#melvika outlaw spicyness abound 😈

[revelisms]

Excerpt: Ghost Stories

Mel and Elora set out for answers.

From 'a drop of venom in your gin,' a work-in-progress Western AU centered on Mel and Sevika.

"Copperhead?" mutters Mel from her disgruntled velvet corner, where she sits draped head-to-foot in white—a rare sight of prestige, in these parts.

The carriage her assistant had brokered her seemed hellbent on convincing them to turn back, with every hour crossed west. She'd been nursing a headache since they'd left the Piltover Bridge, five days ago; the horrid contraption clobbered over every rut and rock in sight.

"Indeed," Elora huffs, bracing one palm upon the carriage's panelling. The tassels stapled to the awning lurch into a jovial thwack. "My word. In—in any case, there has been a suggestion that she is....in charge, so to speak—"

"Kino made no mention of a woman." Mel laces her hands firmly in her lap, brushes her thumb over the golden ring at her finger. "I'd have known. If he was working under any, I'd have—"

"Councillor." Silence elks uncomfortably between them. "If I may," Elora continues, quietly, "we know very little of the situation."

For minutes, Mel studies the red earth that stretches bland and endless beyond the carriage's windows. The view comes as much a strange comfort as a pit of dread within her. 

"I am familiar with these territories, Elora. The sheriff and I are well-acquainted." Gold glints beneath her twisting nail, and stills. "And I have heard no word of this. Nothing. This—it is highly unusual."

"Could your brother have been—" The carriage batters over a sequence of broken stones. "Well. It's just—there has been word, you know, in the Council—"

"If this is about the dust, I want to hear nothing of it."

"It's become quite the lucrative trade."

"It's vile." A set of black-varnished nails click stiffly upon the door's handle. "He would have had no part in it."

Elora lifts her chin, stares silently at the dry brush that thistles past the panes. Mel knows her discomfort comes partly from her dress: the lace has laid an incessant itch, for hours. Her throat swivels against it, now. "The traders call it shimmer. It may be worth looking into, is all."

An impulse to smile cuts across Mel's mouth. She stamps it down. "And this...Copperhead. She's running it, then?"

"Not a runner, no. But there is a connection."

"To the trade, at large?" Another jitter of Mel's fingers. "A hunter, then," she gravels. "And, pray tell—who employs her?"

Now, her assistant's discomfort comes bone-deep: nothing to do with her clothes. "From what I've heard," she murmurs, "a man who is supposed to be dead."

Mel does smile, then: a lax crook at one side. "Ghost stories." She reclines back into her seat, hands laced. "Take my advice, Elora—don't get too excited." Her eyes trail over the silhouette of a town blazing on the horizon. "There's a dime a dozen of those, here."