Light fractures against the pitted contour of red-canyon-rock. Far above, thin clouds track the sea; seeking the briny kiss of a Noahic covenant that was promised to them long ago when the shadows were longer and the hours crawled without measure. 

She thinks of their journey. She thinks of how they must peer down at her pygmy silhouette and think nothing - oh - nothing of her at all. She thinks of her own journey. Of her Mother's. Of her Father's. Of--

Of the eyes that glitter like a lacerated gemstone in the cove of shadows beyond the sun. At first she thinks that her prayers have been heard (by which God, she does not care) and that she has succumbed to a merciful breed of madness. But then, they blink - and at once she sees the hunched form to which the belong. A bird. A witness to her grief that snaps and slavers at the bit. There is nothing ordinary about its eyes; for despite the vacuum of bitterness that howls in the space between her forefinger and thumb, Sabine is unpredictably cognizant of the way it watches her the way she imagines death might watch the dying. 

With the clack of its unhallowed kerosene-keratin beak, the girl dares to wonder if this winged creature is made not of flesh and blood -- but of something older, higher, darker. An omen to bring what has only ever been inevitable. 

Then -- suddenly, as if speaking in the tongue of her oracular dread, the shadows open their mouths to dislodge the secret within. For the vulture (the prophet) is not alone; it remains inanimate as its perch is expunged from the darkness and laid bare before the child's eyes. 

The figure is still moving in the half-beat of a second when Sabine feels her heart stumble and drop. Her fear falls into the vast gunmetal silver that yawns over muscle and bonemarrow and sin; it hitches on the hook of that compressed cobalt gaze. She cannot see, she cannot see and there is a block of thick-red rage in her teeth at the way he blinds her so. Even now, even here, so many miles and so many days from his city of horror, he still takes - takes - takes. 

But the black words forming sluggishly on her lips are lopped in half by the sound of her name as it pitches downward, like a cleaver against meat. Sabine. Blunt and unripe, it sounds like a question and an answer all at once. For that was no voice of her father. That was not a voice she knew at all. Sabine blinks, startled and transparently caught off-guard, taking one long step back before she looks again; closer this time. 

Her thoughts reach a crescendo of shame when her eyes latch onto things she had not before noticed. The torch-bright glare of the right eye glinting yellow, the elfin curve of femininity, the column of stripes that train across her neck, her legs. Fool, she thinks, Sabine you are a fool. She does not consider her dehydration, her fatigue, her lament. Who could blame a child for seeing a father where a stranger stood?

The woman speaks again, staring with those estranged eyes and Sabine cannot help but feel like a book beneath that stare; flung open and deciphered. She wants to tell her not to read on, to stop before she unravels her sad small story and leaves her to face the final chapter alone. But how does she know her name? Where does she want her to go? The girl is too young to recall that first night. That wet, terrible night. It is, perhaps, one of the few mercies she has known. 

Sabine does not move at the command of this woman. She feels her shoulders tremble, and hears her voice crack, "who are you? And how do you know my name?"

She tries to sound strong.

She fails.

@Seraphina | "speaks" | notes: <3