<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/8/89/Onnecamug1.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>August 11, 1875<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Afternoon<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Bodega de Goni<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Agatha<br/><hr/><br/>Onneca could not stop smiling. It ached, in her smile and in her heart, because it'd been so long since both were exercised like this, like a girl at play, her friend at her side, the weight of the world carried by somebody else. "Si! Prepare to be boarded." She was looking very silly, with yarn in her dark hair, and it only worsened when she plucked a diaphanous lace pattern from the shelves and fastened it around one eye. It was intended to be a play eye patch, but it was far too fancy, and on olive-toned Onneca it more resembled a gypsy wrap.<br/><br/>Giggling was how she worked out her energy, and her laughter was infectious as she scooted in beside Aggy, dressed as a pirate or a gypsy or a gypsy pirate queen, or as the case was, not very dressed at all. The cool bodega air, without the heat of the sun glaring down on her, turned her deep breaths into purrs. This was how she had wanted to live, free, in the wild plains with Aggy, a naturalist at awe with the world around her. Why had they both needed to grow up? Perhaps that kiss, so long ago, had been to blame. That was how adult troubles tended to start. There was a brief moment of lucidity, as she thought about this and met Agatha's gaze with her dark, shy eyes. But it was forgotten in the wave of happiness that Aggy's smile crashed over her. It wasn't fair of the redhead to pull out that smile, but neither one of them could help it.<br/><br/>"We can be ourselves here." At first, she thought she meant the bodega, but it was something larger than that. It was being an unwed and fully realized woman, a lady scientist, a Mexican, and making it in the West. Gomorra was not a fantasy any rational mind would concoct, but for an Onneca, it was the promised land. It was the land at the end of the railroad. Her fingers sought out and intertwined with Agatha's, warm, lotioned, soft. Many women lotioned their hands to reclaim their youth, but Onneca had never been as soft as she was now. She had metamorphosed, in the intervening years, into a butterfly.<br/><br/>There was a glint of gold in her cleavage, pure, solid gold. She fished it gently from the tanned globes of her breasts with a rasp of ordinary chain, the conquistador crucifix that had been passed down in her household since the fall of the Spanish dons. It had hung on the wall, in her home in Texas, and before that, when Agatha had known Onny's gruff father, it had graced his person. Perhaps the man who had shot him down in cold blood had been too drunk to steal it, or too distraught by the sign of the Lord. It had a dark history, even before that- these crosses were melted down from Aztec idols, of great snakes who feasted on men, and remade to suit the gods of the great conquistadors.<br/><br/>It was heavy, when she laid it into Agatha's fingers and grasped it with her. Onneca was pious, she was Catholic, but it was not about that. It had belonged to her father, and to her mother, and its outstretched arms were an icon of their love. Onneca was not sure what to say, and so her breath caught in her throat. It just felt right for Agatha to hold it, too, as though her madre might sense her through it, and know that they had found each other again, and be pleased.<br/><br/>"Sometimes," she whispered eventually, when her breath was not fixing to sputter out in raw emotion, "it is so quiet in the evenings and so dark, we could go out into the mesa like this. If we are very bold."