[AW] little ghost, so forgotten and small

[Isra]

She's startled when the apple jerks away and to her the night seems suddenly old and thick. Her heart flutters and her blood rushes like wild water through her veins.  Run, her instincts shrill at her. Run, run, run. Quickly she steps back into the darkness and the eyes on her now feel like twin suns, burning into her flesh, scouring her skin with little marks of char and ash. But then he talks and she focuses. The eyes are predator after all, male and fiery hot and her breath clogs in her lungs and her blood rushes violently. Deep down the blackness rattles in her mind, screaming a warning that she is too afraid to hear. His words are nothing, mere jumbles of sound paired with the gestures of his face. It's been so long since she's heard a voice so close, so different than that quiet muffled echoes of the sea. “Don't” She panics when he moves closer and his flesh seems a little brighter the the sun in the moonlight. He's a snare, vibrant against the night and she thinks she might be nothing more than a plain, mouse ripe and weak for the hunt. Only when he doesn't move closer does she relax enough to breath and her lungs are frantic from panic and the night air burns and stings her throat like smoke. Isra's gaze is intense and winter cold as she judges him. When he offers her the apple she's quick to take it , barely tasting the sweet pulp of it as she devours the first food she's had in days. Still she feels like a cornered beast, frantic and broken and unsure if she wants to just surrender to the danger of him. The sea had taken away her salvation and she's desperate to feel anything at all but anxious. Perhaps that's why she follows him and forgets for a moment to step light enough to hush the jangle of rusted chain on her leg. It's loud in the quiet of the shadows and she looks at him to see the sound has given her away. She knows it's important, that chain about her leg, knows that no one should learn it's meaning. But she's forgotten the meaning herself and that makes her more afraid of her own skin that anything else. “I am...” She pauses, gazing out into the nothing of the darkness. Who am I? She thinks she might have know at once point. She might have know what  purpose the words churning like squalls in her mind might have served. All she knows is that she is here, in this place and made of flesh and bone (although she wonders if he might see nothing more than some ghost of a horse, a reflection in a wave blurry and white with sea-foam). The pauses draws out too long, brittle and broken up with the steady way she breathes in and out to focus herself. She looks down at her skin, watching the chain catch the moonlight. She follows the curve of her ribs to the dusting of scales on her belly, sea green and somehow terrifying to her. “I am Isra.” Her voice is uncertain, as if there is a silent wondering to her answer, as if she doesn't even know who she is. What does he see, she queries to her self silently, when he looks at him. Am I flesh and bone, am I broken and bloody or am I nothing more than a mare given shape and form by the selfishness of a sea-god? The words jangle in the abyss of her, forming a story that she has forgotten how to form sounds with. “Who are you and where am I to follow you?” Isra tries to make the question sound like a demand and fill her voice with a confidence she doesn't know if she ever knew. But her voice is nothing more than a whisper of surf in the night, dusted with the melancholy of falling stars that turn to dust and wishes as they enter the atmosphere. Still, she follows him this night, giving up her fate once more to a man. * * * * * I have forgotten what I am to see