April Marathon - 4. Smell
Apr. 4th, 2026 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormandozoneIt's the burn of greasy smoke in their throat, the acrid tang of spilled, fresh blood. The mouldering of leaves not enchanted away. The stench of a city let to rot. Ezrae breathed it in through their teeth when it got too thick, but the scent remained. Like this, they felt like the creatures in the stories that sold above the Row; the hardboiled investigative knights who helped those femme fatales in the rooms barred by shadows in the glowing of arcane lights, the corrupt magisters, the hedonistic, broken row rats.
The pain of an entire layer of their own home, rendered like fat, into something palatable. Perched on the window ledge, their leg swung three stories above the broken, unkempt streets of Murder Row.
Some were more plain in their uses of the row. The pale-haired Magister who gathered heroes to his supposedly-hidden sanctum. Worst kept secret. Stank like blood and bad magic, worse than the red Anima that had flowed through it years before. Worse than the charnel house smells of before that.
Blood thistle muted it, for a time. But nothing could make it palatable. They brought the cigarette to their lips and breathed in the herbal smoke.
Arms wrapped around their middle, thin and pale. "Come back to me, Ezrae." The woman's voice was cloying, her perfume strong enough to taint the air even beyond the reek of cheap wine and shared drugs. Fingers crept over the flat plane of their belly. "I don't have to be back to the academy until this afternoon..."
Ezrae breathed in. Out. Let it all pool in their lungs. The thistle was burned down to nothing.
"Then get on the bed, girl." They flicked the burning ember of thistle down. Pretty things could mute it too, for a time.
The pain of an entire layer of their own home, rendered like fat, into something palatable. Perched on the window ledge, their leg swung three stories above the broken, unkempt streets of Murder Row.
Some were more plain in their uses of the row. The pale-haired Magister who gathered heroes to his supposedly-hidden sanctum. Worst kept secret. Stank like blood and bad magic, worse than the red Anima that had flowed through it years before. Worse than the charnel house smells of before that.
Blood thistle muted it, for a time. But nothing could make it palatable. They brought the cigarette to their lips and breathed in the herbal smoke.
Arms wrapped around their middle, thin and pale. "Come back to me, Ezrae." The woman's voice was cloying, her perfume strong enough to taint the air even beyond the reek of cheap wine and shared drugs. Fingers crept over the flat plane of their belly. "I don't have to be back to the academy until this afternoon..."
Ezrae breathed in. Out. Let it all pool in their lungs. The thistle was burned down to nothing.
"Then get on the bed, girl." They flicked the burning ember of thistle down. Pretty things could mute it too, for a time.
