've always believed her to be c': }

♢

[Mesnyi]

a moment stolen,

She buys the brooch, and the doll disappears.

Wink.

Mesnyi’s mouth twists into - into something very unflattering, but she says nothing to the scowling boy, and makes no comment about it to the beautiful woman whose name she already knows: Aghavni, Emissary of the Day Court. Daughter of nobler and crueler blood than most (than anyone, perhaps), and thief. Apparently. 

Mesnyi leans close to the mare and says, honey-sweet, “You have excellent taste, Emissary.” She does not smile, and her gaze is a cold blue. How unfortunate that we have the same tastes, it says, but Mesnyi knows that to get the doll - did she even want it? She isn’t sure - she thinks she would’ve liked it to stay there - perhaps be adopted by a child - not this, certainly - would require leverage, and dedication, that she does not possess. It’s just a worn out doll. Mesnyi is more incensed by Aghavni’s crude destruction of an otherwise perfect moment in time. 

Woman, doll, table. End scene.

(Enter Aghavni.)



@Aghavni

"Speaking."

Tags, OOC, etc.

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