She is consumed by the seething, heady crowd; gives herself to it. 

Or what slips of herself that can be clawed back from the hard, vain cage of quiet, contained animus; from the scowl of lip and the narrowed, indignant slit of bright, sky-blue eye. 

That scorched, elemental rage that had subsumed itself to her like venom as a young girl. First, as the fangs sunk deep into her knee. In the swimming, white-hot reverie that followed, as reached up to Solis and found she could wrap herself around the radiant, holy rays of Him to pull grace down upon herself like fiery armour; swirling into the Beyond-Beyond-The-Sand as a crusader. And second, before she lost grip of her consciousness, as she brought the small, curved janbiya down and pinned the writhing, furious stygian serpent to the dunes. 

Blood pooled on the sun-baked sand, staining it a red so dark it was almost black.

She had died and come back that day.

El’Alafir-Uquaa.

The Serpent Slayer.

—died and come back many times after, too.

Cyrra shoulders inebriates out of her way with grunts and sharp, barbed stares, as day passes, bruise-purple and bright tangerine, into night. Her pale wings are held tight against her body, extending roughly now and then to claim distance between herself and the rabble. Moonlight begins to pool in the crowded streets as braziers and strings of lanterns are lit, one by one, offering their own oily, dancing light to the market streets; catching, warm and golden, in the burnished curves of her serpentine neckpiece.

She had awoken, moonstruck and feeble as a sprig grown in a place without light—a place where light goes to die—to a Solterra invaded. Inviting. Opened, like the arms of some indiscriminate lover, libertine and rowdy; redolent with spilt wine and ale, like petrichor, but sour and fermented. Sweat, bodies, exotic perfumes and something more. Something many-tongued and violent in its greed. Something she could not place her finger on, but could feel its heartbeat trying to match her own—warpaths and bedsheets; skin rent and skin touching. 

All the trappings of the festival that she wished to lose herself in. To take and remake herself with; to replace the putrid, charnel abyss with music and brutality.

Anything, at all, to remind her she is alive.

To pull back the layers of swart and funereal aloneness.

A spare, elegant man, dressed in a hooded cloak of brilliantly vibrant beadwork, rings of jewelled gold in his nose and ears, approaches her, extending delicate, crystalline bottles of clear, suggestive attars—jasmine and oud, rose and saffron. ‘...Something cool for you, sayidat alnaar, to temper your flame—might I suggest honeysuckle and citrus…’ Her iron gaze lingers for a moment on the oils, listing in their glass containers as he tilts them back and forth slowly, beckoning. 

She is jostled and groans, teeth clenching. She shakes her head curtly and hisses, “bother someone else,” before moving off, gripping herself all the more tightly. Guarded and ungiving in the dizzy night, she meanders, searching and seething; moving through pools of light and dark, merchants hawking fine jewellery and indelicate bottles of thick, homemade brews. The once-Arete, now errant ember of a dead sun, shakes her head to most but throws a couple of gold coins to a hard, aged man selling strange, floral wine in sea glass bottles.

(Then, she almost runs into you. Some wasted and wonton stranger bumps into her, slurs uncouth and bawdy apologies and disappears into the night-clad streets.)

She mutters a string of creative expletives, iron gaze falling on the gilt, gunmetal stranger, breath smelling of lotus, vanilla and alcohol; body as hard as coiled springs, “gods-damned tourists.”

R A Z I E L


—


here is dread under his skin, twisting and writhing like a dead-dying thing. It winds deeper to burrow beneath sinew and flesh, hemorrhaging under moonlight; he knows it will not be shaken from his bones now. It is too late. 

You might be mistaken for thinking a man like Raziel, a man whelped upon the lap of luxury, bloated by the fortune of his house, would dread nothing. For what could plebeian fear could touch his god-gold heart? 

But Raziel was no deity, numen or creator. He was not, would never be, free of mortal sensibility, no matter how fervently he might pray. The base desires of men and women were perhaps the only certainty they should bear in each long dark night. And Raziel? He was no different. 

It had opened the door at noon. Sauntering between the white walls of his teeth and slipping down his throat with an arrogant familiarity. The music that drifted in east from the capitol on a low, sweaty breeze had only excited it so. Gahenna sensed it immediately, lifting her muzzle from the leopard-skin pouffe upon which she was sprawled (the autumn heat was a noose pulled slack) but the stallion had shaken his head as if to say 'don't'.

Now he is drowning. He had never learned to swim. 

Festivals brought a myriad of opportunities to Solterra -- each one doused in salt and fire -- but to Raziel it meant only one thing; the one thing he could not have. 

Alcohol. 

When Zolin fell and his brother's head was severed like a thread cut loose, Raziel lost everything. Grief has never been the tragic poeticism portrayed by the great writers of bygone worlds. It is ugly and wet-mud-brown. It is dark decomposition and darker despair. It is waking at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, watching indifferently as another day dies before you ever had the chance to fill it with all the life that was slipping through your hands. The life that was not now any such thing, but time; endless, flat, agonizing time. It is not knowing how to speak, how to move, breathe or eat. It is simple in its method, and devastating in its force.

So when he had taken a shaking hand to the bottles tucked neatly inside his dead mother's cabinet, it had been in naked desperation. It, of course, was not the first time he had drunk; he was a teenager after all and even if he hadn't snuck out with it to the Baobab tree with Raoul at his side, the grandiose dinner parties thrown by the Nazaret had been anything but dry. 

But he'd never needed it. Not like he'd needed it then and certainly not like he needed it now. 

His favourite poison was (is) damassine: a spirit distilled from the Nazaret's private orchard of plums their ancestors had brought with them from the Orient. The aroma is strong and the taste stronger. An empty glass soon turned into empty glasses and later empty bottles, but the oblivion it awarded him was a mercy he could not quit. 

It took almost losing Gahenna to realise the gravity of his dependence, but that was a story for another day.

Now three years sober, he stands on the outskirts of Solterra's revelry, watching on with a gaze that is both guarded and envious. The dread of this afternoon has turned into a barely-kept thirst; darkness has always been slippery and persuasive but he holds himself on a tight leash. At least that's what he tells himself.

The streets are ablaze with foreigners and nationals alike, though the wayfarers stick out like sore thumbs in gloves made of gold. The air is matted in smoke, booze and forms of other debauchery he cares not to think about. Raoul had always called him a prude and it had always irritated him, no doubt because it was true.  

A girl catches his eye; a surprisingly rare thing for a man of his age and standing. She is caramel-honey and wide-winged, though it is not her looks (it never is) but the vitriol in her breath that hooks his mild interest. She grunts something about tourists and he does not respond. Instead he wonders why he has come so deep into the pit -- the inner city is not a place he often frequents; too many people, too much noise. Even his nose is not safe from assault - the fusion of malodours and perfumes clings to his nostrils like a glutinous leech. 

Raziel's ear twitches backward as he considers turning for home (as if he hadn't only been here fifteen minutes) but he can hear Gahenna's voice already, telling him how mind-numbingly boring he has become. As it happens, his hound is not far away; hunting rats in a dark alley no doubt. So he stays, with a cocked hip and a discreet expression, letting the night draw in a little closer as he calls out evenly, “terrible, aren't they?”

Though, evidently, not as terrible as his social skills. 

§

History has its eyes on you