A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
She is a clever, pretty thing.
For as delicate as she appears to be, Phasus has never been dainty or demure — but now, for the sake of her passions she buffs her edges and smoothes them out as though she is made in the image of those words, as though she is only doing something as simple as ironing wrinkles from fabric. She looks soft when she needs to look soft, and small when she needs to look small. She extinguishes the wildfires in her eyes, replacing greed and smoke with concern at all of the most pivotal moments.
God, give them the strength to withstand the furl and unfurl of her eyelashes against the tops of her cheeks because she is poison, even if she looks like an angel with the halo of moonlight that cradles her face.
Every-so-often the light reflects off the sheen of the exposed bone in her wings, but the beauty of this isle is not something that occurs to Phasus as she listens, biding her time while the other mare speaks. In fact, she doesn’t even notice the sky as it flickers a thousand shades of blue, like some sort of oceanic kaleidoscope. She is too busy agonizing over her own skin, over the disease that creeps in on them like a cool wind; gently enough at first, until the chill finds you and settles in deep inside your marrow to take root.
But she’s got it right, at least.
This is the one she has been looking for tonight.
The green mare confirms it herself when finally she asks why she is important to Phasus’ cause. The truth is that she isn’t, not desperately so, but that it is easier to catch flies with honey — to have them bend to her whims rather than break by them. For a moment though, Phasus pauses to humor her, tracing with her eyes the lines of her companion’s face now that the moonlight has thought to light it. To Camomila it will look as though she’s simply quietly contemplative, but she isn’t. Phasus already knows her lines, had crafted them carefully word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence hours before these moments.
She’s only acting.
She’s only showing Camomila exactly what she wants to see.
It would be easier, she thinks, to stand before a man — to let him traces the bends of her slight body with hungry eyes and make him think he has a chance. Negotiating with women, at least most of them, was different. They weren’t driven by the same primal desires. Their knees didn’t quake when she looked up at them from under the curl of her dark eyelashes. She had to adjust her methods, appeal instead to a finely balanced sense of compassion and practicality, rather than sex.
“Quite frankly,” she says at last, sighing deeply partially because the cold could steal the breath from her lungs and partially for the dramatic flair. “I don’t need you. If you reject my offer I’ll be inconvenienced, certainly, but not reeling by any stretch of the word.” There is just enough edge left in her voice to make it real, to coat the words in truth so they won’t taste so sweetly going down, like powdered treats. The words that follow become music that she conducts to rise and fall as she pleases, invoking a gentle sense of sincerity to them where there is certainly none.
“I would like your support though. I would like for you to believe that what I am trying to accomplish here is in everyone’s best interest. Contrary to popular opinion, I am not a heretic, and my ideas are not radical simply for the sake of it.” This part is mostly true, though it is layered, muddied at best, and peppered with gentle lies. Mostly, she is acting in her own best interest, though she is far from the only one trapped on this wasteland acting selfishly. At the core of it all every one of their reasons is selfish, isn’t it? Phasus is simply more transparent with her motives given that she speaks them all aloud, albeit in prettier ways than she is thinking them.
Camomila is desperate for something to call her own.
Leilan is desperate to fall into his Queen’s good graces.
Phasus is desperate to save her own skin, no matter the cost, and to have the world know His name again.
And at last, it comes, her finally tuned crescendo:
“We don’t have the luxury of time to bicker amongst ourselves. I’ve already tried to reason with him. It occured to me very quickly, however, that you are likely the more reasonable of the two that have also laid claim. It is my hope that you’ll see it’s in all of our best interests not to put all our eggs in one basket. I only thought that if you could see that, too, perhaps he would be forced to acknowledge it for himself. The incentive is simply a gesture of my goodwill. Take it, or leave it. I won’t offer him the same deal, and speaking candidly, I don’t think he’s rational enough to rule himself let alone a nation in times of crisis.”
And for all that she is (a predator, a snake in the grass), she comes across well. If they only knew that brimming behind her dark eyes is something so much darker.
They don’t know that she will keep them out at any cost.
They don’t know how badly she craves a cure.
They don’t realize that she loves her own existence enough to threaten everyone else's.
phasus
@[Camomila]