Hushed Willows [festival] the sun's not yellow, it's chicken

the man that came certainly wasn't the audience he expected. brawn like that, guy fit right in at a fertility festival—but perhaps that was the point. the ladies might drive themselves to madness, fawning over him, and him to madness in turn. so cortez's mouth quirked as the other spoke, and the bard gave a nod. not the audience he expected, but certainly an audience he would entertain.

and if this brute sought to escape female attention, then he was out of luck when the young woman appeared. they seemed to know each other, though. on what level, he didn't know. the characters in his mind dissipated quickly, replaced by the pair in front of him. he would tell that story one evening, maybe, but not tonight.

no, he'd walk them into the land of fantasy, a world wholly detached from their own. some sought to educate through their tales, but cortez had never really liked the idea of being preachy. an escape was he provided, what he enjoyed providing. an experience rooted in the present, with no ripples of consequence.

a long while ago, there were two sisters—flora and sienna, the shakti began, eyes slitted half-shut as he entered the storyteller's reverie. out-of-body. sweet girls, both of them, with beautiful eyes and long, shapely limbs. they were every woman's envy and every man's ecstasy. but for flora, there was only jules. and jules might have been even more heavenly than the ladies.

his gaze rested on ford, then, as he let a beat or two of silence go by. in no world could this man be considered beautiful, but he was handsome in his own frighteningly rugged way. the way the alabaster cut across his dark fur, his cold (yet not unfeeling) eyes. . . it took some self-control for cortez to look at the girl, instead, a little breathless as he continued.

no act of any god, nor nature, could have separated flora and jules. they were halves of the same whole, the sun and the moon—truly, for flora burned a dark gold in the sun and jules was a brilliant silver in the moonlight. from the moment they found each other, they were madly in love. they were perfect. cortez swallowed. almost.

he sighed, his chest lifting and falling with great effort, his breath billowing out in a cloud of fog before him. like a drunk man leaning on the brick wall outside the bar, having just taken a drag from his cigarette. he stares at you and a bolt goes through your heart; cortez knew his pale gaze was sharper than the rest of him, and used it to his advantage.

what could have gone wrong? he asked, lifting a brow, looking between the two assembled. this was where it got fun—would they treat his inquiry as rhetorical, and remain silent? would they supply halfhearted answers out of polite compulsion? or—or—or would they take the opening and run, tug the words from his mouth and sail away and craft a world of their own in which they could dwell?

it happened so infrequently, but cortez could die for that third possibility.