Priests aren’t encouraged to be vain. Their long, tangled hair, twisted as the roots of the Underworld, is intended as proof of that. But priests for the Dead are held to somewhat higher standards, presumably because they already work with corpses all day and their fellow clergy would like to be able to stand downwind of them occasionally.
And therefore, Acatl spends one day a week attempting with varying degrees of success to comb his hair out. This is harder than he thinks it really should be; his hair is thick and wavy and falls past his waist, and there’s just so much of it. Normally, getting it clean and untangled takes hours.
Normally, he doesn’t have Teomitl.
The man had shown up just past dawn with a steaming bowl of porridge and a smile, and when he’d spotted Acatl’s still-wet hair he’d asked, “Can I help?”
And Acatl, weakened by that smile, had said yes.
So now he’s sitting cross-legged on his mat with Teomitl kneeling behind him and an oiled comb dragging slowly through his hair, and each touch makes him shiver. He can feel the closeness of their bodies, the way Teomitl’s fingers almost but not quite brush his skin. He wants to speak, but he’s not sure he has the breath for it. And if he did, what would he say? This is his sister’s husband.
It’s Teomitl who finally breaks the silence. “Your hair looks like obsidian.”
He feels his face heat up. “It does not.”
“You can’t see it from this angle,” Teomitl says, and there’s something so terribly soft in his voice.
Acatl bites his lip, remembers the way Teomitl had smiled at him—remembers the way he’d smiled back, the way it had made his heart full and warm for the first time in days—and says nothing.
Obsidian & Blood, Acatl/Teomitl
Priests aren’t encouraged to be vain. Their long, tangled hair, twisted as the roots of the Underworld, is intended as proof of that. But priests for the Dead are held to somewhat higher standards, presumably because they already work with corpses all day and their fellow clergy would like to be able to stand downwind of them occasionally.
And therefore, Acatl spends one day a week attempting with varying degrees of success to comb his hair out. This is harder than he thinks it really should be; his hair is thick and wavy and falls past his waist, and there’s just so much of it. Normally, getting it clean and untangled takes hours.
Normally, he doesn’t have Teomitl.
The man had shown up just past dawn with a steaming bowl of porridge and a smile, and when he’d spotted Acatl’s still-wet hair he’d asked, “Can I help?”
And Acatl, weakened by that smile, had said yes.
So now he’s sitting cross-legged on his mat with Teomitl kneeling behind him and an oiled comb dragging slowly through his hair, and each touch makes him shiver. He can feel the closeness of their bodies, the way Teomitl’s fingers almost but not quite brush his skin. He wants to speak, but he’s not sure he has the breath for it. And if he did, what would he say? This is his sister’s husband.
It’s Teomitl who finally breaks the silence. “Your hair looks like obsidian.”
He feels his face heat up. “It does not.”
“You can’t see it from this angle,” Teomitl says, and there’s something so terribly soft in his voice.
Acatl bites his lip, remembers the way Teomitl had smiled at him—remembers the way he’d smiled back, the way it had made his heart full and warm for the first time in days—and says nothing.