[AW] thy kingdom come. [meeting]

[Isra]

Months have passed by her in the mountains and the forests since she ran so far from the court and herself. With only the trees and mountain goats to keep her company the time slipped, away, away, away like sand beneath the sea. Where the treetops were too thick to see the sun she lingered, content to forgot how many hours, days and week passed. Soon a month had passed and to Isra it felt like a slumber, a story she was loathe to leave. The trees were her heroes, tall and mighty and refusing to bend in the wind as the seasons came and left and came again. She would whisper to them, tell them of the memories she remembered. They alone knew that this was not her skin, not really. There were no secrets she kept from the sea, as she lingered below them nibbling away at their leaves and licking water from their bark when the skies granted her rain. She even told of them the chains (so many chains) and how she spent nights tethered to walls and beds. Part of her healed, there between the trees in the gloom of a forest that was dull where the sea was blinding bright. That box of buried memories was open now but her heart no longer thrums a panicked song when a branch plucks at her coat hard enough to leave a scratch. And just when she was ready to remember the sting of Acton, of the way he smelled like kindling and fire, the world around her ended. It began in a blaze of blue and the trees sighed, swayed and all their leaves seemed to cry out the rainwater as they withered and died. All around her the mountains screamed and she screamed with them until her lungs burned and her heart grew cold enough to stop it's thready beating. At her back a branch falls against her rump and she sobs for the pain if it. But that branch causes her to her run and the forest starts to crack like a million whips. Isra remembers the sound of a whip too well. It makes her frantic to escape, to be anywhere but there where the fire burns like winter and now, in the distance she can hear a dragon roar. Her hooves scramble over the roots and rocks. The goats and grouse run with her until they all blend together in  pack of survival, of mindless beasts that know only the words run and survive. It's a mantra insides their heads and it drowns out the hiss of the hungry fire are their backs. Run, run, run. Run until our legs are broken and out flesh nothing more than snow and our bones ash. All the animals listen to only that song, that chorus of instinct that drowns out all the politics and wants in the world. Oh how she runs, swift as a deer, elegant her sea skin. It's only those long legs that save her. They barely seem to touch the ground as she streaks down, down, down the mountain side. They are either swifter than the fire or the forest warned her of the end soon enough for her to flee. She doesn't stop when she reaches the city edge. Even then she runs, slipping over the cobblestone like a newborn foal that somehow manages not to fall. Isra only stops when the finds the others and spots that sun yellow skin in the crowed. Her panic is still too bright, too much an inferno reminiscent of the fire at her back that she doesn't realize they are still-- too still for fear. “The forest is alive with fire, it burns.” She bleats as she slides into Acton, simply because he is the only face she knows, her only friend (if he can be called that at all) in the entire world. “We need to run, it's not safe” There is a wildness to her touch as she nudges at his neck, overlooking the way his eyes look ahead towards all the winged horses before the crowd. When Acton doesn't move she follows his eyes and her own grow wide with white-walled fear. Oh, but how she quickly realizes what has happened. A slave is never slow to find cruelty when it shows its face with smiles and laws and righteousness. Isra is a slave to the bitter end. Her skin is new but her soul is not and she steps back, back towards the shadows behind the gathering. “What nightmare is this?” The words are a whisper, almost too low to hear with the way her heart beats loud enough to be thunder in her ears. She takes another step back, crying out when she bumps into someone else she doesn't know. All my devils are here. Isra thinks to herself, sliding back into her own mind. It's the only place that's safe, in this world of pretty, bejeweled horses that bicker like jackals. Their words are like a language she cannot bear to understand. And when she remembers running with the wildlife, all of them afraid that fear is the last thing they might ever know, Isra is glad she cannot understand their language of cruelty. She would rather die (sink back into the sea with chains to weigh her down) than speak a single word that she learned from their lips. * * * * * when your heart is full of blood