Designing a character, Aevfinn, from a wip novel. Snippet below
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Eyes shining, Aevfinn took her spot. It took a few moments to get the rhythm, rocking her hips and pounding her heels as Eloane had done. The ribbon ends swung around her waist, and a few thistles from her crown drifted to her shoulders. She circled the fire, following the music like a path. The fire snapped and ate up the stubble being added. Ianatan leaped across it to meet her. His mask was a boar, tusks curling round and over his ears. He pushed the mask up, revealing flushed cheeks and soaked curls. He grinned at Aevfinn. His freckles looked like flecks of mud across his cheeks.
“Come to join the dance?”
“No,” she said, tipping her chin and taking two overlapping steps around him. “I came to swim.”
“Ah, so,” he said, grin deepening, “you are Estar. The little fish.”
“Not so little.” Two more steps, and he turned to keep her in his sight. The fire warmed her back. She felt old, dancing like this. A woman. “How’d you get the boar head?”
He tugged the mask back down, voice echoing. “I wanted the wolf’s head. Neacal beat me in a game of horse bones.”
“Pity. Boars are so ugly.” She scrunched up her face. The dried mud covering it crackled. “Their eyes are beady.”
“My eyes aren’t beady,” he protested with a laugh. The green sparked behind the mask. He held out a hand. “Dance with me?”
The ribbon kept her skirts hiked to mid-calf, ensuring the cloth would not light. It stuck to her legs as she danced, sweat rolling down her back. The plaits held her hair in place. She burned her feet twice, but the momentum of the drumbeat kept her dancing. She followed Ianatan’s steps until he caught her hand and twirled her out of the fire’s reach, behind a rolled bale of hay, and stopped her there with her back to the straw and her eyes on him. His fingers were anchored in her hair, tiny white flowers surrounding his thumb.
“Can I—” he asked, and leaned in to kiss her.
It was very soft, very fast. Her cheeks were flushed. Straw pricked her through her dress. He didn’t pull back, only leaned heavily on her, lips brushing the corner of her mouth, and she, after a flustered moment, pushed him back. There was blood on his lips. Ceit had stopped singing.
“Ianatan,” she said, and locked eyes with the man standing behind.
A wet shluck as Ianatan jerked back. The man held up a glittering curved blade. Aevfinn screamed.
He caught her after four steps, getting a handful of her ribbons and heaving her back. She fell. He locked an arm around her waist and hoisted her until her bare feet left the ground. His skin was dark. Not one of the raiding clans. She raked her nails down his arm, peeling away skin and leaving red furrows like a plow through a field of dirt and clay. His grip tightened. Then she heard a wild yell, and the man shuddered. His grip dropped. She stumbled forward, eyes wide, and turned to see her mother heaving a war axe from between the man’s shoulder blades, foot pressed to his lower back for leverage. Soazic’s face was covered in mud and blood. Her eyes burned.
