[AW] the stars failed to guide me home;

[Isra]

The sound of please on his lips softens her and fades out the sharpness of her fear to something gentler. No monsters asked burn her, no lash asked to dig deep into her flesh. All her panic turns to nothing more than caution and she's able to lean into the gaping space between them. He widened the space by a step and she only closes it by an inch of her nose as she scents the air around him like some wild, untouched animal. She has forgotten society and never has she known a man to not be a sinner and hide his stain beneath smiles and gentle touches. Perhaps it's only the safety of the mountain ledge at her back that lets her close the distance. Isra would be happy to toss herself into that cloud-filled abyss just to make sure she never feels the touch of a monster or fire upon this borrowed skin again. Her skin feels empty where the scars of her past have be wiped away, she misses her sun-shine skin. She slips away in thoughts of the past and doesn't surface until the sound his voice echoes again on the trees and rocks around them. There is almost an apology in her eyes, a remnant of some social grace she has only now remembered she posses. So much of her was lost to the sea and to the violence of men. Again she closes that distance between them with no more than a single, butterfly sort of step. Isra moves like horses that live behind walls have forgotten how to move. Everything about her is more reminiscent of a deer, a prey animal, a thing that knows only how to live. She does not move as a horse should. Even her voice when she talks is strange, whispering like a willow that has learned to talk on a fall breeze just before the rains descend. “I forget sometimes there are others.” There's a story in her voice as there always is. Always does she talk as if the next movement of her lips might be magical, as if worlds and legends could live on a curl of her lips. If only Isra remembered how to smile. She cannot remember the last joy she felt, perhaps back when the world started to burn. Perhaps she hasn't smiled she she tried to down herself in the sea just to feel free.   She doesn't mention that she forgets only that there might be others who are not monsters. Still when she lift her eyes to meet his there is a touch of a sea-shine in the blue. “Are you not afraid?” Her wondering sounds like a warning chime and she lifts a hoof to just graze the peak of a small rock. Just enough of a touch to feel that the mountain still trembles, if only slightly, beneath them. “It feels as if the mountain might collapse around us and take us with down with all the rocks and trees.” There's that fear again as she talks, a flash-back to another mad dash down a mountain side. Isra knows what it feels like run, run, run to flee the rage of others (gods and men). She wonders if he does, if he might keep up with the wild things like her. She also wonders that it says about the stains on her soul that when she looks at his face, those wicked horns and red, red, red, all she can think is that all his markings look like blood.   * * * * * in the blur of all the stars @Jericho