Meadow

She addressed him as a sorcerer summoning a djinni, with such familiarity as to be weary of it, and he sank into a dramatically low bow in response, his black eyes glittering, unrepentant, in his gory red face as she examined him. Her show of teeth was friendly in the loosest of senses, a reminder of her easy, practiced violence, and he licked the frost from his lips in anticipation, memories of tense, heated words shared in humid undertones rising back to the surface.

“And what of the ermine when the fox grows hungry?” Ahh, he had missed the icy curiosity of her voice. Her ponderings to him had a casual viciousness to them, as if she held each mystery at the tip of her sword, tilting it this way and that at her leisure with a sharp edge for her dissection. It was one of her many delightful traits, and his red visage crinkled into a gruesome grin to match her pale pink smile.

“Foxes have been known to eat ermine, after all.”

The joke, if he could call it that, had the sweetness of oleander; he could all but feel her slender, calloused fingers pressing petals to his lips. He drifted, with a twitching eagerness, one, two steps closer, a feigned and theatrical concern furrowing his ruby brow.

“Have they? How dreadful. It’s a wonder the ermine doesn’t quiver with fear- though…” his head tilted, his smile all innocence; his eyes all slippery, oily black. “…I do suspect this particular ermine may cause indigestion. Perhaps-” a whimsical lack of earnestness upon the word- “that would keep the fox from the attempt..?” Another step, the curiosity over whether she’d bring that silently-promised violence down upon his head if he touched her so palpable it was all but a gauzy sheet of silk between them, through which he peered with greedy eyes to make out the subtleties of her unguarded expressions. Her black lashes shifted up at him, and he rushed out an audible, texture-ridden clouding breath through his growing grin in reply. Her name in his mouth was plump pomegranate seeds waiting to burst between his testing teeth.

“Ingrid.”