Re: The Bohemian/The Companion
Phoenix didn’t need to make a conscious decision not to be fooled by the woman who looked plain and stark, it was just a matter of inevitability. They had sussed, you know, that some of the most fascinating folk were sketched in shades of brown and gray. Sometimes they weren’t even shaded at all. Just outlines, translucent and hollow as the bones of a bird’s wing. Adaptive skeletons that could more easily soar. So they wondered what currents ran beneath the veneer smooth like ice, or some other simile that was better thought up by an author than an artist, okay?
“Oh, shit yeah,” they laughed, a bark that grated their tonsils on the way out with the force of their delighted surprise. See? Still waters and all that. Phoenix grinned wide and impudent as they set the bottle down just a little too hard, sloshing the contents with a sound like glug-swish. Lithesome forearms folded on top of one another on the table and they leaned forward, uncaring that some of the stain transferred to their sleeve and dampened their skin a deep blush. “Like, the most. I lose things all the time up there. A few months ago I filed away the combination to my bike lock and I haven’t found it since. Now I have to walk everywhere.”
Phoenix’s hair was dampened, darkened, along their sideburns where sweat had gathered while they sat and sipped and scrutinized, and a single rivulet ran over the shelf of their jaw and carved a path down their neck. (It was dust that the saltwater tracked through, not makeup, and perhaps a daub of thick pastel in chartreuse.)
“Nice to meet you, Charlotte Selby. Phoenix,” they offered, like an afterthought. Hands stayed on the table linen. They had enough shaking hands to go around, thank you. “Like the creature, not the city.”