Two Eyes Cenote oscura

soto does not attempt escape. he can sense @Khusobek is never far, and besides, his goal is not freedom. 

 he counts the guards and passes time by arranging each blade of @Machiavelli’s fur in a line. twelve white tufts so far — and one whisker. 

he lines them against the cell’s wall, then traces a spider’s veiny web in one corner.  and then, he allows his mind to wander, wondering when @Safiya might learn of the cenote’s newest, devastatingly handsome captive. 

the thought causes the corners of his mouth to lift in a pleased smile.

Much ot her irritation she heard fairly quickly about the foreign man that her father had taken captive who had brought gifts. Though she doubted it had been for her. Because he did bring gifts for the Hepbshet from time to time. She shook her head and headed towards the cells.

There was a prickliness to her fur, and she quickly stepped into the darkness and the damp. Her eyes the only thing alight as she moved. She blended in well to the surrounding areas. And no one wondered about a Mazoi being in the jails.

She found her way quick enough and she was not averse to the irony of the cell that Soto now took up. She shook her head. And gave a soft whispered Psst

light footsteps in the tunnel. the tread is different from khusobek — soto’s heartbeat quickens. 

the girl. his dark features pull from the gloom as he leans in. chamaca, he purls, only sorry that the gifts he’d brought had been left by the gates. 

his gaze flickers to where a guard had passed minutes before, marveling at her ability to remain undetected.

cameo!

safiya was a credit to her training, to muat-riya, to inji — to himself.

protective fatherhood bid him keep close — not so close. he did not follow safiya; he came across the whispered sound of the captive in the darkness.

the mazoi held himself back from the prison-entrance; he trained himself in red relief along the wall, ears twitched to listen.

She was greeted with her usual nickname. A small smile tugging her lips upward. The snag of a tooth gleaming in the gloom. 

She tilted her head and looked him over. He was not injured. So why had her father captured him. He had brought gifts 

She shrugged. And studied him again. You okay? the language barrier was an issue

he knew just enough of the language to know what okay means; he cracks open a brief smile that illuminates even the corners of his darkened face.

si, he breathes, wondering if her father might linger around the corner. if only he knew how much easier he’d made the brother’s designs.

he spreads out his paws with a shrug. sin regalo, no hay pétalos para la chamaca bonita. the timbre of his voice lilts with soft edged regret.

He seemed in good spirits despite it all. This was a good sign. She supposed from a Mazoi perspective it made sense to be wary of someone who had come three times now.

She jad no doubt her father would eventually show up. But she was doing nothing wrong.
As far as she could see.

She pieced through some if what he said. Rgalo she was fairly certain was gift he said that before. No of course is universal. And the last part pretty girl. Was he saying he had no gifts for her?

She shrugged. It's okay. Don't need them. For pharoah?

he studies safiya’s face for interpretation. while he likes hearing her pretty voice, the words mean nothing. he shrugs, motioning to the passing shadows behind them as if to say this was their work. 

a memory hits him like volcanic brick lodged from hillside. 

tomillo; a sweet-faced, lovely boy from the emerald hills of silao. soto recalled the boy was an enchanting singer. there was something sonorous in the way his words fell like layered honey on soto’s longing ears. soto found him endearing, and so, kept him around longer than most of his pets. 

tomillo fell earnestly and hard for green.  soto remembers the boy’s first draw, the euphoric high that limned his silvery eyes. the years may pass, but the faces of his victims remain in perfect clarity held in his mind’s eye.

tomillo chased that appetite to his end, which was neither gentle nor kind. first, he came scrabbling with bitter meats for payment. then he came around with nothing at all. the brothers allowed him some grace, but when it came time to pay up, tomillo offered them nothing. 

first, soto stole tomillo’s song. then, he’d stolen his tongue. and finally, when the boy had nothing left to give, soto took his life. 

soto returned from his reprieve with a faint smile. it was tomillo’s aching song, in a stolen language, that filled the halls now — and for all his gruff exterior, soto’s crooning song carried deep melody to it. 

estrela, estrela,
como ser assim,
tão so, tão so,
e nunca sofrer,

brilhar, brilhar,
quase sem querer,
deixar, deixar, 
ser o que se é,

borrowed song and borrowed tongue — soto sits up midcroon, listening as his voice carried down the halls. would his captor know he sang for his daughter? perhaps it would incite him to something rash. 

he strums the hard stone with a claw, gaze fixing on the lovely safiya. mi dulce lluvia de verana, his pet name for the stunning vision that was safiya — voy a follarle los sesos a tu padre mientras miras. his voice still singsong, his eyes dancing with a light that could be misconstrued as geniality.

She wasn't sure how to get past the barrier without doing whta she was doing. But he repeated words so often she was starting to learn some of them. She didn't know if he would find her language easier or harder than she found his. And a part of her wished she knew more. The not knowing drove her insane. 

She didn't recognize any of the words in the song. But it was a pretty one none the less. But she also wondered at it's cadence and rythmn. The expression on his face was one of joy or something she couldn't quite place.

But she enjoyed the song none the less. The words after that she didn't know. But it slipped of his tongue so prettily. It was nice. Even sweet to be the one that was thought of as Bonita. When it was usually Tiye.

Bonita. Was all she said. Unsure what he said. But his language was pretty. Song? She asked as simply as she could about the song.

tiye skips past her baba, only giving him a sweet smile. she almost skipped past the room entirely before a red tail tip caught her eye. tiye squints, and crouches low to the ground. slowly, she approaches, before bursting into a hop behind safiya, pushing her gently —
boo! the girl giggles, though it falters when she sees what had captured safiya's attention. a much mangier man now resides in the hole left vacant after the first "beastie" of fiyas.. tiye looks back, reminding herself that her father was close by, before huffing.
are you bored or are you dumb.

bonita, she says again. soto quite likes his language on her tongue.

the blackness of his promise never reaches his smiling eyes — and she is none the wiser. he likes this, too — he can say what he wants, and she remains sweet. ‘song’ is close enough in cadence to another word he knows, but he does not speak again.

prancing footsteps down the hall cause him to sit up — a second young girl shoves into safiya. she’s close enough in features to safiya that for a moment his gaze dances between them both.

siblings — or enemies? this one has a sour look to her; soto measures the prettiness of her delicate face unabashedly.

Safiya stiffens as Tiye comes up to her as if she didn't say those terrible things. As if she didn't rip apart all the pretty things that wolves had given her. She stares at Tiye with barely concealed anger and hurt. And she shifts away from her entirely. Their interaction made even more sour by the way her sister's voice speaks venom as it often does. 

If you have your say, dumb, huh. her voice quiet with an undercurrent of hurt and anger.

Safiya shifts and dips her head to Soto. I'll be leaving.

And she turns to step away from her sister. A maelstrom of emotions in her sea green gaze. Her sister had upset her greatly. She loved her sister, but she hated that she could never be happy for anyone. Or treat them well.

yea. your replacement beastie's pretty ugly. if you're going to talk to strangers and prisoners they should at least be handsome so then i can kind of get why you fall head first for 'em. 

she teases, even as anger burns in her sister's heart. tiye could care less, it's her fault for taking gifts from strangers, falling for their words. she's falling for another, too, though for now tiye has chased her off.

oohh, fiya's scaared.. the dusty pelted girl titters. tiye doesn't catch the holed up man's scanning of her features until safiya is gone, and tiye peers over the hole. lavender eyes scan over his, and they don't like what they see.
what do you see in her anyways?

I can remove if yall would rather he keep cameo! <3

to have one daughter in measured role within this dungeon was something khusobek might have been able to abide.

the man's song rang sinister despite the beauty touching each of the unknown syllables. but when tiye crossed the threshold and entered did khusobek find the entire situation intolerable.

it was too much. he stood silhouetted now in the doorway behind his daughters. "tiye. go back to your mother." his eyes moved to safiya. "how many times have you seen this man?" his voice was cold, a captain addressing a subordinate. "you are mazoi. you are not his friend."

it does not take special cunning to read the room.

soto sets back on his heels and watches his summer dove flutter away.

now it is just the pigeon posing as a harrier remaining — the fox-faced girl far less pleasing to soto’s eye. 

he waits until safiya is out of eyesight. once she rounds the corner, soto bursts towards tiye in carrion-bird bounds, an expression of malevolent delight wrinkling his features. a volley of obscene kisses flutter in the air between them, the puckering sounds laced with machismo poison. he sizes her up hungrily as if he might pull her peering face right through the cell doors. 

khusobek’s grim shadow crosses the door. soto leaps back, the malevolence of his expression melting away to something nondescript.

he stands as the father’s voice rings down the hall, waiting for it to just be the two of them.

Safiya stares at her father in reproach as she walks past. He didn't even have the gall to say anything to the cruelty that fell from her sister's lips. He just let her go. Her eyes flashed with a sense of injustice and she cycled that away.

Three times, no four. Two times at the borders one time when i was training on the rocks and here. Don't worry I didn't wreck your precious reputation. And I'm not dumb like everyone seems to think. I have been careful and only kind. The first time he came he brought gifts for our leader, the second for me, the third he was merely where I was. This time I heard about it and came to see.

She shifted. I have a patrol can I be excused, Commander?

The last part was delivered kind enough, but it tasted like Arsenic.

a pit twists the girl's guts when, for the first time in her life, she is met with something truly ugly. she grimaces wordlessly, taken aback by the sight as if he'd truly touched her. her throat clogs, and she feels wretched.

she doesn't complain when baba tells her to leave — tiye scatters from the room as quickly as she entered it.

is this what it means to be a girl?

retorts leapt to the father's mouth, but he let both daughters go, heart beating in dismay at how coldly his sweet safiya had spoken.

tiye slipped off. when he could no longer hear their steps, he turned back to the man and struck him without preamble, hard, splitting lip against teeth and knocking him back.

"i think you enjoy looking at girls," the crocodile calmly incited, knowing there would be no understanding. he did not care. "you must comprehend that i will put out your eyes and your tongue and leave you to strangle in your own blood before you look at either of them again."

the crocodile stepped back then, eyes burning with that eating and malevolent need, his brawny figure all but twitching with it.

he can’t see much behind the cell’s dim curve, but soto knows when a shepherd has lost the faith of its flock. 

the peering girl leaves. soto replays the delicious moment in his mind up until he’s struck hard by the basilisk’s fury. 

he allows it, though his blood seethes beneath his skin. his gums are slick with blood as he becomes acquainted with the cold cellar floor. did the last occupant receive such grand treatment?

malevolence seeps into the man’s words, but once again soto can only read the tone; it’s angry, balanced on the hissing edge of a viper’s strike. when the snake releases him, soto rises to a stiff siting position. 

he laughs, a splutter of blood from the fresh crack in his mouth. regalo, he murmurs, casting a bloodied phlegm into the stone. para ti, cabrón.

some dark thing, for now, was sated in the crocodile's heart at the sight of that blood. his eyes regard that singing voice, that spitting mouth.

it is he who has control. it is he who would not surrender that rein, not for any bait.

he would earn the way he intended to hurt this man.

no food. no water. khusobek withdrew from the chamber and left the bard to his own tones.

shark's eyes regard him, recollecting their displaced glacial cool. soto rubs his lip, the taste of salt and iron singing in his mouth. ah -- he was alive! he runs his tongue across his cracked teeth in exhilaration.

when soto is done with khusobek, the shepherd would wish that it was little girls soto liked. no, soto's was a far darker affiliation, and the thought of it bore his heartstrings to heights that defied the cellar-crypt his body was housed in.

as the man pulled away, soto regards his exit coldly. it was life's little irony that he'd dangled food above silvertongue not a week before, and now he's housed in some other man's prison.

tomillo's song floods the caverns, skulking after khusobek as hounds pursue their chase. the boy's been dead for three years, but his voice finds new grounds in muat riya's ancient keep.