Starglow Basin your bloodstains on my custom coutures

it seemed best to wander at night, given the danger and bloodshed that lingered 'round her new associates. the woman—named sangre, which she had recently learned—was on the mend. but trouble was not over yet, based on the electric charge that raced among the wolves gathered here.

it wasn't so bad here. not so sparkly as the pass had been, but a better look at the stars. and how numerous they were!

fiamma stood upon the cool sand on an evening, looking up at the mass of little lights above her head. they took shape and form, as she had once been told—but only her brothers had been taught astronomy. she could barely guess at shapes—

a set of teeth? the deadly length of a deer's antler?

she sighed and shook her head, letting the stars be. instead, she paced the perimeter of this little valley, ankles brushing the desert scrub as she went.

if someone had come across her mother bleeding out, she would have begged for them to help her. she had stepped in to do the same for sangre.

and if that someone had been successful, she would have offered them her eternal debt and gratitude.

so here she stood. 

a savior. an outlaw. an aberration.

… and an apparition; edged in silver lucency beneath the cold-cast starlight.

“May I join you?” The ocelote emerges from a bracket of shadow, red eyes peeling towards the woman in the deep night.

These were the last of autumn days. Soon, winter’s sere voice would bear itself upon the basin, complicating an evening walk. Already dead leaves lie in drifts from palo verde as Osiel approaches Soto’s slender recruit.

a grayscale vision emerged from the night, his ruby eyes cutting through the darkness like twin beacons of something bloody. frightening—and, she had to admit, compelling. and his purred request even more so.

of course, fiamma told him with an ingratiating smile. she felt her hips sway and the rhythm of her movement designed to accentuate her curves that little bit more.

men were fools for flesh. she knew that well.

come ti chiami? she asked, looking at him with chin slightly lifted. i'm fiamma.

he moved like soto did—low and furtive, like desert shadows. perhaps he was of the same set. she wondered whether he carried the same magnet for bloodshed as the chocolate man, though even if he didn't, he would soon drift that way by proximity.

they all would.

for now, she'd have her fun. soto owed her one for saving the woman sangre's life. she would cash that favor out at the best possible opportunity.

In Sayula, the ocelote had lived in luxury with his wife and children. Many families and many generations.

Here, their basin was desolate, with very few pleasantries beyond the woman who enriched his eyes now. She wants him to stare, and he does openly, at the slim tuck of her waist against the swell of fuller hips.

“My given names are Osiel Melendez,” his eyes sift upwards to the silver’s face, “but my friends call me Ocho.” He slips into step beside her, silken coat a pinpoint of starlight.

“You are far from home, Fiamma,” he perceives from the romance in her italiano. “What business does a woman have in the desert?”

she didn't miss his wandering eye, and the way it lingered upon her slender curves. she even moved a bit differently in the wake of it, shifting to allow the moonlight to cast shadows and spotlights in all the right places. 

fiamma had been alone and lacking company for far too long.

un piacere, ocho, she purred, lifting her chin to survey him much the same way. the woman chuckled at his question and gave a brief shrug. change of scenery, i guess.

the days were hot and the nights were cool. it was unlike anywhere else she had ever traveled.

un amico di soto, suppongo? fiamma queried, cocking her head. he could hardly be anything else, given his close proximity to the camp—and the fact that he hadn't been disemboweled by now.

unless she was the first to have spotted him. . .

He indulges in her game, eyes following his want, teeth dipping below dark lips in amusement. The basin under sunlight was no particular sight to behold. The ocelote stops short to admire her better from a distance.

“You lie, Fiamma,” he sets between them before a smirk, folding back into the foot-trail beside her.

“Sí. Old friends.” Amusement again. He and Soto were more reluctant associates, brought together through mutual aims. But that was their business. The red eyes gleam aside over the graceful femininity of Fiamma.

“Do you always make yourself a spectacle for men?”

you lie.

her icy eyes widened in reproach, raking over the man as she shook her head. she huffed a slight chuckle at his question, but brought herself further into his orbit, allowing her tail to almost brush his hindquarters.

solo quando necessario, fiamma told him, grinning. ma no. . . i am just patrolling our new land, ocho.

she tilted her head, brow furrowing in question. e tu? what brings you out at night?

he was handsome. fiamma did not hesitate to look him up and down as he did her, approval clear in the glint of her gaze.

“Making acquaintance with all who work for me,” he rejoins bluntly. “Tonight, you. Tomorrow, a far lesser beauty.”

Osiel no longer lives in his family’s sprawling, palatial enclave. He doesn’t dine on fine meals, doesn’t brush shoulders with the realm’s elitists. He doesn’t miss that life, but he does miss his daughters. Sometimes even, his wife. The elegant presence of Fiamma surfacing images of Solana. She was a bewitching possession, even if love had only ever existed between them through mutual aims.

Idly he wonders if Fiamma wishes to be possessed.

“Is it your preference? To patrol?”

fiamma's grin grew wider at the compliment—even if it was not sincere. and she knew it wasn't. there were greater beauties out there, and this man was a flatterer. but she'd take the saccharine words in stride.

no, she replied, shaking her head. i'm a noblewoman—back home, i wanted for nothing. but things changed, and so here i am.

she continued her prowling step, encouraging the man to follow. i am restless, you see? she remarked. i know well what danger lies outside. everything can change in an instant, signore.

fiamma paused briefly, slackening her pace to look the man in the eye. tell me about yourself, osiel melendez, she purred, smiling.

He listens, contesting each of her steps with his own heavy tread. No encouragement needed to follow, he paces the sinuous lines created by her silver stride.

She is noble, a revelation that comes without surprise. Even if she’d tried to hide it, she could not in the neat sway of her body; the part of her that must be coaxed— not taken. Such a wager appealed to the man beneath starlight.

“I too have had many things, Fiamma. I still do," he muses. "Yet, I too am restless. Why do you think that is?”

he responds in kind, then directs a question toward her. how should i know? is her initial thought. she had assumed with his lecherous gaze that he'd court her, mount her—and instead, he is digging into her psyche.

finally, something comes to her.

you want it all, fiamma replied, halting and looking at him. all land, all treasure, all. . . she swiped a tongue over her lips, trying to find the word—and failing. yet she believed she had gotten her point across.

the words hung in the air between them for a moment, and then she spoke again:

i want more myself, signore.

“Land. Treasure. Women. Without meaning, there is only temporary pleasure of conquest. In the end, it is emptiness,” his lifting grin reveals canines.

So often nobility were coerced for political moves. Fiamma would have been promised to the son of an ally. Did she resist the idea?

“What is ‘more’, belleza?” If she were his, she would want for nothing.

land. treasure. men, she echoed ocho—though with a twist, and she grinned. power.

see, though i wanted for nothing in my old home, i would have inherited nothing, too, fiamma explained. my brothers were heirs; i was to be married off to some other prince, to provide heirs for his own family. i had wealth, but no power.

her eyes swept across the desert landscape, mouth curved ruefully. here, i think, power for me is possible, she mused, then returned her stare to osiel.

buona notte, signore, the silver woman said in farewell for now, dipping her head. until tomorrow, ocho.

she took her leave, then, with one last coquettish glance over her shoulder before returning to her den.