[P] he borrowed colour from the sky

[Isra]

It took only a story to drive her back to the forests. A story and the dark gaze of a man who seemed like more than just flesh, bone and antler. After him the festival was too thick to bear. All the gazes that skated across her and lingered on the broken, glittering scales over her hollow ribs felt like pinpricks of lightning. She had shivered before all those horses. All their shadows had her bending around them as if she might avoid the world by tucking herself away in oft forgotten shadows. Like a bird in a sky full of hawks she quickly ducked back into the forest and followed whatever path silence made. Where there were voices she would turn the other way. Light too decided her direction and it was only under the glittering starlight and soft moonlight that Isra would travel straight at all. On she went until the trees grew thick once again and the sea turned to creeks rushing with cold, storm water. She doesn't know the name of the place where she finally rests and drops her head to drink deep of the cool waters. Weeks and months have passed since she stopped caring what was held in this place of monsters and fires and men. Perhaps it has been years that she has wandered the lands of Novus. Isra has long forgotten to keep track of the days. She lives as only the wild things do.   She's lost in the loudness of the creek, the way some distant waterfall sounds like thunder. It roars and beckons her, whispering in coos of rushing water that she might sink deep and let the falls wipe clean all the scars of her soul and this strange skin over her bones. There's a hope in her as she lifts her head and turns to make her way upstream. The hope boils in her and overflows like change. It's not until she turns that she spots the man and the ram horns that curl behind his ears. All her bones seize and she freezes wide-eye with one leg lifted back towards the shore. She looks in that moment like a deer, like a wild thing. She could be some some picturesque ruin of a girl. Where she should be soft and tender she is sharp with hunger and exhaustion. Nothing on her glimmers but her scales and the brief places of chain that were washed clean by the water. The rest of her looks black enough (coated in sweat and dust) to be nothing more than the shadows of the lumbering, mighty trees that arch above the creek. “Hello.” The word slips out by instinct alone. The greeting is a throwback to her other skin, her other life, where saying nothing ended in lashes and blood. Isra regrets the sound of her voice the moment she hears it echo like a hammer in her skull. Still frozen she watches him, waiting for the moment he realizes she has stolen away his solitude. Air hardly flutters in her lungs as she waits to see what kind of monster this man might be. When she blinks her fear looks like flotsam in the dread blue sea of her eyes. * * * * * untangle all these veins of mine @August