[knuckle] ✧. prompt : mishka lenkov ( @nowincolor ) ft. lebedeva , not accepting
the ceremonial bride delights in drink and dance and every festal duty to appease the spirit of a slain totem. cynosure of all eyes, a once isolated vila cannot feel in danger, for tonight the people do not see a white-haired demon, nor a woodland pest, but a human girl who they venerate with honey cakes and flowers for her plaited hair. there was a touch of vanity in her desire to be the chosen one, along with a devoted interest in honoring all creatures of the wood, but these offerings, she finds, are a prize to be coveted all on their own.
not even a magician's glamor can contain the fervor and glow of a well-fed chyerti. now hers is a force to draw their attentions in like flies to an unpeeled fruit, and she has no wish to bridle it. less so when the village smith and miller came to drunken blows over a skipped turn to dance with her. ( koschei was right. even the smallest drawing of blood fuels the magic in a way favors and prayers never could. ) it's too easy to get swept away by the night's boisterous song and the rapture of being utterly fearless in her power. she forgets herself, until her lord approaches.
a towering force of his own catching her eye from the side, the bear lord calls forth lebedeva's best behavior. prudently, she steps away from the dancing circle, and greets him with a swan's bow. ❛❛ god be with you, gosudar. ❜❜ the slow upturn of her smile is coy, conspiratorial. ( see how the holy word does not spit fire from my tongue? rest easy then. the traveling priest cannot say this village harbors the wicked. )
a hand is offered for his blessing, which he gives with a kiss to fair knuckles, gentle and warm in the ways one might assume him to be brutish and frigid. in that hallowed moment, her glance holds his, and an enchantment flows between; hers a natural quality, and his an allure that he does not know he possesses. ( and that she only ever passively admits to being ensnared by ) ❛❛ mishka, the scandal, ❜❜ she teases in a low whisper, and dips her chin with a thespian shyness. ❛❛ you know i've been promised to another bear. ❜❜
