It is not the sun-eye, or the grotesque rib-bridge, or the shops filled with horror-wealth, that draws Amaunet deep into the belly of the Island. She does not froth and foam at the promise of monsters, and treasure, and a terrible crown to lay upon her brow. Her wings do not carry her across the bridge, so lightly that her hooves do not touch the star-ashes and the muck of organs laid out in the sun, for any purpose but one of selfishness.
There is a rumor of the magic in star-bones that might be bent into a weapon. A legend long forgotten in the dusty tomes hidden deep in father’s library that has only now, when the world was first torn asunder, been brought to light. What started as a rumor, a mere whispering of what if when she laid her head down to dream, as turned into an inferno.
And Amaunet, like a starving hound at the belly of a kill, soon found the whisper turned into a bellow.
The screaming store, and the wailing store, and the one with gold enough to burn her eyes with the glimmer of it, do not turn her from her purpose. She walks through the spirals with all the determination of a sun-blooded thing caught in an endless night (she does not know how to do anything but go on, go on, go on, until the sun rises through the dark again). Her heavy gaze settles one everything all at once and yet it lingers on nothing. Garnets, and emeralds, and bones that should be silent that clack instead as she passes, do not hold her attention.
Amaunet does not relent, does not stop wondering what if, until the castle doors wave in the formless wind. It’s only there that she pauses, waiting until each eye has beheld the determination in her gaze and the dark monster that looks at their own bodiless monsters like a dragon come to call the coyotes to heel. And she’s about to brush her wings over the hundred eyes, and push the hundred lashes down into slumber with her wings, when the sound of another hoof falls too close for comfort behind her.
She had been too focused to hear him, too determined to worry about the wants of men.
And it’s only now that she appraises him, feeling the glimmer of recognition but not bothering to name it, as she steps back down the stairs toward him. Her wings snap out in a warning and her head lifts in the same furious challenge she greets the sun with each day. “What have you come for?" She asks.
Because if he’s come for the bones to be welded into weapons she will kill him where he stands.
've been following her for a little bit now. Maybe that makes me sort of creepy, but there is something familiar about her. I can't put any words or memories to it yet, but I'm curious. I guess it leads to that saying of curiosity killed the cat because the farther I go into the belly of this island, the worse it seems to get.
There were things I saw after Raum's reign that made me sick to my stomach. I had already heard horrible things, but to see horse skulls among it just freaked me out. I know I'm a warrior and one by blood, but I'm a lot different from the boy who grew up to be who I am today. I don't really involve myself in that anymore and maybe because of how long it's been, it makes it that much harder.
I've never been to the island, but I've heard all the stories. How it changes nearly every season and the magic here is ancient, unique. It's certainly… something… as I had walked through the caves and seen the bridge of bones (or maybe it was an actual spine?). The empty storefronts were filled with different skulls, weapons and other darker things. Even this place is dark except for the very dim lighting I'm not even sure is coming from the sun. I'm not sure that I want to find out.
So when I saw her, someone too beautiful to be in this place of death, I knew I had to follow. I wanted to catch up with her eventually and not be a total stalker, but I didn't want to startle her either. When I do manage to catch up, it's my hooves against the stone stairs that give me away (although it looks like this is all made of bone too). She had been about to walk into the castle that looms before us until I had disturbed her and she doesn't seem too happy about it.
What have I come for? Well, I suppose that's a good question.
"Magic, treasure, you know, the usual stuff," I say, trying to seem nonchalant. Then, I get a little closer to her so that she might be able to see the glint in my golden eyes. "Maybe some love along the way." I wink and don't bother being subtle with that line.
I was going to wait to ask, but I just can't help it. The more I look at her and notice the intricate jewelry and braids in her hair, the more I just need to know.
"I… feel like I've seen you around before. Did we ever sleep together?"
What should feel like recognition rises to the surface of her skin in wrath instead. It billows in her cheeks in a blush of dawn-light, a glimmer of the eye-sun shifting above their heads. The air thickens around her. And when her wings snap out a warning, brushing all those door-eyes closed with a touch of feathers, the quiet after the sound feels as weighted as the air before the lightning strike.
She smiles and there are too many teeth in the look to be anything but the look of a desert-eagle in the dead of winter. Her body does not move down the steps, or slide close enough that she might grab on to his collar and pull. The tilt of her head is a wolfish-thing when she laughs in a way that suggests a snarl more than it suggests amusement. “Love,” she scroffs, “have you any originality at all? Are you nothing more than another thing cut out of the desert in the exact shape of everything else?”
When she finally steps closer to him, her feathers stay flared out in a way that blots out the castle entrance from him. Like a sun shifting over the more she steps closer, and closer, until her shine is bright enough to blind. Magic leaks for her skin like smoke, and heat, and a hundred sins melded down into magma smooth enough to drink. And in turn it drinks, and drinks, from all the dead stars and new-born monsters hiding just below their feet.
Amaunet steps close enough that she might count the rings in his ears and the frail hairs rising around his muzzle ring. She counts each ounce of gold of him and each ounce of something missing from the stance of his body that smells of the desert but does not bellow of it or claim it. What she sees, what little she can see, makes her think of the gone-king and his smiles that were as shallow as a low-tide sea. Her teeth ache to tear the little from him.
“You would not have found sleep with me, stallion.” Her smile turns teasing as she presses her cheek close enough to his that she can feel the remnants of the desert heat rising from him. And when she pulls away, and snaps forward again quick as a snake to latch onto the bull-ring in his nose, the aching of her teeth turns to a stabbing, needy pain.
am captivated by her. It's all in the way she moves, the way she spreads her wings, the way her smile draws me in. Even as she's snapping at me, I find her even more dangerously beautiful.
She accuses me of being like everyone else and I'm quite offended. I don't hide my shock from her either. "Oh, darling, spend a night with me and you'll see how different I am from everyone else," I say, although it's more like an invitation. My brows raise and my lips pull back in a smirk. Unless she hasn't met many men, I can't imagine why me in all my golden jewels could just blend in with the desert sand. Maybe I need to step it up a notch.
But then she steps closer and I start to feel more alive than I have before. It's as if she's tapped into the warrior side of me. Her voice is like the sweetest honey I could ever taste.
And, shit, I don't even know what to say next. My body nearly shakes when she presses her cheek to mine. She is a wild one, a restless creature that I don't think anyone can tame. I don't think I would want to but I want to feel the heat. It's more than just a fire burning- it's raging.
When she pulls at my nose ring, I am head over heels for her. I want to soak in every moment of this and I completely forget we're not anywhere remotely romantic or comfortable. We may as well be in the belly of a beast, but none of that matters now. Not in these moments.
"You know, where I'm from, the women were the strongest in the tribe. They made the men look unworthy. And you, you look like you could be our queen."
I remember the Davke women and all their paint and warcries. We could train as hard as we could, but nothing could beat the way they carried themselves. They were so alluring too, like this woman is. I don't think I'm very worthy either, but I'm willing to have this dance. I want to so bad.
Her life has been full of a hundred moments like this. They have haunted her hours since the first time she walked from her mother’s teat and tossed herself into the games of children. She can see twenty different stallions in his look, twenty different nights that roused her hunger instead of satisfied it, twenty different looks that promised disappointment over and over again. Amaunet knows him well, well enough to know that there is not enough charm in a tame thing, a false thing, a safe thing, to hold her.
Had she not been holding on to his nose ring she might have torn the smirk from his face instead.
Instead she pulls, because there is no other way but violence to translate all the things boiling and festering in her magic. And when she lets go it is to snap her wings in the second warning. The dust billows around them like mist. Every eye in the door opens. Amaunet can feel the weight of them all tracing the lines of her back like a caress of every chaotic monster waiting in the castle for her.
For her.Not, she thinks, for them.
This time her feathers do not settle back at her side and her restlessness rouses at the idea of a promise unfulfilled. Maybe if he had laid teeth to her throat, or blade to her pulse, she might have not snarled at him like a fighter instead of a mare. At her back her tail lashes at her hocks like a lash, and even that sting of pain does not soothe her.
Amaunet has stopped wondering if it’s her magic gone wild, or the island, or whatever might live in the stallion who talks of love. She has stopped thinking of the other hundred moments like this one in her life. But she is remembering the secret in his statement, a memory faded and unimportant the moment he had left.
“Our queen.” She laughs but there is more cruelty in the sound than humor. “You say that as if it is my desert that you hail from. If you had been a tribe member you did not stay. If you had I can promise that your heart would already be outside your chest.” One of her wings slides down his spine as she moves away from the door to circle him (daring a kick, a snarl, anything but another promise he cannot fill).
Her wing moves from spine, to hip, to ear before she replaces feather with lip. “But if I was your queen should you not bow?” She whispers as if she’s unconcerned with the answer.
But her magic is. Her magic is very, very concerned.
thought she had been playing, but I'm starting to think that maybe she's not actually that into me. It sort of looks more like anger than passion, although I can't say I'm not still into it a little bit.
When she lets go of my nose ring, there is a searing pain that shoots up my face. I wouldn't be surprised if she pulled so hard that she drew blood. Then she is snapping her wings open as if in some kind of warning and I see the eyes light up along the doors again. It's so creepy, I think I just got chills down my spine.
I am watching her still, wanting her wildness to myself, but I'm realizing she might be way out of my league. She touches me with the tip of her wing and I watch the way she moves around me. She is circling like I'm her prey and I wonder what will happen if she decides to pounce.
"Well, I do call the desert my home. It's a beautiful place," I say to her as faded memories start to piece themselves together in my head. I'm wondering now if she is Davke too, but with the way this conversation is going, maybe it'd be better for me not to say much more. I didn't stay with the tribe and while I don't mind getting beaten up a little, I'd very much like my heart to stay inside my chest.
She brings her feather to my lip and I almost want to take it in between my teeth, but she tells me to bow. I had never been one for following rules, but this time I do. Maybe that makes me desperate.
As I bow, I find myself smirking and wondering just how far this could go (if I even have a chance). "If you were my queen, what would you do with me?"
All it has taken is a single conversation, or the dregs of what might be considered one, for her to name him an unimpressive and unimportant bit of flesh. She does not find his words clever or his responses full of anything but an ignorance that would have killed him already in the pits. Had she taken the time to remember him in the tribe, she would not have been surprised to remember how she had not thought of him at all when she learned of a stallion leaving.
Her lips follow his ear as he bows and her feathers trace the curl of his knees where they fold into the ground as they should have the moment he approached her. She does not smile at his supplication, or purr, but silently considers it as something right in this twisted, monstrous world. And if she knew, as she dragged her teeth along the long of his ear, of the throne waiting in the middle of the castle she would not have lingered with him.
But she does not know and her teeth do not pause for long on the shell of his ear before they move to grab onto it. Between her violence she purrs, “I would make you stay there until your knees bled.” Her teeth almost lament the loss of him when she steps back to consider him with her regal neck curled with all the promise of a desert cobra. Amaunet is still above him (as she should be) when she promises with all the sultry and ember-warm heat of the night that he will never have, “and then I would break you.”
The eyes, blinking and hunger bright, follow her as she steps from him towards the door. Somewhere in the castle a weapon purrs again at the feel of her chaos magic reaching out to meet it. Amaunet’s heart leaps in a way that he had not made it at the promise of the blade. And when she turns away from him, and steps into the belly of the castle, she does not turn to remember him.
he world feels a lot smaller down here and I think that was the point of having me bow. The woman truly looks like a queen the way she towers over me and looks down at me now. I am nothing but an ant to her and probably always will be. I can't say I'm not disappointed. This happens sometimes where I just meet someone who I'm not good enough for, but I can't help but try anyways.
But her- she is a warrior in all the ways that I no longer am. Perhaps she is colder too since she bites down harder on my ear. It's a shame this couldn't go much further because this rough play is such a turn on. Even as she says she'd make me bleed and break me- I mean, it's a little intimidating but it's really hot too, what can I say.
I know I've officially struck out when she leaves my ear to bleed and turns to head into the castle. The way the billions of eyes blink and stare at her still freaks me out. I finally stand then, the soreness of my ear and nose finally becoming more noticeable.
I almost follow her, but I know better. Because if she's anything like the Davke women, she would follow through on her promise.
So, I leave the island and go in search of someone that might be a little less intense.
