the girl, she's hiding horns; any

[Leokadia]

she got blood cold as ice
and a heart made of stone

Leokadia angles her face in the direction of an approaching stranger, and though she should try not to allow herself to gaze so steadily at someone (memories too quickly formed) she cannot help it. Her eyes might be blue but look closer to an unsettling white, especially in this intense sunlight and contrasting with the red clay that bisects her face. She trains those eyes first on the unfamiliar woman’s dark and wooly frame and then slowly on what looks in bright daylight like a drifting haze floating around her. Is there ash in the air? No, it is not like ash.

When the stranger comes close enough and asks about the dried mud Leokadia glances unselfconsciously back over herself. “It does.” A beat of silence as she studies the other woman. “I also just enjoy the mud.” It may appear that Leokadia had just sought relief from the summer scorch but in truth she is almost always filthy, not for lack of grooming as she does attend to herself, and isn’t a fly-hunted stinking nag. She smells like herself, and the earth, and whatever she crushes beneath her when she rolls in the forest or meadow. She is beautiful beneath the dirt, and more appealingly feral because of it.

“What is all that? Floating around you?” Tossing her head to indicate what she now perceives as glittering dust and taking a few steps to close the pair of them into a polite distance for conversation. Red earth crumbles dustily away from her feathers as she drags her wing-tips along carelessly. “For Carnage’s sake, you might not be so hot if you weren’t dressed for December.” Leokadia scoffs at thick black hide the woman wears, focus moving past her veil of glitter. “I’m Leokadia. Lo is fine.”

but she keeps me alive
she's the beast in my bones

Leokadia

@[Ciri]