BEXLEY BRIAR
but if i gave up on being pretty,
I wouldn’t know how to be alive
I wouldn’t know how to be alive
Bexley does not know the springs that Emersyn speaks of, though she would like to: for a moment she is surprised, or a little disappointed in herself, that for all her treks to and from Denocte she has never been told, or even noticed, this place which sounds close to Heaven. Secluded, alone, surrounded in steam—oh, it sounds infinitely better than this dark, crowded bar filled with the smell of sweaty drunks.
The air is hot, hot, hot, steeped in heat that makes her skin crawl and something in her stomach buzz. Someone goes tumbling over the floor in front of her, another one is pinned beneath a lashing hoof—somewhere between startled and disgruntled, she steps sharply back to avoid the body that comes to a stop just in front of her and feels her flank bump Emersyn’s. A shiver! A thrill.
Something in her feels young again. The breezy touch of electricity which rides up through her hip, the low growling sound of men and their catcalls, or bodies hitting the floor, the pouring of drinks—it sounds like her past rerealized, something that was, for years, buried.
At Emersyn’s quip, the sound of her voice purring we better make this a vacation, Bexley grins. A sharp, white, feline thing, a corner of her lip curling up and up and up; her heart pounds in her chest, quick and insistent, as she swishes her white tail against her legs and narrows her eyes at the scene around them. It is chaos, in the way she has always liked best—a way that is loud and carefree and does not bother lingering on things like death, or despair, or anything less than ecstasy.
Someone surges up for a fight, only to be kicked back down; when a muscled gray with a short dark mane comes up to her with a look like a sneer, his lip curled, his eyes glittering with something like malice, or an interest so intent it has turned evil, Bexley dismisses him with an eager, bone-cracking headbutt and tosses the blood out of her eyes with a shake of her white hair.
“Absolutely,” says Solterra’s golden girl, and with a smile like a scythe shoulders a path toward the door for Emersyn to follow.
