Re: promenade
A vulgar error, they said, and everyone knew red hair was a sanguine sign. His snapping words reminded her of church. They reminded her of men in black whispering hush and somber words just out of her hearing, while she stood there in shoes that had belonged to five feet before her. She eyed the bat, and she saw it as no better than the crosses women clutched in their beefy fingers when she crossed the street. Her own cross, tarnished and raw, rested against her chest. It left no brand. It lived there, a cohabitant with the inhumanity that she'd been told lived beneath her breast.
"You aren't very friendly," she said, because she'd rained no storms upon his head. She hadn't cursed his crop or stolen his mate. She'd given him no children born with hoofed feet, and she hadn't tried to ensnare him for her own. She knew he hid from something, but she hoped it was something more frightening than a girl. For wasn't that all she was here? A girl? Or had those omens and whisperings followed her onto the deck of this ship. She'd sought anonymity. She'd played this game before. Some part of her remembered it, and that part of her longed to live it again. To, for the span of an evening, not be the evil thing that made good people scream.
She tapped a finger against his bat. It didn't even move. The thunder rumbled, but she could not control the way her emotions rose and were feasted on by the clouds. She could not control the way the deck trembled again beneath their feet. She tapped the bat again. "You think I'll hurt you," she said. It wasn't a question. It was the truth that had been carved into her skins with words and slurs and isolation.