you're too young & eager to love

Writing is a thing!

Which I have not done in MONTHS!

So, here's a little something, that may or may not be crap, but at least it's writing, ya know?

--

“My life was a storm, since I was born
How could I fear any hurricane?
If someone asked me at the end
I'll tell them put me back in it”




The water is warm and clear blue, unlike the sordid gray of the ocean, which stank of bottom-feeders and decay. The Brimgate Islands are known for this, of course–the idyllic points of paradise nestling within their lavender-colored groves, the secret waterfalls thundering into placid pools, the temperate breezes soothing the skin.

Augusta is unimpressed.

It is her typical state of being.

Radomir, however, appreciates the water gently flowing between his calloused palms, the beauty of the moment. Still, he is an intimidating man even here, submerged up to his waist, the sun warm on his scarred backs and shoulders. He’d shorn his hair for the journey, and the water runs down the sides of his face, clings to his eyebrows, his eyelashes, his mouth.

“You are a mountain creature,” Augusta says from the edge of the water, her legs half in the lake as she reclines on a mossy boulder. “You should be afraid of the water.”

Radomir runs a hand across the left side of his face, wiping away the wetness there. “What good am I to you if water scares me?”

“True. You are endlessly fearless, regardless of the terrain.”

He takes the compliment with a grin then shrugs in a mock-modest way. “If I am fearless, then you are terrifying.”

“The very essence of my appeal, no doubt.”



“Guest-right,” Augusta sneers, glancing over her shoulder at the two micipna the Magister had sent to accompany them on the day’s excursion. They wear the blue tattoos of their station on their arms, their necks, their wrists. The taller one has a peculiar mark below his right eye, almost a burn, except cerulean. They stay on the perimeter of the waterfall, stoic, silent, mute as dumb beasts awaiting an order, but she does not trust them.

“Guest-right is an ancient tradition. It dates back–”

She holds a hand up, cutting him off. “Don’t. I know the history lessons. Some traditions are worth leaving behind. This is why the Vries do not frequently have guests.”

He smirks. “You cannot assassinate your way through the world.”

“I can’t,” she says pointedly, and his laughter is a deep rumble from his chest.

“It is guest-right that protects us now, here.”

“It is the Vries name that protects us here. You do not start a political war by murdering a visiting diplomat from one of the most powerful families from the mainland. Guest-right is the veneer the Trifecta hide their fear behind. I am tired of these niceties.”

“Yet your brother still lives.”

Augusta rolls her eyes skyward. “Harrow’s own ineptitude will be his downfall. I cannot usurp him. Once he has finally shown his true colors and ruined Albtraum, I will prove myself.”



Her hair is a dark coil down the back of her shoulder, gathered into the intricate braids the wealthy women of the island wear to show their status. She is sun-kissed in the water, her usually pale skin turned golden by the afternoons in the sun, a flush of peach over the bridge of her nose and the curves of her shoulders. She is still young, no touch of silver in her hair, no fine lines near the corners of her eyes or mouth, but she has made herself sharp, like her brother, a woman of angles meant to cut. A blade.

When she stands in front of him, he is a whole head taller. Her hands skim his shoulders, feeling the old scars from his years in the fighting pits.

He must look down at her, but she is the one with the gaze of iron and steel. When she catches his face in one hand, her thumb digs into the tender spot below his chin. “Do you ever miss the fights?”

“I miss the noise sometimes. The waterfall sounds like the pounding of the stadium footsteps, the cheering. This island is too quiet. It’s all birdsong and chatter.”

“You were exhilarating to watch.” Her thumb traces the curve of his bottom lip. Not too long ago, his mouth had been hidden by the metal bars of a muzzle; emboldened now, he presses a kiss to the center of her palm when her hand passes across his mouth.

He does not know what to do with his hands now that she is in the water with him, as naked as he is, her silken dress the Magister had loaned her left on the side of the lake. She presses her hips into him, returns her hands to his shoulders, pushing her nails into the muscle there. She can feel his excitement between them, see the way his gaze is heavy with desire and shame and uncertainty. Slowly, as though she may be a viper about to strike, he moves his arms to circle her waist, the very tips of her hair touching the ends of his fingers against the small of her back.

She has to push herself to her toes in order to press her mouth to his thick jaw, near his ear. “Tell me about devotion.”

Augusta knows that he would bury himself in her if she would allow it. That his head would dip to her neck to breathe her in and he would lift her effortlessly, held by his strength and the water both, her legs coming to anchor around his waist. He would kiss her eyelids, her temples, dig his battle-born fingers into the strands of her braid and unwind them with the tenderness of a worshiper. He would show her his devotion if she did not insist on the words.

But because she has, he presses his forehead against hers, his voice pitched low, and he tells about the kind of loyalty that is born in chains. He talks about the scent of blood in the air and the feel of death between his palms and the taste of frenzy on his mouth and the many ways his violence took the shape of allegiance.

I am back-posting Monday's AWS (which was more of a catch-up/work on a pre-existing piece since I had Internet issues) now.

This is my attempt at world-building, playing with limited POV, and creating dialogue. I give you the Brimgate Islands (a wasteland, warped version of where the Caribbean should be in today's time) and the Outgan Trifecta, which have a completely different view of shifters and culture compared to the Vries. Augusta goes on a diplomatic visit and does her thing.

( to make a creature )

Goodness gracious, I have not posted since June. Let's lessen this lapse.

This "piece" has been sitting, half-made, on my computer for months. I can't say I actually finished it. It's more of a bunch of random snippets/moments lumped together that, at some point, I was going to try to weave together into a cohesive piece but ... alas, the momentum has gone. I can't even remember my initial plans. Nonetheless, I cannot deprive the world of Augusta and Radomir!

( where your world is me )

This is a thank you to my dearest of dears, daintiestmartyr, who made me one of the best gifts I have ever received: a character-themed personalized calendar. Since she gave me 12 character-themed months, I am doing the same! … Except with writing rather than visuals since I have all the artistic skills of an undertaker.

I've been having a bit of trouble with my writing, probably because I haven't been keeping up with it as well as I should, so I tried to focus these as shorts and go off of the idea of focusing on a moment rather than having each short tell an actual full narrative. So! That's the idea.

Part One! 6 more to follow (eventually).

( I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace ... )

This was supposed to be the opening section of a much larger piece. But it's been sitting around for so long that I forgot where I was supposed to be going with it. Figured I could post this bit at least.


--



Augusta has grown.

It's the first thing Maximus thinks as he's lead into Albtraum's executive suite. They've had the generators restored since The Incident, but he can see that they're supplementing the emergency lighting with candles, so the room is full of shadows. There's a low fire burning in a stone hearth, and the smell of cinder is everywhere. In the middle of it all, his daughter sits. Pretentious. Self-Assured. Vindicated.

Augusta is his eldest, but Maximus sometimes confuses her for another one of his offsprings, one of his younger daughters from his third wife. He's less surprised by her demeanor and more surprised that she's at the writing desk, a gigantic structure made of solid oak, square and masculine in its cut. Harrow had always leaned against it when entertaining diplomats or conducting meetings, but Augusta claims the center seat. Her ankles are crossed one over the other, modest-like, one foot bare, her left toes balancing inside the tortuous straps of a leather stiletto. It's only when she tilts her head up at the sound of his approaching that he sees the full length of her face, all the dips and planes that adulthood has sharpened and life has weathered.

She's beautiful, but she makes no attempt to hide her cruelty from her beauty. No amount of cosmetics could soften the hardness of her mouth, of her eyes. Her hair falls against one side of her face and down her back, the ends blunt and harsh. Her nails are clear and sharp.

"Do you want me to make nice?" Augusta asks by way of greeting, pausing in her writing. The tip of her fountain pen hovers, bold with fresh ink, above a stack of official looking letters. "Father arrives and corrals the disobedient children?"

Maximus wraps his knuckles around the top of his cane and taps the tiled floor absently. "This is why I married you off," he says at last, "because of your untempered spirit."

Beside Augusta, a predator cat growls, the sound low and threatening. The hair on the back of its neck rises, a rigid line following the length of its spine. It's too large to be anything but a shifter, and even next to that gigantic desk, it looks huge. For one brief moment, before he can compose himself, Maximus is startled. He hadn't noticed the beast laying beside Augusta, it's gold eyes full of intelligence and anger. A younger Maximus would have seen it immediately, but he hasn't been young for some time. He's nearing eighty. His eyes are milky, and he needs his cane more than he would like to admit. There's not much left beneath his expensive suit; he used to be a broad bull of a man, but age has weakened him. Even his voice rasps with death.

Augusta is looking at him. She sits back in the chair and drops a hand to the mountain lion's head, the way one might do to a loyal dog, her fingers idling above its brow. Its amber hair smooths, but the creature keeps staring, its eyes as defiant as Augusta's.

"And how well did that work out, father? Or can you even remember?"

Harrow mumbles something unintelligible, the slurred words jerking into the conversation from behind Augusta. He's slumped in a corner chair, half folded into himself, his mouth slack from too much whiskey, his voice a croak of impotent anger. Maximus hadn't noticed him before either.

"What's that?" Augusta asks over her shoulder. Beneath her stroking fingers, the lion starts to purr. The sound is worse than its growl.

Maximus lifts his grey eyebrows, frowning. "Sober him up. He has work to do."

"No."

He looks as though lightning has struck him between the eyes. "What did you say?"

"I said no. In fact, let's bring him another bottle. If we're lucky, he'll drown himself in whiskey, and we can say goodbye to all his foolishness." She gestures to a plain girl in a khaki colored uniform, and the girl skitters off without hesitating.

Maximus stutters on his breath. Augusta waits, scratching behind the lion's ear, and it closes its bright eyes, it's tail making a lazy, long sweep above the floor. In the background, Harrow mutters a line from a lullaby and shifts drunkenly. His eyes are only half open, but they're red and unfocused. Maximus stares at his son, trying to will him into action by the sheer force of his gaze, but there's no power in his eyes anymore, and Harrow's too busy pining over his swan to notice. His swan and his kingdom and his pride.

Augusta clears her throat. Light. Demure. Ladylike.

"Was there anything else, father? Because if not, I have a number of correspondences to address to assure the remaining compounds." She flicks her pen with her right hand, gesturing to the letter.

Maximus' mouth is a thin, grim line. It's white and wrinkled, like the rest of him. For a moment, he considers confronting his eldest, of stalking forward and cracking his knuckles across her mouth the way he had when she was a child, the way he had when her mother had also become too impertinent for her own good. Again, his hand curls tight around his cane, and he shifts his weight. He manages one step closer before the lion's eyes have opened, have pinned him with their stare. It bares its teeth like it can read his thoughts.

"Let's discuss this more over dinner," Augusta suggests before she begins to write again, the scratch of the pen deafening. At the same time, the maid returns. She's carrying a fresh bottle of whiskey.

This thing upon me, howls like a beast
You flower, you feast
- “Woman”



His weight beneath her anchors Augusta in the moment, binding her sails and building her moorings. She feels almost child-like - a woman grown, tall as a willow, her body devoid of grace and molded into severe lines (the resulting aftermath of a life of trials and tribulations, of crossing into adulthood fully) - but she is made minuscule by Radomir's mountainous size. She is used to having control, to maintaining order, to fulfilling responsibilities; she's grateful for the freedom and comfort his body provides. It's refreshing, even if it doesn't change the fundamentals of their dynamic.  As if to further establish this point, Augusta's arms cage his head, her wrists locking behind his neck, mimicking the way her legs circle his waist. She has circled her way around him, as much as possible. If she leans down more, she'll find a shelf for her head in the shape of his shoulders and chest. If she arches too much, her oak-colored hair brushes the top of the Cadillac. 

They are a knot, insidiously twisted, and difficult to untangle. 

Radomir's heavy hands grip her hips. When she rocks down, grinding against the hard length of him, he holds her like she's the anchor instead of the ship. It makes her laugh, slick and needy, against his lips. 

Forehead pressing against hers, and in-between uttering a Slavic curse and a groan, Radomir asks her what's so funny. 

"Sometimes I think you forget what you're capable of," she tells him, trailing her palm from the nape of his neck to his jawline, feeling the scratch of the day's stubble against her skin.
 
Radomir grins, leaning back against the leather seats, spreading his arms out over their curves. "No. I never forget."

She quirks an eyebrow at him, her mouth a thin scar of a smirk, then nods briefly. "You're right." Her hand scalds him as she runs her fingers down his neck, deliberately traveling the length of his jugular, circling away from his heart as she traverses over his broad chest, burning lower and lower until she palms the outline of his hardness completely. He grunts, guttural, and looks at her from between half-lidded eyes. 

"Show me then," she says, licking the corner of his mouth. "Show me what you can do." 





Augusta could talk the devil into setting himself on fire. 

She could get into anyone’s brain – into their teeth as well as their ears. She could vibrate in the knot of nerves below the breastbone and seem to eat the damp and delicate tissue behind the eyes.

Radomir knows this. He has accepted it, has let himself be convinced by all her words and plans and promises, has even been enamored by it, but when he's deep inside of her, his hands buried in her hair, her body wet and yielding to him in all the ways he has often yielded for her, he wants to be the one who is silver-tongued and solid. He wants to lead as she follows. He wants to pave a path to a future where their footing is on equal ground, where he does more than guard her life, open her doors, and fuck her in secret. 

But then she catches his neck with one of her hands - hands that make him think of doves in their elegance and long-fingered poise - or her sweat leaves salt on his lips as he mouths the curve of her jaw and the desire to satisfy her, to be hers, battles with his urge to claim. 

Augusta is silk, spread beneath him, a leg curved over his hip, the other pinned down at the thigh and held open by his right hand. Her body is pressed against and into the Cadillac's back seats. The windows are fogged over. They're both sweating. She has a rope of pearls around her neck that glisten, sticking to her collarbone, the ends of her hair clinging to them. But she is still removed, still distant - he's only pushed up her skirt, only undone his trousers - and he's bracing his bulk above her, forced into the back of a car that suddenly feels like a coffin. His left hand had gripped the front seat for leverage and balance, but now he uses it to pluck at the matching pearl buttons of her blouse. Quick. Nimble. Too precise for a man whose history has covered his hands in blood. 

"Hold on," he murmurs, like his words are sticking to his tongue, then scowls when she groans with impatience. 

Augusta pushes her hands back through her hair, looking down at the progress he's making, inches of her skin slowly coming into sight as her blouse spreads open. "Radomir." There's a note of annoyance in the way she says his name - it's subtle, but he's been trained to notice it. 

"Augusta." He mimics, leaning down to kiss the tops of her breasts, his teeth dragging over the expensive lace of her bra. He guides the shirt off of her slowly, rolling it away from her shoulders, and feels her acquiesce when she arches up to help him. It slips from her arms, a snake shedding expensive skin. 

He curves a hand back, against her spine, and works the clasp of her bra next. When he moves to the line of buttons on the side of her hiked skirt, she huffs again. A simmer of anger from her mouth, disguised as a sigh. 

"Radomir," this time her tone is clearer - more obviously sharp, "we don't have time for this." 

"Why not?" he asks, the only part of him moving now his fingers at her hip. He's still inside of her, thrust to the hilt, but he is a creature of self-possession. 

She slaps him, her hand a viper. Three quick successions. His eyes flinch, but the crack of sound is louder than the pain. 

"No time," Radomir muses, feeling the sting of her nails. He lowers his eyes to her exposed chest, to the slender inward curves of her waist, his hand rubbing the buttons of her skirt now, feeling their worth. 

He seems reflective - humbled - so Augusta is surprised when he looks her squarely in the eyes. 

"Do you have time to undress for your brother?" The impudence is more in his eyes and the smirk his mouth makes than in his voice. That he keeps even and low. 

Although she considers it, Augusta decides to answer him earnestly rather than make him apologize. "No.” She uses her slapping hand to run her thumb over his full bottom lip, her nail scratching at the corner where his smirk is the most evident. “… and I don't fuck him in the backseat of cars either."

"Where then?" He undoes a button.

"Where I bury my skeletons."

Another button loosens, and now he can unwrap her fully, smoothing away the fabric to feel the way her thighs shiver and how her bones battle with her waist. He hums his understanding and dips his head to kiss her neck.

Slowly, ignoring the time she cherishes, he starts to move. He thrusts deeply, one hand at her hip, one arm curling around her lower back to pull her up and closer to where their bodies are joined. Augusta drags her nails across his shoulder, hooking her leg further behind him.





They fuck into dusk. Until Augusta’s skin is slick with sweat and flushed from her toes to the crown of her dark head. Until Radomir’s breathing hitches and his blood stutters in his veins.

She has crawled on top of him in the low-light, the muscles in her thighs straining, her fingers trembling. She mirrors how they began – arms around his neck, legs caging his waist – and his hands cup her ass. She rocks above him, chasing her rising crescendo.

When she comes, she bites his shoulder, stifling the cry torn from her mouth. Radomir, never the nosiest of fucks, groans with pride.

Augusta nuzzles into the side of his neck, contended.

“What does Hatchet sound like?” The question settles along his throat and constricts like a noose.

Radomir wonders how long she’s been waiting to ask. He runs his hands over her back, counting the notches in her spine. Augusta laughs, breathy, at his silence. She nips his earlobe. “Did you think I didn’t know? What you do when you aren’t with me.”

“I am always with you,” he says, “even when I am not.”

“How romantic.” She knocks her knuckles against his heart.

Even though she’s patronizing him, he kisses her – long and deep - satiating himself.

Augusta presses her fingers to his mouth. “Are we done here?”

He nods. When she slides from him, the sudden loss of her is a void.






Radomir leans against the side of the Cadillac in the darkness as Augusta dresses. He smokes a cigarette, watching the horizon. There’s a clutter of brush along the seaside. Come fall, most of it will probably be dead, but now the branches bear leaves and makes it hard to see the crashing waves. A narrow dirt road, scattered with sand, curves back towards the city. Traffic will be light he thinks, and pitches his cigarette to the ground.

In the night, Augusta can hardly make out anything. She adjusts the fall of her necklace and pins her hair carefully using the rearview mirror. Her blouse sticks to her skin and her skirt is wrinkled, but her strict spine and sharp gaze are enough to make her look composed. She touches her swollen mouth and smiles before knocking on the window.

Radomir grips the steering wheel once he slides into the driver’s seat.

“I could kill him,” he says.

Augusta lights her own cigarette, following the train of his thought easily. She speaks around the smoke in her mouth. “It isn’t him I want you to kill.”

They look at each other, and Radomir says nothing (except with his eyes, and Augusta can read them easily, can see the way pain and obligation twist him up like a tourniquet, can see, too, how quickly his love for her outweighs his devotion to any other). He starts the engine, one hand falling to the gear shift, the other balancing on the wheel. Augusta places her hand on top of his, tracing the lines of his veins above his knuckles.

Hello, journal! It's been so loooooonngg. I blame my descent into the world of fanfiction.

It feels good to return to my babies though. 3500 words - woohoo!

The novel I'm reading right now uses multiple spaces to separate sections of a chapter, but the author also capitalizes the first few words of each section. I stole that stylistic choice. I always worry about how many spaces I use for separation and whether or not aesthetically it works, so the added formatting helps me visually. /random

Title/text at the beginning comes from a Halsey song, of all things.

( you're a masterpiece )

Originally, this was going to be a 3-part piece where I contrasted different characters' relationships in the Wasteland universe. I only wrote the first part though, and I can't seem to gather enough steam to do the other two parts. I'm hoping to come back to them eventually.

But here we go!


--



What’s left, if you take away love?
Just brutality. Just shame. Just ferocity. Just pain.
- Margaret Atwood




“Please,” he says, the word a hot iron coal in his thick mouth, searing his skin as he spits it out.

Augusta hates his mouth – the full lips that remind her of her father’s pit bull terriers, her father’s feared hounds, and the association it causes between beasts and dumb brutes – as much as she loves its talents. She stares at him in the darkness of her compound suite, at his mouth which has shaped such an ugly plea, and cannot pull compassion from her heart.

“What did you say?”

“Augusta, please. We should leave, tonight, now.”

She scoffs, turning her narrow body towards him, this giant, hulking, monster of a man. One of her thin eyebrows arches; her hand is on her hip, the withering moonlight from the open window catching all of her sharpness. For a moment, in the second before she acts, she thinks of her brother. Harrow who bought a serpent from across the western seas. Harrow who created a striker when he was hardly even a man. But Augusta has no need of whips or poison-fanged shifters. She strikes with her own hand, a rapid white blade that launches from her hip and lands across Radomir’s solid jaw.

She has to roll up onto her toes to bridge the distance between their heights, to sink her nails into his skin. The scratch of his stubble its own kind of brand. The stoic press of his shoulders tightening beneath his shirt, the way his eyebrows draw together in shame, its own kind of devotion.

“Since when do you decide what’s best for us?” she asks.

All his great strength has shriveled. Radomir is still standing, the slap of her palm inconsequential for its meager pain, but the denouncement alone is a burden heavy enough to make him wilt. She can see it in all of his small gestures, his body’s miniscule responses that betray him, his coiled rage and grief that is always just below the surface, shimmering up into his dark eyes during his best and weakest moments. Another man might as well be crying.

“… I thought you-”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

He clears his throat and ducks his eyes. Augusta can feel the weight of his gaze settle on her ankles. “I thought you valued my opinion, Minister.”

She steps away and curls into the solid weight of a high-backed chair. She is still dressed for dinner. Her brother is a knife wrapped in a suit; she is often the same, hiding her feminism in more masculine fashions. The fabric of her dark cigarette pants heightens the razor cut of her body. Her plum silk blouse sleeveless and leaving her finely muscled arms naked. There is nothing descriptive about her – no silver trinkets dangling from her wrists or diamonds claiming her fingers. Her hair is brushed free and dark, left to spread down her shoulders like molasses, to slip and stick to her collarbones. Even her mouth is bare, lips a girl’s shade of pink, but the curl of her smile is more beguiling and capable of cruelty. Radomir knows what she looks like, has memorized all the details, but he keeps his eyes on her feet where he is least likely to offend her with the heat of his gaze.

She stretches out one leg. The patent leather of her flat ending in a sharp point aimed directly at him. “Maybe I do … on good days, when you remember your place.”

Radomir does not drop. He is too graceful, too familiar with his large gait. He slinks to his knees instead, like a dog with its tail between its legs, and catches her foot between his powerful hands. She pushes her shoe into his chest before he slips the flat off and digs his fingers into her high arch. He does the same with the left, turning his head into the bridge of her foot, ghosting his mouth across the skin.

Augusta sighs, the softest sound she is capable of. The sound of a butterfly taking flight. “Why should we leave? I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.”

He kneels in front of her, her feet warm in his lap, and continues to drag his fingers from her ankles to the bottom of her calves where the muscles are tight. He has almost forgotten the slap from earlier. “I don’t trust it here. Something is different. Harrow is … unwound. Irrational. His eyes are bloodshot all the time now. His anger palpable.”

It’s true. Harrow had, until now, always possessed an egotism and narcissism thick enough to deflect any of her best barbs, as he had always sidestepped and circumvented her attempts to usurp his place within the family hierarchy. But the curl of his hand against his whiskey glass over dinner, the glare of his unfocused eyes, his half-hearted wit and hurricane-level anger were all the defense mechanisms of a dying wolf. He had lost more than his swan when she’d fled across the dessert, and not even her triumphant return had restored what her disgrace had taken from him.

Augusta shrugs, shoulders thin, bones cleaving against her skin. “Perhaps he senses the fall of an empire. The rise of a new era.”

“Wounded animals become the most vicious.”

Slowly, she pulls her legs from his grasp, bringing them to her chest, until her body curls into a fist. He is still on his knees, and she sits high above him. “Well, if something happens to me, I’ll know who to blame, won’t I?”

Radomir nods. He stands when she does. He helps her undress, his fingers soft against her skin, careful with her clothing, and they don’t speak anymore. He waits until she falls asleep, her long back turned away from him in the darkness, and then he shifts.

His eyes golden and fierce beside the bed.

I'm counting this as a warm-up rather than a piece, because it's not really anything close to what I wanted to write.

--

I.

The first time Augusta hears of the Emerald Isle she has sand in her hair and blisters forming on the otherwise smooth contours of her palms. They’ve stopped for the night in a ramshackle tavern, held aloft by what looks like drift wood but can’t be, since they’re more than seventy miles into the desert and too far from the coast.

The name trips over the excited tongues of straight-backed boys cleaning tables, sets the eyes of the middle-aged bartender alight, tip-taps sideways from mouth-to-mouth down the bar by the customers, in-between mouthfuls of cactus juice and gin. Augusta is wrapped in layers, her lips dry and cracked from the weeks of traveling, and she raises an eyebrow at Radomir from across their teetering table to see if he has also heard the whispering. He casts a wide shadow, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, one of his large hands wrapped around a baked clay mug that he lifts to his mouth every few moments. There’s a tilt of his head in acknowledgement before he scans the crowd of men at the bar one more time.

They haven’t been bothered by their waiter (or any other prying eyes) since he split open the whole chicken they ordered with his rough, bare hands, his fingers oblivious to the heat and steam of the meat. He had cracked open the breast in the gesture of a blink. But Radomir never fully relaxes while they travel, so he keeps roaming his gaze, memorizing faces and listening to pulses.

She tells him it’s because she’s tired and they’re still three weeks from the mountains, because she wants a hot bath and a pretty, long-fingered girl to wash her hair. He knows, however, that the real reason Augusta tells him they’re changing course is because she doesn’t like anything to consider itself out of her jurisdiction.

She is resolved to be unimpressed, and that holds until the first time she sees Palmer in the atrium, eating a pear, leaning against a column beside the reflection pool. Palmer, she realizes immediately, is a switchblade, slim in the waist but broad in the shoulders and arms. Radomir circles him in what he must intend to be a casual manner as a one-legged woman continues to welcome them from somewhere to their left, but Augusta only half-listens. She watches the exchange between her beast and this business man, half-amused when they seem to circle each other like jungle cats, although Palmer is talking casually, motioning grandly with one arm, pantomiming ease.

“Your companion does not seem to like my partner.” The brunette woman says now that she is beside Augusta, her hands clasped in front of her slender body.

“No,” Augusta corrects, unwrapping one of linen scarf from around her head, the sheen of her hair bright beneath. “No, it isn’t that. It’s that they’re the same, I think, except your partner is a knife wound and Radomir is a closed-fist punch.”

To her surprise, the woman laughs. It sounds sweet, like honey, which does not seem befitting. “Yes, I think you are exactly right, Minister.”


II.


When Radomir had first seen Augusta, long before the fighting pits and her government position, she had peered at him with her bright eyes and the breath had been knocked right out of him. He had seen a lot of girls, been with a lot of girls, touched them and watched them and tormented them the good way and the bad, but Augusta, in her long-limbed, adolescent youth, had sucked his breath right out of his lungs like no other.

Eda does not elicit the same response. She’s a petite little thing, a little bird, ready to take right off. She’s got big eyes like a doll’s, lids sliding shut and open again in a languorous blink. She’s beautiful in a way that will only be ripped apart.

“I am not made of glass,” she tells him, politely, mistaking his slowness for hesitancy rather than disinterest.

Augusta tips her drink back, hiding a laugh, ice clinking, from a chair in the corner. She has been freshly cleaned, rubbed raw by the heat of the water and some attendant’s caring hands. Her hair is still damp and Radomir, briefly, becomes distracted by the smear of wetness it leaves on the side of her neck when she pushes it back.

“You’re like one of those …” He reaches out and touches Eda, his big hands running up her sides. “One of them little ballerinas inside the music box.”

She smiles. “That’s lovely.”

He is close enough now that all Eda sees is the wide breadth of his shoulders and the way his shirt stretches of his body. The hair on his forearms is fine, but dark. He is a collection of geometric configurations. He is planes and lines and points connecting harshly with the contrasting softness of mouth and eyes. He looks too large for the suite, even though it is the best the Isle has to offer, and Eda swears her moans will echo off the walls.

He undoes the tie of her shirt. He is gentle peeling it off her arms, gentle when pulling it up over her head. She notices, but does not mind, that his eyes aren’t on her at all. They’re somewhere over her shoulder, past her shadow, focused on the other woman.

Eda is certain this is some kind of seduction. She takes a relaxing breath. “You don’t need to worry about hurting me.”

From behind them, Augusta throws back her head and laughs.

In a way that could be fond, Radomir nips the bottom of her ear, his voice a growl. “I wasn’t.”

New piece. A piece piece. An actual cohesive, looks a bit like a short story piece. Yesssss.

3088 words. Woohoo!

( mounts her lion )