shebelievesinbones
A Perfect Decapitation
Leaves both the head and the throat intact, such that the ghost may speak as well as think. What do your ghosts say?
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Daily Writing Post 2/10/17
Number seventeen.
Sobi whipped her knives through the air almost faster than Suynn could see them leave her hands. In seconds, the array of targets across the ring was studded with flashing, deadly little birds: ten hits in the center rings, one wide, and one interception. Suynn snatched the knife out of the air mere moments before it would have skewered her shoulder, tucking it safely in her palm and obediently pausing where she stood. “That was my whipping arm, sister,” she called with a carelessness she didn’t feel.
Sobi, eyes bright as stars and snapping with energy, tensed but didn’t turn from her trained fixation on the targets. “I heard no impact,” she said, all the snakelike charm Suynn loved gone to the tumult surely churning in her mind. Her voice was high and fraught with tension. “And you haven’t returned the throw.”
“Ak kreset,” Suynn soothed, “of course not.”
“Don’t call me moon-fox!”
“Why not?” Suynn feigned ignorance, kept her voice light. “You loved it when we were small. He was your fable hero.”
“I am no child anymore,” Sobi hissed. She was coiled like a cat about to strike, and though Suynn knew she could be at her throat in seconds—she’d always been faster—she wasn’t moving yet, and that was something. “I am the Neeta.”
“And I am the Neeta.” Suynn arched a brow and put her hands on her hips, careful not to let the knife show through the gaps in her fingers. “The two-headed spirit would be no better than the common rattle-tail without her second head, no?” She smiled, feeling everything but cheer, praying to that very spirit that Sobi would at least look at her, turn her attention away from the sight of blades buried into targets.
But Sobi didn’t smile, and she didn’t look at her. She didn’t even send another throwing knife Suynn’s way. Instead she stalked across the ring and began yanking the weapons free one by one, slipping them in places they had no right to be: into her hair, down her training smock, between her teeth. Hoping beyond hope that her character would work where gentleness and humor hadn’t, Suynn gave a derisive laugh—much harder than she usually bothered with her sister—and allowed a touch of scornful singsong into her voice. “Just where do you think you’re going with those? Leave them for the sandmen. Our handler will only catch you and remove—”
“She will bleed as the rest,” Sobi interrupted, serene in a way that would have made a lesser fighter’s skin crawl. The words slurred slightly around the knife, but there was no mistaking the light in Sobi’s eyes. There would be blood on her hands before sunset, possibly before she got to their room. Suynn ran through a mental tally. That would be the third civilian in the past two weeks; the first had been a camp guard, the last two had been watchmen sent to investigate the sound of screaming coming from her bed at night. Their handler hadn’t done anything about it yet, only raised her brows and forced tinctures and herbs into Sobi’s hands the next morning, but the way things were going it was only a matter of time before word got outside of the pit-fighting sector and around to the rest of the Meruan camp—or worse, outside of it.
They had three days before their first scheduled fight. Valena, Suynn thought, was going to flay her.
Suynn charged.
#daily writing post#dwp#prose#siblings#gladiators#Suynn and Sobi#mental health issues#Sanguinaria#circa. February 2017
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Daily Writing Post 2/8/17
Number sixteen.
Tiamat had been the name of an old god.
Tiamat herself was no god, of course, though sometimes it pleased her to think so. It was amusing, on occasion, to imagine being completely and utterly in charge of her station, to personify something so enormous and grand no man—or non-man—would dare look upon her or her territory with the intent to do wrong. Being the frontrunner of a hub like Reagent was no easy task, and the more traders she sent away unsatisfied the more enemies she made. Some travelled whole dozens of lightyears just to hawk at her markets, and when she refused their business, no matter the reason, they always left in a fury plenty hot enough to power a blazer.
Not even her crew was exempt from a handful of unsavory characters. Mech Tiglan, for instance, had always been a man who could do for a little awe. He was a tall, pale creature, with gaps in his teeth when he smiled and eyes like smelted gold, narrow and rectangular in his otherwise fairly human face. Seeing him for the first time after his vacation—the one she’d only authorized after much grumbling and attempts to change his mind, or at least charge him fare—Tiamat had had the horrified thought that he looked like something out of a fevered child’s dream. Human enough, but too other for comfort, all stretched limbs and curves; no angles anymore, even when he bent his joints. Later she’d been told that her station’s least-liked but most skilled mech had against orders spent the entirety of his allotted time on one of the outer planets, apparently one of the ones that wreaked havoc on the non-native appearance when one was there for too long without something to ground them to home.
She’d docked his pay and scolded him harshly, but all he’d had to do was give her a smile that reached his brand-new eyes before she was telling him to get out of her office. (She’d made a promise to herself to up his punishment later; it had never happened. He was too good to lose, their Tiglan, and she needed his favors more often than not).
That morning Tiamat approached his work-floor with one such favor in mind and her customary not-quite-smile on her lips. She could hear metal singing as she mounted the stairs, rhythmic and almost jolly; Tiglan, for his part, had taken up his post immediately after returning from his trip, new mutations aside. If Tiamat ever gave him points for anything, it would be work ethic.
Pausing at the top of the flight, Tiamat put her hands on her hips and announced without preamble: “I need a passenger ship and a pilot who knows how to use it.”
Tiglan paused with his hammer in midswing. A glance around his too-slender form revealed a dented breastplate on the anvil, built for the snakelike form of a Kuazi. The metal looked like Terran steel, but Tiamat knew from experience it was plenty strong enough to stave off blows far beyond what the best armor of the planet could handle, right up until the end. What in the name of old earth had managed to put such a dent in it? She hadn’t noticed any injured Kuazi come on board, either. Was Tiglan taking mum orders again, or was she getting complacent in her watch? Was she not paying her guards enough? Maybe some bleeding Kuazi had offered a bribe and been let through down-low—
“Going somewhere already, Captain?” Tiglan’s voice right next to her ear made Tiamat start. With a jolt she realized she’d turned and had already taken three steps back down the stairs, half her mind set on getting back to her office with no regard to why she’d trekked all the way up here in the first place.
“I—no,” she said, pivoting and trying with all her might to ignore Tiglan’s gapped grin as she slipped around him. “You heard me, didn’t you? I need a ship.”
“What for?”
“I don’t pay you to interrogate me.”
Tiglan laughed. “You hardly pay me at all anymore.”
“Well, we both know why that is. Can you get me a spare or not?” It took only a moment for Tiamat to perch her hands on her hips again. Never cross your arms when you’re negotiating, she heard Rizi lecturing in the back of her mind. It makes you look defensive. Hands on hips, now…that indicates power.
Sure enough, Tiglan was wearing another grin, borderline pleasant instead of mocking this time. “Sure I can, boss. When do you need it?”
“Today,” Tiamat replied. She very carefully didn’t allow her relief into her voice. “As soon as possible.”
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Daily Writing Post 2/7/17
Number fifteen.
When she woke up, the light was soft and the futon underneath her warm with the dent of her curled body. The first thing she saw was her hand splayed atop the covering, small and pale, spread as though to make a star. (She felt an inexplicable rush of warmth at the thought. Star. That was what she was. That was what she would be. She liked stars.)
Liked them enough, in fact, to lie still and look at her fingers a while, appreciating the shape. When at last she had her fill she began moving them slowly, one by one; a test here, a test there. Tap the futon—faded, checkered squares of downy gray and soothing blue. Warm; safe. A glance at her nails, pink and white against the gray, and then back to her fingers. Curl them up, down, out, in—like a caterpillar, waving on a branch.
Caterpillar. The thought poked at something else through the warm, sleepy haze in her mind.
She remembered, gradually.
The pod. Floating soundlessly in a solution that looked dark as a void when the chamber had been opened, but wrapped around her more like silk than water. A small, soft eternity in the quiet, waiting. Waiting for what? She didn’t know. She could only remember feeling something else, something that was definitely not warm. Something…something. Though she searched for them, the words wouldn’t come; only a woman’s voice, light as a dream, answered her call.
What’s your favorite shape, sweetie?
A star, she’d replied. Of course. She’d always liked stars.
What about your favorite color?
That answer hadn’t been quite so quick. Blue, she’d finally told her; and gray. They went well together. She found the contrast pleasing. The first one had to be dark, like cobalt; the second softer, gentle. (Her eyes moved to the covering. Had she actually mentioned a dove?)
Do you like nighttime or daytime best? A little laugh. This is going to sound a little silly, but…what’s your favorite kind of light?
Had she been anywhere else, she might have blinked, but in the pod there’d been no need for that. Instead she’d tilted her head, actually feeling her lips purse a little. What do you mean?
I like sunrise, the woman had supplied. When the light is all soft and gold. It doesn’t last long, but it’s always been the most beautiful thing to me.
Oh. This one, she’d had to think about. Something…peaceful, she’d finally said. Like…a nice lamp. She’d hesitated, a little embarrassed at her next thought, but the woman had sensed it and teased gently, plucked at the edges until the words came free: Like the kind you’d find in a kid’s room. A night light.
We can do that, said the woman, and she’d gotten the impression of a smile, a rush of warmth behind her eyes. You go to sleep now, sweetie. I’ll call you if I need anything else. When you wake up…well. You’ll see. And I think you’re going to like it. Then, nothing. She’d obediently turned her thoughts away, and when she came back—here she was.
Did she like it?
Yes, she thought. She was almost sure she did.
Time passed. It could have been minutes, or hours, or days; she was already half-dazed and just on the verge of falling asleep again when a new voice said:
“Welcome home, Marjorie.”
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Daily Writing Post 2/6/17
Number fourteen.
When she was a little thing, too small to know better and far too proud to even know what that meant, Kirsica had thought everything was made of words.
It only made sense, she explained to her teachers (Foolish, Useless, Bothering). Words, after all, were so many different things all at once. Words were sounds, yes, the honeydrop cadence of suckle versus the tang of chime against the sweet crunch of apple; but words were also things. “Human,” she would say in triumph, and point. “Arm. Desk. Chalk. You see? Everything is made of words.”
Most of her teachers didn’t bother to indulge her. Foolish.
Some tried, but went about it all wrong, trying to explain to her that meaning was not the same thing as comprising—useless.
And some, worst of all, simply told her not to make trouble and stop thinking so much about pointless things. Bothering.
“Concentrate on the history lesson, Irsi,” Madam Madolyn (Meek, Blind, Mouse) would say.
Kirsica always kicked her feet and pointed her chin the way Mother (Power, President, Tremor) taught her. “My mother is the president,” she would reply, not a boast like the other children (Weak, Stupid, Slavering) thought, but a statement of fact. “I know the history already. She taught me best—better than you ever could, Blind.”
Madam Madolyn would send her out of the lesson room for that.
Her fellows would corner her outside, all sneers and bright eyes. “Magpie!” she would shriek at the nearest, while they cajoled her: “Give us another word today, Kirsica! What are we made of? What do you know? Book-beetle, book-beetle, tell us what you know!” And she would hurl the sharpest and fastest words she could at them, arrows and blades bathed in flame: Sloth! Rubble! Ignoramus!
They would laugh and laugh. Some would dare get close enough to pull her hair or pinch her arms, grinning like dogs, and for them she would scream “Miscreant!” before stabbing her fingers at their eyes. Then she would go home with a new bruise or scratch and take it straight to her mother, who would look over Kirsica’s head at her father (Pillar, Bringer, Coil) and say deliberately, “Who started the fight, Kirsica?”
“Not me! They called me names and pinched me!”
Mother’s mouth would pinch. Warning. “That isn’t what I asked.”
Kirsica would gape at her; Mother’s baked-ember eyes would narrow. “I started the fight,” she would say at last, not cowed—never ever—even though by then the words were almost a gasp.
“And who finished it?” Father would say.
“Madam,” Kirsica would answer, never bothering with the name because her tongue always wanted to supply Blind or Rat or Wilt. Mother would gaze at her with disapproval. Father’s eyes would be more level, but only just, deep blue stone in his smooth dark face. “Always finish what you start,” one of them would reprimand. Kirsica would lower her eyes. Yes, viti. Master. Lord. One who is obeyed. The only titled never owed her teachers in their lesson rooms. Good, the one would say, Mother with her small, sharp smile (Sting) or Father with the telltale glint (Deserve) in his eyes.
And they would sit her down and ask her to explain again the way she thought about words.
#daily writing post#dwp#words#Kirsica#going somewhere?#possibly#excerpt#promising#prose#circa. February 2017
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Daily Writing Post 10/1/16
Number thirteen. This is one in a Halloween bunch, unfortunately (for those who don't favor the holiday) to be running all month long. A warning here if you're no big fan of blood; there's heavy mention of it in this piece.
Golden Eagle
She met him, and she knew—better than she knew a lot of things, in those days—that he would have what she wanted.
The funny thing was, he almost didn’t look the part. His kind had dropped the guise of pretty and innocuous hundreds of years ago, when fine cheekbones and curved-bow lips had begun to makes prey pucker instead of purr. And yet, there he was: fair and lovely under the sun, teeth gleaming white with welcome in his open, laughing mouth; if her suspicions were correct he was selling himself as much as his looks, to be sure, but an untrained eye would never see it. He was moving to catch eyes, not draw crowds. It was all soft angles and flowing gestures there against the garden wall, turns of the head to reveal hints of red under the gold in his hair, runs of his fingers through to keep wandering gazes near his face. When he turned on his heel to look at her at least three bodies followed the movement unconsciously, and when he smiled twice that number nearly shivered in delight.
His fingers flashed and his wink was almost too brief to notice. She saw what was meant for her, but even so, she would have thought him something else—something younger, fresher, something with less of an axe to grind—if it wasn’t for his eyes. They were blue like new stars, too bright and too pale; she looked at them and thought, inexplicably, of cracking ice. You. She shaped the word but didn’t speak it, too wary of his enchanted. There were too many soft bodies between his form and hers, and the last thing she wanted was to break his spell on purpose. There was no way that would end well.
After a moment he caught her eye again and twitched one angled brow up in amusement. Me, he mouthed back, and when she jerked her chin to beckon him he tilted his in recognition. The motion made a strange relief blossomed in her chest, heavy as a blanket and nowhere near as comforting. It brought more pressure than it eased, and she hastened out of sight before any of his throng deigned to notice their unspoken communication.
She made her flight and the pressure faded, though only until she found a proper meeting place. The stone was cracked on this side of the wall; ivy crept up to curl over the edge, and there was enough of an overhang to dapple the concrete with shade. Maybe it would be enough to soothe the light in his eyes.
There was nothing to do now but wait.
It didn’t take long. Within minutes she heard the sound of his approach, the thump of boots low and lighter than she’d anticipated against the ground. “You’re smaller than I thought,” she said, the words free of her mouth before she thought about them. She didn’t turn to see his face at the insult.
His chuckle startled her. “You’re bolder than I thought,” he returned, voice surprisingly light and pleasant. It wasn’t the voice he would have used with one of the soft ones—too much mischief hidden just beneath the surface of the welcome—but it was much less harsh than she had a right to, nonetheless.
She did turn then, just to see if he was smiling. He was—but it wasn’t the showy thing from earlier. This was smaller, subtler; it barely showed his teeth because that wasn’t the point. She looked into his cracking-ice eyes—duller with the jest, not brighter—and wondered, for just a moment, what she looked like to him. Did he think her prey? She could only hope not. She wasn’t here for a chase, or a lesson…but watching him now, the way his expression rippled just slightly when he met her eyes, she had the thought again that he knew. He knew what she was after, he knew what she was needing, now, this long after the last, and he would be able to give it to her.
“Your name,” she said, without preamble. It was always better to know sooner than later with his kind. They were about to play a very dangerous game, and without names to take the edge off the blows there would be more pain than satisfaction.
“Caietanus.” The arch of his brows made him look somehow wry. “Yours?”
“Marzia.”
Something like surprise flashed across his pretty face; he looked her up and down again, as though taking new stock. “A little young for one of yours, isn’t it?”
Marzia smiled with her teeth. “Only to some. Yours doesn’t match your face, Caietanus.”
“Cai,” he corrected, with a smile of his own tinged sharp around the edges. “It is old, you’re right—so I don’t use it in full unless I need to. You’re not planning to be that difficult, are you, Mariza?”
She swept forward and snatched his arm, grip viselike and firm. Not enough to bruise—he wouldn’t even bruise, if he was as old as his name suggested, not from someone like her—but enough to merit the way his smile fell, quick as it has come. “I’m not planning on anything,” she growled, glaring him down. She couldn’t put the same force behind the warning like some others of her kind, but she could shape a nasty edge, and he would do well to remember that. She wasn’t as young as he thought, and if he pressed like he would with a soft one he would find her harder than he liked. “You’re here to help me, not hunt. I need you only like a fox needs a den.”
“Present, and temporary, and you have plenty to choose from,” Cai finished. Nothing in his tone gave Mariza cause to think him indulgent, and he did nothing so stupid as to smirk, but she snarled at him anyway. He raised his hands and loosened his stance (deliberately, she noticed, leaving his arm in her grasp). “I understand,” he said, face carefully blank. “This is a partnership, not a power trade. You have nothing to fear from me.”
Mariza wasn’t so sure about that, but she wouldn’t have feared him regardless and so she let him go. He stepped away when she dropped her hand, returning his arms to his sides, and when he looked at her again he cocked his head just slightly to one side, like a curious bird.
Fitting.
“Where are you taking us, then?”
Mariza didn’t bother to grace him with a response, just turned and flicked her fingers over her shoulder. “Follow.”
He followed. She never turned to look to make sure he was keeping pace and staying on the track—it didn’t matter to her which path he took, as long as he stayed behind her and didn’t try to circle around to her front. He had wings, she was almost sure he did (wings and claws and eyes that went yellow in the lamplight) and as long as he didn’t use them to unfair advantage before he was due, he could take to her direction in whatever way he chose.
She led him, at length, to an unassuming house squatting on the sharp edge of a street corner; smaller than the usual fare in this part of town, and older, and darker, made of brick instead of painted wood. Half the people who passed it took one look at the worn brass of the door handle and the moss clinging to the roof and assumed it was abandoned.
It suited her purposes just fine.
Cai finally came up to stand at her side—he was only a head taller than her, she realized, even with his boots adding inches. He really was small.
Now he cocked his head again, angling a glance down at her before flicking his eyes back up over the house. “Is this where you live?”
“No.” Mariza made a curt, dismissive gesture, and favored him with a feline smile when he raised his brows. “You didn’t think I’d be stupid enough to lead you to my real bed, did you? I need a stint, not a shadow.” She took his arm again, patting rather than grabbing this time. Silly boy.
Cai, for his part, gave a grand little laugh and ducked his head almost graciously. “Fair enough,” he said, and did nothing more than grin when she winked, turned on her heel and made her way inside.
The interior of her little house was bare and thick with the kind of gloom stray cats couldn’t get enough of. There were none on this level, of course—she brought too many predators around, no cat who made his home beneath her stairs would last a fortnight—but it was amusing, nonetheless, to hear the soft sound of interest Cai made when he entered. “You’re not alone here very often,” he observed.
Mariza purred, low and almost derisive. “Think you’re clever to notice that?”
“Just observant,” Cai demurred, not missing a beat. His chuckle was low and dark behind her, like a roll of thunder just before the rain. “Think you’re clever for pointing it out?”
“Only honest.” Again, she didn’t bother to turn, moving to catch his gaze only when she was halfway up the stairs and peered over the railing to see him still at the bottom. She inclined her head, cocked a brow when he grinned. “Are you coming?”
“I was waiting for your signal.”
Mariza snorted. “You have it. Don’t waste my time.”
Cai murmured a never that was couched with enough faux consternation that Mariza rolled her eyes. He made his way up when she scowled at him, though, and that soothed her irritation such that she didn’t smack him when he came in range. “Were you hired out as a court jester back when kings still squabbled over borders?” she quipped. His laugh—and no answer—followed her down the short hall and through the open door of her room, joined just a moment later by his form.
“Nero, once,” he offered, and she shot him a look.
“You’re not that old.”
He grinned a wide, hard grin, teeth sparkling like half-diamonds when she flicked on the lamp and cast soft light about the room. “You don’t know that.”
And she didn’t, so Mariza busied herself trying to change the angle of that grin: she slid her shirt up and over her head, kept an ear tuned behind her so she would hear if Cai shifted on his feet. He didn’t—at least, not obviously enough for her to catch—but she heard the rustle of fabric and saw a flash of color in the corner of her eye as he cast his own shirt carelessly onto the bed. “You really have been needing,” he said, and by the tone of his voice he wasn’t grinning anymore. She turned to face him, noting the way his eyes didn’t stop at her chest like any other’s might have. They swept her instead, surveying the maze of cuts across her collarbones and ribs and stomach. Most of them were healed completely; even the newest was dark with old scab, shrunk and flaking at the edges.
“I told you.” She met his eyes and pulled her lips back from her teeth, allowing just a flicker of heat into her gaze and the tight coil of her muscles. “Now what can you do for me?”
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, they shone a keen, severe gold. “Enough,” he said, the word thick around his lengthening teeth, and his wings—dark and powerful and broad, eagle’s wings for certainty—unfurled from his back and threw wide, sculpted shadows on the floor.
She’d thought so.
Mariza said nothing more to him, just took a running leap across the room and landed crouched upon the bed. She opened her mouth, baring teeth long enough and sharp enough to split his lip in two if she bit down, and hissed an open challenge. If he had been anything else he wouldn’t have so much as seen her move, but she didn’t have to worry about that, did she, she just had to entice him enough to make this last.
Cai had enough reserve not to crash into her when he landed on the bed, wings curled in as though to box her in, but he did bowl her over in a fierce, graceless movement and follow her down with hands scouring marks against her shoulders. He had talons now, great black things that curved wickedly from the base of his fingers, and the tearing pain they brought was so welcome and sweet that she reared up and dragged him down for a kiss, all tongue instead of teeth. He growled—slashed her just under the jaw when she licked into his mouth—and after a few moments the skirmish turned into a battle, and Marzia lost count of the times she arched her back and hissed and kicked at him, struggles rewarded by the occasional groan or snarl of pain, his favorites by a gash.
Her blood sang hot and fast in her veins, slick and beautiful out of them. Cai’s pale skin wasn’t quite as pretty as hers smeared red, the contrast too garish by comparison, but she could make do; it wasn’t hard to let her head spin and forget about such simple trivialities as appearance when she had pain arcing through her body. Sometimes Cai would dig claws into her flesh and twist, opening deep wounds that ran with red long after the precious burn of their novelty faded. Once she found purchase as she scrabbled at his back by catching her fingers on the muscle at the base of his wings, and his head came up in a raptor’s scream that drowned out her own howl of his name. Vengeance came in the form of those dear talons against her windpipe, carving down until they met bone, and her rejoinder was to tear into the join of his neck and shoulder, an act that left her mouth thick with the taste of copper when she finally drew away.
The mattress was heavy with blood by the time they sprang apart, his and hers, and the both of them dripped with it. Marzia burned, inside and out, feeling at once sacrosanct and deliciously wicked; tomorrow night she would tally her new wounds, purr over her favorites, and spread out bare on the bed just to feel them stretch as they healed. As for Cai…
She cast a critical eye over him: he’d folded his wings and brought in both talons and teeth. A strange sort of chuckle hissed from his mouth when she grinned at him, showing hers still long, but he didn’t seem to share the rest of her playfulness—even his eyes had gone back to normal, the same new-star blue from the garden. Their intensity was gone, too; no invasive images of imminent danger came to mind when she looked at them.
Marzia opened her mouth, closed it again, raised a hand (a trio of long scratches marking the back) to run it through her hair. “Did you not…?”
He raised a hand to stop her. “Fine,” he said. “It was fine.”
“You don’t seem very pleased.”
He smirked, a nasty twist of his mouth that looked more dangerous than mocking. “I don’t need it like you do.”
She couldn’t tell if that was meant to reassure her or something else entirely, and so she sat up, idly tracing of one of the few old cuts that hadn’t been reopened during their fight that wasn’t. His voice was more friendly than his expression, at least, but not by so much that she didn’t feel obliged to turn away; she busied herself instead studying the contrast of blood on her skin, a sunny, rich brown to its roots and dusted with freckles, compared to his; he was so white the blood stood out stark, and he didn’t seem to enjoy the sight as much as she did.
He hadn’t seemed to enjoy a lot of things as much as she did.
“You’re going to prowl.” The thought came to her suddenly, and when she spoke it aloud and saw the corners of his lips turn up she knew she had guessed correctly. That was what he needed, she realized—this stint with her had just refined it, sharpened it, focused his attention until he was made as hollow as she had been before they met. Still, she waited for him to give the affirmative before she rose, padding to meet him in the center of the room and rising on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. “Good luck, then.”
He drew red-stained fingers through her hair—so much finer and thicker than his that strands came away sticking to them—and brought his lips to her temple. It was, Mariza thought, the gentlest exchange they’d had all night. “Thank you.”
She pulled away and bent her head to run her tongue lightly over the bite on his shoulder. Good luck came in more forms than one. “Happy hunting.”
She looked up to see Caietasnus smile, wide and hungry in the light.
#prose#short story#prompt-fill#daily writing post#dwp#original characters#supernatural#Halloween fiction 2016#circa. October 2016
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Daily Writing Post 9/29/16
Number twelve.
Angels in the Sea
“Angels don’t live in the sea.”
The breeze carried the voice out to the water, and it was enough to soothe what would have been irritation to a faint, bitter tang in Asherah’s mouth, there and then gone in an instant. She turned, brows knit, and swept her hair away from her mouth with one hand to free her reply. “How do you know?”
Desideria’s smile was little more than a point of white on the shore. “Everyone does. It’s written. Only monsters live in the sea.”
Asherah didn’t bristle like she might have had the words come from anyone else, nor rise to the bait. Desi was a fool; she always had been, her tongue too loose in her mouth, too quick to flash teeth and gleaming eyes whenever her remarks made anyone around her color. She didn’t understand the weight words held, and she’d certainly never come close to knowing when to let them dance and when to hold them in. Not even at Meeting. Asherah could forgive her many slips of tongue; she was stupid enough to insult the sea with its waves lapping just inches from her toes, she needed all the forgiveness she could get before her end.
She made her way back to the edge of the water, trying not to wince when her bare feet met hard-packed sand. It was still early, for her, but Desi knew better than to cut her night-hours short too often; if she was here now, it had to be important.
Desi watched until Asherah stood free of the waves, then glanced her up and down. “You have salt on your feet,” she said, mouth twitching into another grin.
Asherah fixed her with a glare. “Did you come out here for a reason, or did you just want to make stupid observations?” She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled, trying to imitate the sternness the town elders held over the heads of even types like Desi. “Reflection is supposed to be done alone. Why do you have to keep interrupting mine?”
Desi’s smile faltered. “I’m not here to interrupt you,” she retorted, merry mood finally breaking. “Jesri told me to come. We lost another three off the docks.”
That gave Asherah pause. She loosened her stance and dropped her arms, blinking hard to keep her eyes from widening. “What?”
“Yeah.” It was Desi’s turn to glare, sour and reproachful. “He wanted me to find you for the mourning service.”
If they were mourning, it wasn’t foreigners who had disappeared. Dread dropped Asherah’s stomach, and it took everything she had not to start running through the town census, thinking of names and faces and the bodies they belonged to swelling purple and bloated in the water. “Who? How? We made enough people two years ago to cover all the creatures in the holy books, the elders said—”
“Someone went wrong,” Desi cut in. “It was Lemaria. Came right up under the dock and slammed it with her tail. Cracked it in half and sent three sailors flying. Young ones. Green boys.”
Asherah swallowed. “Dead?”
“If they weren’t when they hit the water, they are now.” Something dark and ugly edged Desi’s voice and shadowed her eyes, something that looked for all the world like righteous, bitter relief. Asherah was reminded that for all her foolishness—for all her games and misplaced comments and casual, almost innocuous disrespect—Desi was still one of them. She held their culture close just like anyone else, even if her grip showed a little more slack than most. She knew as well as the rest of them what kind of price certain mistakes demanded, and she was glad—like the rest of them—that it didn’t always take honored, deserving, worthy lives to get it paid.
Asherah thought of Lemaria, thick, serpentine body coiled into muscled loops as she cut through the water towards her due. She thought of blue-green scales flashing under the sun as her head breached the surface; she thought of her jaws, long as three men and broad enough to swallow one whole with no trouble.
She very carefully did not think of the teeth in those jaws loosing a fountain of blood in the water.
Desi turned her mind away from the horror with a hand on her shoulder. “It starts in two hours,” she said. “The service. Jesri said your father wants you to give rites with him.”
The same thing every man, woman and child was owed when the died. Even the ones eaten by monsters. Asherah’s mouth tasted sour. She swallowed hard before she spoke, but her words rasped anyway, jagged at the edges and burning in her throat: “I’ll do it. I’m…it could have been worse.”
“It could have,” Desi said darkly. “It could have been something else. Something bigger, or hungrier. I told you, Asherah, only monsters live in the sea.”
Mourning clothes in their town came from the ocean. Pearls and corals and spines from urchins hung off the dresses and livened the suits; lace dripped from sleeves and collars like foam, accenting fabrics made to shimmer in the light like sun on water. The women wore veils over their faces and sea glass in their ears, and the men drew colored sand-paste over their lips and wove their hair with kelp—save the dead’s family, where the traditions were reversed. Scanning the crowd, Asherah spotted more than half a dozen men and boys with veils and ears that flashed when they turned their heads; fewer women with powder on their lips and green in their hair, but plenty of girls. The sailors, it seemed, were survived by many.
The funeral rites weren’t hard to memorize. Asherah was only an apprentice to her father; it was her job only to recount the lives of the deceased, to tell tales of strength and bravado where appropriate and soothe the crowd with gentler speeches after. It was he, she thought, who had the hard part—he who had to send the souls to the afterlife with words chosen so carefully, mindful to keep the precariously delicate balance between anger at the passing of ones so young and respect for the creature that had taken them. The oldest of the sailors, Redmond, had been twenty-three when he died; the youngest, Gethin, had been seventeen. Asherah didn’t know how her father could be so calm, standing on high before a crowd that swelled and rolled with rage and grief and an itch to lay blame. She didn’t know how he continued speaking even when one of the girls—cousin, niece, sister, it was impossible to tell—began to shriek for justice, blue lips glittering as she leapt towards the stage.
“He didn’t deserve to die!” she wailed, lashing out at arms and necks and faces when the crowd braced to hold her back. “It wasn’t his fault that someone didn’t hang their scroll! Throw them to the beasts instead!”
Asherah flinched despite herself when the girl looked right at her, shaken by the fury and desperation that made her green eyes shoot sparks, but her father didn’t move. He didn’t even break cadence, just raised his voice over the disruption (that was what he would call it in the privacy of their home later, Asherah thought, a disruption) and continued with the obituaries. By the time he was finished the girl had quieted—pulled away by a relative or subdued some other way, Asherah never saw—but the crowd had grown restless, their grief sharpened by the revelation that indeed, someone else might have been to blame for their loss.
“An accident,” called one of the elders from behind Asherah, a woman named Marina who stood unbent beneath the weight of age. “Surely it was an accident. A tragic one, but an accident nonetheless. The creatures of the sea can be subject to violent whims from time to time.”
“No!” shouted a faceless voice from the crowd, male and roughened by tears. “Not Lemaria! Ryine, maybe, or Joam, but not Lemaria!”
A woman near the front raised her fist in agreement. “I would have believed it from the sea-wolf!” she cried. “Oronah, too! But it wasn’t any of them! It was Lemaria, and before now no one’d seen her for years! Something drew her out! Someone killed those boys!”
It took only moments for the word to appear on everyone’s lips. Just a single spark was needed to start a fire, her father often said, and Asherah could see it now, blooming in the rage that overtook a thousand faces all at once. She could hear it in their voices, as the scream of someone! someone! someone! became so loud and plentiful it turned into one piecing, incoherent howl.
Every town elder rose at once, hands out and raised in placation, but none of them moved and none of them spoke. Her father and the other officials moved back to give them room, and Asherah tried to look for Desi in the mob but her father was pulling her away before she could finish lifting her veil. “It’s done, Asherah,” he said in her ear, lips nearly pressed to it to make himself heard. “We’re finished here. The elders will take care of this.”
Asherah struggled, grasping furtively at empty air for purchase she knew she wouldn’t find. “Father, someone’s going to get hurt! Brained or trampled or—”
“And you want to see it?” her father demanded. They were at the stairs now, and he pushed her ahead of him with one hand on her shoulder and the other firmly around her mother’s wrist. “Whatever happens, Asherah, we don’t need to be here. It’s dangerous, the crowd could turn.”
And the worst part was, she knew he was right. If the crowd wasn’t able to find someone to hold responsible—someone to tear to pieces, Asherah thought, nausea rolling in her gut—they were all too likely to look to the higher class for answers and an outlet. It wasn’t their fault—of course it wasn’t, they had their scroll right by the door, theirs was Mireel, six eyes and twice as many legs and claws that could tear trees right out of the ground—but the bloodlust of thousands was a powerful thing, especially when those thousands thought they were owed.
“At least tell me the elders will find out who did it!” Asherah couldn’t tell if the tears in her eyes were from fear or the brightness of the predawn light as she was driven headlong into it. “They can’t just let another innocent die!”
“They won’t,” her father said, jaw set and dark eyes hard. The silver sand-paste on his lips shimmered when he pressed them to a line. “Now be quiet, Asherah, until we make it home. Whatever happens, we’ll know by the afternoon meal.”
He was right, again, but even so Asherah could only find her air when the sounds of the frenzy from the square faded to a dull roar behind them. She didn’t know why she was so afraid, if she was really worried for the safety of her family or if she thought the anger of the mob would truly drive them to murder without trial, but whatever the reason the fear sat in her chest for the rest of the day like a stone made of ice, freezing and terrible.
She scoured the sky for the rising sun the way grave-guards watched for thieves.
#prose#short story#daily writing post#dwp#original piece#original characters#prompt fill#dark#series potential#angels in the sea#circa. September 2016
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Return
After a brief unintentional hiatus, I make a triumphant return to Daily Writing Posts. I tried to catch up on the backlog when I had free time, but doing that actually ended up stressing me more than having a backlog in the first place as the days passed, so I have resolved to forgive myself the days between the twentieth and twenty-eighth and simply return to regularly-scheduled content-making as usual. Did you miss me?
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Daily Writing Post 9/19/16
Number eleven.
What's In a Name
The name on her birth certificate read Apolline Phyllis Janvier, and Apolline decided as soon as she was old enough to know what a nickname was that she wasn’t going to settle for any of them. She was not Lina, no matter how many times her little brothers called it up the stairs or cried it during playtime; their tongues tripped over her full name, that was so, too unused to all the smooth sounds to make it roll like their mother, but Apolline didn’t care as long as they were trying. No, she was not Lina, and she certainly wasn’t Polly no matter what her father said. Polly was the daughter he’d always wanted and would never have, the girl who strung her red hair with ribbons and smiled and twirled and clasped her hands behind her when she waited in line.
Apolline did none of those things. She didn’t scorn them—she smiled when it suited her and twirled when she wanted to dance and clasped her hands when she had nothing else to do with them, and she’d always liked ribbon, ever since she’d found that it still felt like water when she wove it through her fingers—but she’d never embraced them, not the way her father wanted. As far as he was concerned, she was a disappointment. He’d never said it (never dared, not when her mother would have known before the day was up) but Apolline could always see it anyways: it was written all over the drawn cast of his face, every time he looked at her with no one else around to see.
In all honesty, she didn’t mind. It had bothered her when she was young—why should Loren and Charlie get such bright smiles when she only got the barest turn of lips? Didn’t her accomplishments deserve the light in his eyes too?—but as she’d gotten older, the string had faded to a dull ache in the back of her mind. These days it was nearly nothing; to the people that mattered she was Apolline, Apolline and nothing else, the most beautiful sound in the world. Even her brothers had gotten the hang of it in time.
The only nickname she’d ever accepted had been born in the mouth of Clara Layton, and at first Apolline hadn’t noticed it was there at all.
Clara was a pretty girl with chopped dark hair and eyes to match, so rich and brown they made topsoil look plain. When she laughed they went wide and soulful and lit up like stars, just like her smile, and Apolline was drawn to it and everything else about her, from the way she moved her hands when she talked to the way she stuttered when she got nervous. She spent her sophomore year half in love and half consumed by turns of everything from shame to fury, convinced Clara was, if not completely out of her league, at least smart enough to stay the hell away from a girl who shot off smart remarks like pistol rounds and had never had a successful relationship in her life, though not for lack of trying.
She didn’t stay away.
She never had. By that summer’s end their afternoon study sessions—delightfully common, Apolline found, since she was bilingual and Clara had always struggled in French—had blossomed into so much more, and they were stealing kisses in the hallway by the time the leaves were turning on the ground. Clara was warm and sweet and Apolline loved her, loved especially the way her eyes sparkled when she said her name. (It was the first word she’d ever said with a perfect French accent, rolling back to front off her tongue and making Apolline’s heart sing when she heard it.)
It wasn’t until she held Clara close in the bed one night that she realized she hadn’t been Apolline in a long time—not here.
She kissed her, to test the theory that teased in the back of her mind; rolled Clara onto her back and followed so that she sat atop her hips, careful and gliding and yes, there it was, Clara arching into her weight and grazing her fingers over her ribs and whispering Apollo with her eyes fluttered shut, soft and reverent like a prayer. Apollo, Apollo, Apollo.
Like the god. Like the sun. Like music, poetry in motion, a melody spilling from the heart and mouth and soul all at once.
That, in full, was the most beautiful sound Apolline had ever heard.
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Daily Writing Post 9/18/16
Number ten.
Clay
He awoke in the middle of the night again. The darkness smelled thick and cloying and felt like an old bruise. He lit the candle by his bed to drive it back; glanced the room to ease his mind.
Nothing.
But there had been something once.
He walked to the doorknob and bent down; looked. The rich, earthy smudge was there, as though someone had kissed the brass with a clay-covered mouth. The someone who spoke the language of moths and scarab beetles, breathless and mossy as red velvet. Too quiet to hear.
They rarely visited him at night anymore.
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Daily Writing Post 9/17/16
Number nine.
32086
Sad? Empty? Unfulfilled?
Repeat this:
“In scientific probable reality I don’t even exist”
Did that make you feel better?
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Daily Writing Post 9/16/16
Number eight.
FFI
I'm tired
in a way
that does not lend itself
to cognizance
I don't know what it lends to
World-weary and battle-softened,
I only know
that shadowed eyes
despite their darkness
don't bring peace
(Is there such a thing as poison tinnitus?
Where the ringing cracks your bones to ash and dust
and fills your head with a broken buzz
not unlike that
of a dying fly?
Sing, brothers
Sisters mine
Who are waiting still
for the poison to fill up their eyes
Raise your voices to the wind;
Howl, and let me find you)
And—
still I am tired
in a way
that does not lend itself
to eloquence, nor elegance
nor the difference between them
I am tired
And my head stuffed full of webs, and stumbling musings;
I cannot sleep
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I meant to post Aerial yesterday, but, on account of ill humor, took to bed early and woke after this day had dawned. Let it be known that today's two pieces are intended to count for separate days.
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Daily Writing Post 9/15/16
Numbers five and six.
Fairytale II
How long must we languish,
those of us whose countenance is counted on in the monster-pit
before we rise again, and peer at clouds?
The grit between our teeth
went stale long ago;
the crunch
no longer distinguishable
from the strange candy-snap of breaking bones
and the peals of near-silent laughter,
itself as hollow
as the mirth mined here like jewels, and sold for more.
How long must we languish here within the gorge?
Those of us whose beck-and-call brings no benefactors,
whose hunger stems not from starvation
but decay?
Time is as fickle a thing here
as the silver-sharp needle-voices
we thought would drown us
when we jumped.
We learned how to block them out long ago.
The ones who didn’t (those pretty mountain flowers)
Have found within themselves other means
(If they gave their voices names, screamed them until
the blood dripped down their throats, steady and soothing like a metronome.)
(If they didn’t, plucked their own petals
and, dousing them in nectar—
[were it red before it doesn’t matter, it tastes as sweet]—
swallowed them back with slack jaws and grim smiles.)
How long must we linger?
At first we begged, as captives
Then, degenerate, spoke amongst each other
and shaped the words like prison keys.
How long?
How long?
As long as it takes.
Said the sanctimonious presiders of our pit;
With knife-like teeth and nails hung with ribbons of vein
As long, we said, all watching them;
And some took
their blood back
by trade: two pounds for every ounce removed.
It is not over. (It never is.)
But for some, the price is paid, the penance done
They crossed their hearts
And did not die.
Aerial
Where did my lover go? she asked them, one sneaking golden evening when she woke to find her bed neat, as always, but empty.
She went to Aerial, they told her, all smiling, eyes dripping with the same color as the sky.
But where is Aerial? (No place, she thought.)
She went to Aerial, they said again, and watched her go. The world, she learned, was a very strange place, and she wondered if her lover knew it too; there was no sign of it, let alone her, though she (the first) scoured every crust of snow for soft-pawed tracks.
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Daily Writing Post 9/13/16
Number four.
Excerpt from Dent, an original work-in-progress.
They’d cut off part of the dog’s front paw. Abel had been asleep when they’d done it, and that was how he knew.
The pain woke him like a brand against his skin, searing and immediate. At first he thought it actually was a brand, and he leapt from the bed, the world swooping dangerously beneath him before resolving itself into the shapeless darkness of his cell at lights-out. He struck out, waiting for the force of impact, for the stark lines of a silhouette to take shape somewhere before him, for the red-gold blaze of a too-hot iron to burn itself behind his eyes. Once he could see he could fight, and he’d worry about the pain later, worry about the mark later, the burn, what it meant, Dara—
It took few moments before he realized that the fire in his brain was edged with something silvery-sharp and clean, the same familiar mental net that kept all bond-pains from moving out, into the area they would have occupied if they were actually physical. His bonded dog was definitely missing part of a foot—he could feel it now, braying, the rage sending up a whirling thunderstorm of red fit to eclipse the loss and the pain and program all its energy into one drive, run bite bleed maul kill kill kill—but Abel wasn’t missing any of his, and that was the important thing here, wasn’t it, that was what they were watching for.
He collapsed back onto the cot’s rough blanket and buried his head in his hands, trying to smother both a stream of expletives and hopeless, hysterical laughter. His overseers had maimed his dog again. That meant Abel had done something to deserve it—or if he hadn’t, that they’d thought him close enough to deliver a warning in the most horrific way possible.
It was hard to think about what he could have done around the roar of blood in his ears and the fire-thunderstorm that his splinter was so generously feeding live into his brain, but he tried. There was last week’s shattered camera, of course, no one had been happy that he’d mustered the gall to break the lab’s fancy observation equipment all on his own without a weapon to his name, direct deposit of endless canid rage notwithstanding. There was his refusal to play nice in yesterday’s counseling session…but no, not even the program director would order his torture for misbehavior—would she? He’d overheard the lackeys talking more than once about assets and expenditure and net gain; surely they couldn’t afford to kill him by inches if they wanted to get any more use out of his mind. For a man with three splinters, Abel was remarkably whole—remarkably sane, and he knew his overseers knew it. They needed him if they wanted to keep testing. They needed every single person they kept in their plain white cells, and they needed them all coherent enough to talk.
But that still left a dozen great and little misdemeanors, for all he knew. It was hard to tell what the lab would and wouldn’t take personal offense to.
Maybe Dara had done something. The thought brought an unpleasant chill even as the still-present pain receded to a hot, steady throb behind his temples, and it took all Abel’s will not to sink his too-sharp teeth into the tender flesh on the back of his hand. No. No. If they had found Dara—if they had so much as inclined their heads in his direction—well, Abel didn’t know what he would do. But it would be bad, and whatever it was, odds were far less than zero that he’d be allowed to walk away from it alive.
#prose#daily writing posts#dwp#original piece#work in progress#wip#original universe#circa. September 2016
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Daily Writing Post 9/12/16
Number three.
Ode to an Eighteen-Year-Old Girl
How to cope with irrational anger:
I: Pretend the dull, metallic almost-hum in your head isn’t there.
II: Ignore the press and throb of yet another headache behind your eyes.
III. Look in a mirror and pretend someone’s just asked you how you’re feeling. Practice baring your teeth until it looks like a smile.
IV. Let things roll off your shoulders like all the professionals say. Replace the weight with heaping thoughts edged red that turn the hum into a buzz and make the headache settle and beat dully where you thought your frontal lobe to be.
V. Go to bed. Sleep, eventually, and wake up pissed because you dreamed and you wanted peace. Get up—make like you practiced with the first person you see—and tell them you’re feeling better today.
How to cope with chronic migraines:
I. Learn not to cry.
II. Remember that a headache does not give you the excuse to miss school or work or chores because it is, after all, just a headache.
III. Go to doctors. Smile at the sympathy and clucking tongues. Take their medicine, and do not break glasses and swear when the pills don’t make anything better, even though they’re the third kind you’ve tried.
IV. Stop going to doctors. You don’t need them anyway.
V. Stop reporting on the status of the migraines around the house. Your family will think they’ve all gone away and maybe, if they believe hard enough, that will make it true.
How to cope with the insomnia you’ve had since you were seven:
I. Read.
II. When that stops working, try staying quiet and willing yourself to sleep.
III. After that, try music.
IV. Still no? Have you considered yoga?
V. Remind yourself every morning to be grateful for whatever sleep you do get. It will press on the backs of your eyelids like an old bruise every single night but be grateful. Grateful. (It doesn’t matter anyway. You’ll be having too many nightmares to care.)
How to deal with a life like mine:
I. Write copious amounts of edgy poetry. Pass yourself off as sardonic and self-aware instead of sick-tired and lonely.
II. Learn another language, so that you can hate the world with more than one tongue.
III. Sneer at optimism. It won’t be real—nothing is, anymore—but that’s okay. You learned how to pretend in section one.
IV. Write a piece like this. Hate it, because it doesn’t capture feelings the way you want it to. Share it anyway. Not everything can be a masterpiece. (Mutter this to yourself, teeth clenched. Your head is humming. Ignore it.)
V. Cling fast to this world and dig your fingernails in. Draw blood. Tell yourself you’re letting the anger out, not checking to see if it still has a pulse.
Wait for the ravens and the worms. Don’t yearn—people only yearn for things they will never receive.
Wait.
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Writing Prompt #544: Hook, Line and Sinker
It took us three days before we started seeing shapes in the fog.
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THE MYTH OF BEAUTIFUL GIRLS by Natalie C. Parker
The masks are not for my protection, but theirs.
I am the most beautiful girl who has ever lived. This, I have been told since the day I turned ten and came to my birthday party dressed for the first time in the red of a young lady. Instead of cheering and open arms, I was greeted by gasps and startled cries. Everyone from my own father to the good Lady Anat drew their hands to their faces and turned swiftly away. I thought perhaps my older brothers had come up behind me in some gruesome livery for the occasion and the crowd played along. But there was no one behind me, and my mother led me from the crowd and locked me in my room.
The next time she came to me, she wore an exquisite mask of gold and bone. The lips were bowed in a delicate frown, one hollow eye dripping jewel teardrops down a smooth cheek. Through the holes of those eyes, her own were a watery brown as she explained that I would be allowed to leave my rooms as soon as everyone in town had been fitted with a mask of their own. I wondered when I would receive mine, and she explained that my face was too lovely to ever bear such a blight.
“But why should you cover your face when it is mine that is too beautiful?” I asked.
“My daughter, my gift,” she began, her voice muffled by the mask. “When a beautiful girl such as you is born, the price of her beauty is steep. Anyone who looks at you will love you, that is the truth. They will not be able to help themselves, and it will not hurt you. Your beauty is a blessing on all of us. But when you love, the object of your love will not be able to bear it. Your love will kill any single mortal who tries to receive it.”
It has been eight years since I have seen the face of my mother, my father, my priest, my childhood friends.
When I leave my home, I pass through streets and markets filled with masks in every color and shape. Their expressions ever the same—frozen grins and frowns and grimaces and neutral lips—I see their lives in the small nicks and scratches that collect along the surface, in missing jewels and fresh carvings. I know Theia by the sheaf of wheat that bends along her left cheek as though pressed in a constant wind, and I know Pax by the crescent moon point of his chin, the sharp plunge of his forever-smile.
I don’t remember when masks became more real to me than faces. I tried again and again to recall the faces from my childhood. At night, when the only distraction was the silver moonlight on my damask bed sheets, I would focus on the memory of my mother. She had lips that pinched whenever I raised my voice too high, skin paler than my own with freckles splashed across her forehead like galaxies, or, was that only the speckled paint of her mask? The more time passed, the more the two images began to blend until I could no longer remember if the dip I saw in the chin of her mask was reflected in the bones beneath.
It’s easier than you might think, living in a town of masked faces. You can learn everything you need to know about a person by the width of their stance or the roll of their shoulders or the tilt of their head. Most like to stare from a distance. Their masks like shields between us until, having their met fill or their limit, they turn away without a word. Some turn their eyes to the ground when I come near. Others keep their faces straight ahead, determined to proceed as though I don’t exist at all.
Sometimes that seems the truest response.
I thought I should always be alone—a living shrine to something only others understood. How could I comprehend beauty when the only face I ever saw was my own? Few spoke to me. Too afraid that I might fall in love with the sound of their voice or the cadence of their speech. At least, that is as mother explained it to me. People are so afraid of the possibility of my love, they prefer to never know me in the slightest.
Except for Theia and Pax. They were never afraid of me and I could see it plainly. It was in the easy way Pax stood with one hand resting on his hip, the way Theia’s head tipped toward me when others tended to tip away. We became friends when no one else was looking. Theia’s fingers curling between my own beneath the table, Pax’s shoulder brushing mine when we walked through the old ruins behind the market.
But it has been eight years since I’ve seen a face other than my own. When I look in the mirror, I see the same eyes and nose and chin that everyone else sees, but I feel no love.
On the night of my eighteenth birthday, I wait until the household is quiet, until the only sound I hear is the hollow song of a tawny owl. Then, I climb from my bed, slip my feet into the soft leather boots father gave me, and pull my packed bag from beneath the bed. It takes no time to escape my house and even less to race to the old ruins behind the market.
“Reanna!” My name called out sharply in Pax’s urgent tenor. “Reanna, wait! Don’t leave!”
I cannot ignore his plea. I drop my bag to the ground and wait for him and for Theia who races at his side. “How did you know?” I ask.
Theia drags my bag through the dirt, putting it behind her. “It was all over your face today. When you said goodbye, we just knew. So we decided to wait for you.”
“My face,” I repeat. How can I still discover ways to feel dissatisfied with it? “That is why I must leave. I can’t force this town to live like this. Not forever.”
Pax steps in front of me, resting one hand on my shoulder. Moonlight glints over the curve of his crescent chin. “We understand, we aren’t trying to stop you.”
Now, Theia moves to his side, the wheat bending over her cheek full of motion even as we stand still. She says, “But you must take us with you.”
I step back. Their hands fall away as I shake my head. “It isn’t fair to either of you. A lifetime behind those masks? I must go alone.”
“You don’t understand,” Pax begins.
“The masks stay here,” Theia adds.
“But I will love you,” I say, suddenly afraid. “I will love you both and you will die.”
“We don’t think so.” Pax moves close to me once more. “The myth says no single mortal can bear your love.”
Theia joins him so that we are a closed circle beneath an open sky. She says, “But we are two mortals, and we love you too much not to try.”
I cannot speak. All I can do is breathe and watch as they remove their masks and I finally understand beauty.
Natalie C. Parker is the author of the Southern Gothic duology Beware the Wild, which was a 2014 Junior Library Guild Selection, and Behold the Bones (HarperTeen). She is also the editor of Three Sides of a Heart, a young adult anthology on love triangles publishing from HarperTeen in 2017. She is the founder of Madcap Retreats, an organization offering a yearly calendar of writing retreats and workshops.
Learn more about her: Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram | Website
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