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
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?”
