Teiran moves through the streets of her court like a snake, slipping between shadows and across the mouths of alleyways. Her sage eyes flicker back and forth, keeping an eye out for trouble. Much of the court avoids her, whether out of pity or fear she does not know and does not care. Her only job is to keep them safe, not to befriend them. Even if it were, the best thing she could do for them as a friend was to keep them safe, so she was still better off as she was now.

It was a quiet day, for the most part. The streets were not busy but she still passed several citizens around each bend and down each road, and as she turned another corner she stopped, sage green eyes fixated on the scene in front of her. She saw everything like a bad slow motion film, the mother pull her child away from the approaching form of Mathias. She thinks he might continue on but no, he wheels around and stares down the boy with the smile of a beast, paralyzing him with fear.

That is when she moves, crossing the street in a few hard strides, her hooves beating down the sand beneath them. “Mathias,” her voice is not quite as flat as it usually is, edged with something sharper, and she stomps her leg down between them before shouldering her way in. Already the mother is backing away, giving her more space to move further in front of Mathias, blocking his way. “Go,” she tells the woman behind her, not taking her eyes off the man of black and white. Teiran can hear them turn and disappear.

"Speaking."

Mathias turns toward her and Teiran does not flinch or back away, not from the manic smile on his face or the wild look in his eye. She can see the tension in his body, filling every inch of him, making his muscles taught and prepared. Her sage green eyes take it all in with so much as a glance. It is her job to read a situation, and to do it as quickly as possible. Take too long, make a mistake, and something can go incredibly wrong in a matter of seconds.

His words bite out at her and she stands as statue still as ever, wearing soldier readiness on her shoulders. The man’s words don’t offend, don’t affect her, and her gaze is like brandished cold steel—like the collar around her neck. Then, she takes one step forward, one step closer, placing herself in his space. She knows what he needs.

What she doesn’t know is if he will do it even if she says he can.

So, she provokes him instead.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” and if there is any inflection to her voice other than the grit of sand and the drone of something inhuman, there is no indication of it in her eyes or in her body. She stands toe to toe with him and wears no apprehension despite their size difference, and she tests him, teeters on the edge of his patience. Her only question now is will he take the bait?

"Speaking."

“Who are you, little girl?” And there are flashes in her mind, faded, torn. A girl, left out on the streets. A girl, picked up by a man (or was it a monster?) and taken into the desert. A girl, tormented, tortured, trained. Who are you, who are you? and something inside her says nothing and something else says a machine made for war. She reaches for that little girl, crying, and wants to say… What does she want to say? But the girl is too far out of reach, too buried in the shadows. There is too much space, too much time, between there and now. The girl slips away.

Teiran looks up at Mathias and the cold steel glint in her eyes does not change. Not until his hand is there, slipped between her skin and that silver collar on her throat. Everything flees, and something wild and feral fills her instead. She could kill him, and there is no fear in her. There is no turmoil. There is nothing. The soldier, quick as a striking serpent, hooks one of her legs around his own front two, and at the same moment she moves to sweep his hooves out from under him she too, shoves all of her weight into his shoulder.

She doesn’t wait to hear if his body hits the ground, doesn’t wait before her tele is reaching, grasping a knife. It draws up in the air before her and she doesn’t even know where it comes from, doesn’t hear the offended shout of the passerby she had stolen from. She could kill him, and the dagger is raised, raised, poised to bite any flesh, to take any blood, that it can. The animal thing inside her screams, begging, salivating. She is a machine made for war. A hissing sound escapes her lips. She could kill him.

She doesn’t.

Her eyes close for only a second, the emptiness being covered by the dark rose of her lids, and she sees the girl again; thin, frail, broken. Teiran meets her fading, hollow sage eyes, and when hers open again there is no beast clawing through them, thirsting for blood. She looks at Mathias, and feels her white-knuckled grip on the knife, and there is a crack in her veneer. It spiderwebs outward, delicate and gossamer, catching the light. “Do not touch my collar.”

She turns to where the bystander is, the one she had taken the knife from, as he looks on in terrified silence. One, two, three flips through the air and he is clutching the weapon and disappearing. As though any of the citizens of this court needed more reasons to avoid her, but she doesn’t care as she turns back to the black and white man. “Next time you want a fight, we can take it outside the court. Do not, however, make the same mistake again.” What she doesn’t say is that next time, she isn’t sure if she can stop herself from taking his life.

"Speaking."

"I am not a coward for refusing to kill you," Teiran says. There is no cowardice in fighting back against the unhinged thing in her that fears the memory of pain associated with that shining metal at her throat. And to kill a fellow citizens of Solterra, for no reason other than he made a stupid, foolish mistake for not knowing better?

Teiran might not have a lot of things, but she does have some sense of honor. No matter how small.

When Mathias rises up on his back legs Teiran  shifts her body to put her should in the path of his hooves. She braces her legs, throws her head away from his flailing punches. His hooves bite into her flesh, into the meat of her shoulder, and the soldier tightens her jaw and holds her ground. If it is not bleeding it will surely bruise.

Still, she doesn't strike back. This is not a fair fight. He is angry, and reckless, and his wildness gives her focus and clear mind the upper hand. She could hurt him in so many ways. He calls her a coward yet he is the one begging to walk out on life. Teiran could say it, could make a weapon of her knife-sharp words.

She could fight him.

She doesn't, because it doesn't feel right.

"Why are you so angry." It is, perhaps, the only consistent thing she can associate with Mathias, through every interaction she's had with him or he's had with someone else. Even in the seemingly pleasant ones, there has always been an undercurrent of something bitter and black. It seems that today, whatever it is, has finally worked its way completely to the surface.

"Speaking."

He grinds his jaw against some thought or emotion that Teiran isn't privy to, cannot know. She thinks that he is like a damn that is too full, has too much pressure at its back. Cracking, wearing down, waiting to explode open. She wonders how muddied the waters held at bay inside him are, how black with dirt and debris.

Then Mathias speaks and Teiran gets a glimpse of those churning waves. 'I am a monster,' he says on a growl, but in Teiran's ears it sounds like a cry. Like a shout, a scream, desperate, ringing toward the sky. It sounds like an accusation, like the crack of a gavel passing judgement, like the silent, poignant pointing of a finger. It sounds like familiarity.

"Do you think I am a monster?" Teiran asks him with glittering sage eyes, straightening her neck and looking at the man before her. "I've been called a monster, but it doesn't make me one." She has been called more than a monster over the years. She's heard them whisper when she walks by them on the street. Not all bad things, but much of it. Some have pity, some have fear, disgust, guilt.

Despite all his anger, all his boiling hate (at himself? At her, the world?), Teiran looks at him and sees a desert full of half-starved children (love, food, hope, starved of it all) with blank eyes and silver collars. She sees a young filly with green eyes and trembling legs, wandering the streets alone. She sees it all, in flashes, too distant for her to grasp. "Because I know what it's like to be abandoned."

"Speaking."