Ah, how Isra is made a fickle thing that by broken box of memories and the razor blades of her shattered soul.

Everything is black, black, black and splattered with blood the moment his touch burns across her cheek. Her nerves are from her old body, her golden sunshine skin, and they remember. Oh, how they remember that possessiveness is always shrouded in smiles and kindness. She quivers for his touch and her veins spark and smoke like lightning. He consumes her with that touch and she can barely breathe with the way her lungs feel paper-thin and beat like butterfly wings against her ribs.

Does he know?

Already he turns away, lost to the thrall of his city. She cannot feel it, the oneness of all these horses in the darkness. Isra can only feel the panic, the tidal wave of memories that drag her down, down, down to the dark crevices of herself.

He is gone in the blink of an eye, lost around the bend of a silken banner and still she stands. Was it Acton that left her? Or was it a jailer, laughing like a crow as he slipped past the silks and chains that tied her down so tight?

Caw, Caw, Caw. The vision blurs and shifts until body and soul are in two different places.

It's not tears that blur her vision but rather some strange detachment from her own body, her own mind, her own self. Gone. Gone. Gone. Without him, without knowing that this is reality and not some fresh hell made to break her down more and more and more, she cannot connect to any of her sense.

And so Isra does the only thing she can do---

She runs, swift as wave and as unstoppable as the tides. Horses scatter before her, afraid of that wild mare that is covered in white, foaming sweat and reeks of fear.

Is she sick? They ask each other, not bothering to whisper about the stranger in their midst.

Yes. She would have replied in a bleating, lamb cry if she paused long enough to hear them. I'm sick and I'm afraid there is no cure for me but drowning

To the border she runs, desperate now for the sea she knows might take her far, far from and the memories that Acton can make her remember without a word. She doesn't bother to step light enough to silence the chain around her leg and it chases her like a devil, nipping at her heels and with gaping jaws split wide open to swallow her whole.


* * * * *
these lines always cross us