BLUE VENOM

Seven - The Glimmers

Her full lips where painted In a shimmering purpur and she had two overlapping, painted on, white strokes on each high cheekbone.

She was smaller than the other outlanders we'd seen but still left an impression deeper than any human could.

I narrowed my eyes at her in lucid suspicion and she walked closer and put a warm hand onto my neck, just above where the rope forced it back to the post. Before I could yell or struggle, she closed her eyes and out of her parting round lips came a low voice, serenely rolling words through the enchanting tongue of these people. An exiguous, milky glow streamed the silky skin of her dark brown eyelids. It was like a slight pressure wave went through the air. Then the aching of my neck and other tied limbs eased. It felt like it was easier to breathe even though I was still tersely bound back.

"What did you do?", I wanted to ask but I couldn't speak through the way. I looked at her in heed but she still had that face less smile that let a person derive nothing. There was something mysterious to all of them but this smaller woman seemed to be a master of keeping treasures hidden.

Then another figure was illuminated but the pink and bordeaux sky here. His hair was chin long and whitish blond, like faultless white gold falling around his slim face with the elfin, even, clear features. His skin was slightly tanned but with the same snow glow over it tagt they all had. He was about seven foot, and his careful and calculated movements didn't receive the fact that he was strong, although lean in built. His narrow eyes were of the most cutting ice blue I'd ever seen. There was an iridescent ring of liquid silver just around his pupil and silver seemed to be all over him. A faint shimmer on the eyelids, on the lips, his lashes. There was no warmth to his face; He looked like he was born in ice.

They way he moved, slowly stepping closer, was elegant, dignified, even. His arms and torso stuck in a wide robe of hard white material with white engravings and shapes on it. He had a black belt on but other than that he was all in white and silver. He didn't wear pearls or feathers like any of the other outlanders. There was a quiet intensity to this man and it was impossible to guess his age but in terms of human age he could be estimated in his early twenties..

Long, slim fingers wrung with each other - no, wrung with a chain of black beads, I realized. The chain was tied to his left sleeve, the only piece of adornment he seemed to own.

His eyes met mine without meeting them. It was like he was looking at me more like at an object that he was studying than an animate thing.

He knelt down into the humid moss under us. It felt wrong to see his knees in the white robe go down to the muggy ground but he seemed to waste no care for this.

His hand suddenly grabbed my chin, with a lot more force than his slim and couth manner would let suspect. He turned my jaw from side to side and examined my face closely. When my eyes shut themselves in shock, he flicked against my jaw and eyes sprung back open.

He was still examining me, his grip cool on my skin.

He then let go and turned the smaller woman with a sharp, quick, rolling exchange of alien words and she nodded, answering in a gentler tone, but just as clearly.

Then a third person stepped forward, coming out from the white tent closest to us.

He was a huge impressive man with strong arms enhanced by six strong metal rings on each. He wore a black vest and had spiky black hair and black tattoos covered half his jaw, from the jawline to the lips. I had to blink twice to make sure it was not a faint beard. Unknown signs, intertwined to a unique pattern, black paint on his furrowed, worn, tan skin. A huge grey scar ran through his face, from his forehead down, only missing his right eye by an inch. He seemed to have gotten lucky with that slash. This mans eyes were of another shade of cerulean blue, but his pupils were so small, that I tossed the idea of mistaking him for human.