Meadow

Minthe listens to him speak. Her face remains carefully neutral, a blank slate even as she rankles at his mention of rottenness. The carnelian girl is not rotten - she knows her worth, and isn’t afraid to go after the things she knows she deserves. “How insightful,” she says after a moment, letting her tone do the talking instead of the words that form in the fertile space around it.

“What you’ve failed to notice, though,” she adds in a low voice, brushing her pale muzzle over the stalks of grass waving back and forth across her breast, “is all that beauty can bring forth.” Her neck arches prettily, the fine lines of her face glowing in contrast to the green swirling all around her.

“Beauty begets joy,” Minthe murmurs, whuffing a soft breath towards a firefly to blow it back. “It begets pleasure…” Red lashes flutter like lace curtains over her downcast eyes, demure. “Power…”

Her tail swishes idly against her hindquarters, caramel-sweet scent wafting into the shared space between them. Her gaze avoids his, innocent in her determination to glance up, now, to the star-speckled horizon, as if tracing the shapes of her ancestors in the constellations overhead. “Legacy.”

Minthe strides a pace or two away from him, taking away his access to her body as quickly as she had given it. “Beauty seems useless, at first glance… but it serves a purpose in this world. Perhaps not in your world,” she throws back with a glance over her shoulder, chocolate eyes flicking pointedly over his homely frame, “or not in ways that you’re aware of.”

Another contemplative snap of her tail, the threads catching like sparks in the flashing neon light.

“Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.” What might stink of rot to one could be the sweetest nectar to another. Of course, some beholders, in her opinion, were more qualified judges than others… but that part could go unsaid, for now.