Hotaru
Somewhere my lifeline still hums and sings
In the mess of all I have thrown away
She has no idea, because Colt is all mystery wrapped in swagger and rough charm. That allure was partially responsible for Hotaru ending up at her game table like a bee to a fragrant flower. There are shades and angles to Colt that feel familiar, like a half-familiar face in a dirty mirror, one she can’t decipher from stranger and self. It’s intoxicating. Confusing. Finding her here, as lost as Ru feels, had finally pulled the trigger on initiating an encounter. In the mess of all I have thrown away
Cloaked in a new appearance now, Ru feels more confident in their escape, hair and eyes as dark as the night they escape into. Out in the open air her Frey-given glow is subtler with no walls to cast against; none save Colt’s, whose defenses she is entitled to from what little Hotaru knows of her recent fate.
Colt’s gaze is felt, and seen of course - Ru has yet to fully take her eyes off the woman herself - but Ru brings no attention to it. Her aim isn’t that shallow with Colt (at least not tonight). Still, Frey’s chosen through and through, Hotaru rises to the challenging heights of Colt’s smirk with a gleam of her own.
“At least try a sip? Tequila is my second love, but gin is my first.” She holds up the glass that had been meant for Colt, holding the honey sugar rim near her lips, magically-darkened irises holding the other woman’s gaze confidently. If Colt accepts, she wouldn’t shy away from feeding the drink to her with her own hand.
Whether she does or not, Ru returns it to the bar and takes up her own to nurse while Colt angles toward her, mimicking it herself to leave an open space meant for vulnerability and intimacy. She nods mutely at the initial question, aware of the fires given the years she’d lived there. Mention of Sunjata does have an effect; her eyes flick down to her drink for a moment, chest rising slow and deliberate as Andraste makes a soft, draconic noise and curls around her ankle. But that is all - her eyes return to Colt thereafter, more interested in her story than her own pain.
Ru would be a pitiful shade of her former self if she could not read the fray and waver of Colt’s voice. And, perhaps it’s too soon, too comfortable for women who scarcely know each other, but Hotaru slides her hand across the bar to rest her fingertips gently against the back of Colt’s knuckles where she holds her drink. Her irises bleed back to their original heterochromatic shades without conscious thought, the hold of her magic disrupted by her intense focus on the other woman.
“I’m sorry, Colt. Truly.” This moment isn’t hers, but the gravity of her tone makes it clear that Hotaru understands ten times over what losing it all means. Her voice echoes past lives that had been lived fully and painfully, long before The Voice brought her to Caido, and the life she has lived since then. Not overstaying her welcome, Ru’s hand returns to her glass to take a sip and lick a stripe of sugared honey off the rim thereafter. “No wonder we’re both here. Is Torchline your new beginning then?” A neutral curiosity lingers therein, no wrong answers to be had.
Hungry now,
I am gathering new seeds to throw wide
I am gathering new seeds to throw wide
