indigo venus; three {✦} finished

indigo venus.
“shake paws, count your claws,
you steal mine, i'll borrow yours.
watch my whiskers, check both ears.
robber foxes have no fears.”
― brian jacques


A little nose twitches once, twice. Dust collects around her face and she breathes in history and hidden secrets. Heartbeat like a rabbit, creature fear plugs her head as her fingers jerk left, jerk right. Time curves around her in waves, a pulse drumming through the air. Lips paled by the freezing temperatures are gnawed in concentration - she's done this a hundred times before but the panic in her spine sits still and waits to pounce at the first sign of life. (The door swings open and delight blooms between her ears.)

{✦}

"Give it back."

"Give what back?"

"Don't pretend you don't know. Give it back."

"No" she delivers coolly, an oddly calm demeanor for someone who's been approached by a bleeding, battered and bruised boy that towers over her tiny frame. This is the beginning of the commotion and the introduction to today's entertainment - the same dance performed in a different ballroom.

Instead of laughing or spitting out curses he simply shrugs, a glower faltering into a smirk. "Fine," he admits in defeat with a raise of his hands. "But I'll be seeing you soon, Venus." (She doesn't know that he has memories trapped between his fingers or that he himself is clutched in a palm of darkness but she's always suspected the latter.)

"Where?" she asks.

"Oh, you'll see."

A scoff chokes past her teeth. "Go to hell."

He laughs. "I'm already there."

{✦}

There has always been a little part of her that feared Damion Mercury, but it was always overshadowed by sheer admiration of his wickedly brilliant mind. Just as there has been (and always will be) a little part of her that holds terror close to her heart whenever her fingers clasp at objects that do not belong to her or hinges lifted off of windows. Tiny and slender, her slight frame slips through gaps in windowsills and sneaks through hallways both foreign and etched into her skull at the same time. She is paper-thin and pale with her father's arched eyebrows and mother's soft skin, miniature ears and mouse-like eyes - a ghost that once walked past your walls and right into your rooms of living.

Like her sisters she is quiet, but far more reserved. Her words are short, demanding - no cutting-corners or sickly-sweet smiles. Three word phrases fall from her tongue as she fills up a room with eeriness - "It's mine now" and "Pay me back" and "Money or else" cracking open a smile. (She once towered over the children at school, laughing at their useless efforts to claim back what was once theirs.) Nobody ever stopped to ask where she acquired her possessions - they simply appeared out of thin air on bookshelves, window frames, her desk drawer, just as they disappeared: like magic.

{✦}

"I'm sorry about your Dad," a little voice pipes up. It's been 14 years to the day since Otis Mercury ate a bullet for breakfast and she had never existed in the universe before that time, but she can hear the wails from the graveyard and she usually finds him perched on the wall between their houses when that melody screeches through the neighbourhood.

There's sincerity in her voice - a rarity around her - but he just scoffs and flicks open a cigarette with quick hands and expert fingers. (Her own fists clutch victims tightly, white-knuckled promises as fierce as her grip on doorknobs in a hasty rush to steady doors and scamper through gardens to safety.) His fingertips itch for a spark, patting down his pockets in his short-lived quest. Extending her arm from her winter coat she holds her palm flat, presenting a peace offering to the mysterious mourning boy she has always held a tenderness for in her otherwise rigid being.

He grins with death between his teeth. "What, no ransom?"

She shakes her head. No, not this time. Not today.

No spoken thank-you's follow the silent offering. The lighter is passed from hand to hand and ash floats to the concrete below. The two speak not with words but with actions and the comfortable silence that settles between their bodies. Her feet kick against the stone wall, ba bang ba bang ba bang, like the drumming of her pulse, and for a moment she wonders what would become of her sickly elder sister were she to burn away her lungs like Damion Mercury did. He doesn't seem to care, for smoke fills her nose and tar tickles the back of her throat as billowing second-hand sin.

"Enlighten me, then" he says after a while. "What'd you steal from my sisters this week?"

"That's not how the game works" she replies sternly, watching her feet bounce against gravity and the wall below them.

He laughs between drags. "Fair enough. Perhaps I'll steal something from your brother, next."

All the integrity in her posture dissolves in an instant. "Don't you touch him!" she scowls - no longer a little girl but a warrior poised to strike. He laughs again - so careless, lacking empathy for anything or anyone. (Sometimes she wonders if he's really a human at all. Whether or not he's capable of love, of care, of any decency at all.) "Calm down sweetheart, I won't touch a hair on his head. Cross my heart," (fingers touch his left side) "and hope" (raised to his temple) "to die."

He pull the trigger on his fingertip escape and a pew! falls out as a sigh from his lips, replaced with a devilish grin. She says nothing and jumps from the wall, landing expertly on two feet. She has had enough of Damion Mercury and his haunting charisma for one day.

"Oi sweetheart!"

She turns on her heel and blinks back recognition.

"Catch."

Her fingers are magnetic. She doesn't even have to bat an eye.

'Isiah Venus' tangles on a chain between her fingertips for the 13 footsteps home.

{✦}

Bruises coat both Isiah and Damion, but she doesn't care for Mercury battle scars. He can take care of himself and she knows it. But Isiah? No. Isiah dwindles into the galaxy of his mind, painting a universe of facts as a library of information pours from every cut and crack devoured into his skin. Her other siblings simply existed around the two of them - minor characters to their main attraction. To her, Isaiah is a genius and the whole wide world, her big brother and secret-keeper - but that doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't need protecting.

A year apart meant nothing to the two who walked together, talked together, ran and lived and grew together. A princess and a king, a thief and a scholar, in a make-believe world that sheds from their skin each and every day. Kings need guards and armies. And Isiah needs Indigo.

She's sure of it.