Politics - even something as simple as the word on the air makes her lips twist as though it were a carrion-bird or shrill jay instead of a few syllables strung together. It had been politics and superstition that saw her thrust from her family as a filly, and it was no natural way of solving anything.
They were beasts, and beasts only; any problems that could not be solved with a wolf’s wit or hoof or strength or speed were problems that had been unnecessarily invented. Shrike has no interest in solving the troubles made by arrogant men and women with too much time on their hands.
She and the black unicorn’s disdain for politics had seen them scorned and laughed at in Ravos – but none of those hollow gods or their worshipers were laughing now.
“Seems an awful waste of time,” she says, a little stiffly.
Raymond’s frown feels more natural to meet than any of his smiles had – how strange a partnership they shared. His words are smooth-edged and sink into her like a rippling pebble into the black depths of a lake. And yet, and yet, they feel less true than any glance or touch she’s shared with Calliope – not for the first time Shrike misses her bear-body, and how no words were needed at all.
Keep her close, he says, and she grunts. “Close as an oath,” she answers, and the patches on her moon-pale body are dark as old blood beneath the summer sun. “But I will not stay beneath the tombstone-walls of that dark city, and neither, I expect, will she.”
With that she shakes out her neck and flicks her pale and wind-twisted tail against her hocks, once more angling her body to the north. It is difficult, on the plains, to imagine the smell of salt-flats and sun that burned like a forge-fire, but she has her own ghosts to track and stories to uncover, and summer is nearly over. “I’ll see you soon, Raymond.” Without a last look back she is gone, swift as a cloud-shadow over the grass.
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
let them know we're out for blood
@Raymond
