[P] A blood-red thing

[Isra]

They say unicorns do not know what regret feels like as it settles into the bones. They say that unicorns are beasts of certainty and bravery built with such great weapons between their eyes. Unicorns are to be mighty things and perhaps a unicorn might have looked at this stallion turned sword with only approval. But Isra is no unicorn, no brave creature to rally to war for righteousness. Her soul is still broken, her insides still feel as if they belong to a slave. She feels, looking at him and all the frightening fire in his eyes, that she does not deserve the horn upon her head. The sea should have let her burned for her soul feels a regret that a unicorn should not feel. There is a war in his eyes, she can pick out the darkness of it as well as she might find a sunflower in a field of dead grass. Isra feels as if he too might be a dragon, a beast of destruction with wide gaping jaws that consumes the world and leaves something very different inside the wake of him. For a moment she watches him with the same fear she reserved for thinking of the things she finds in her nightmares. She wonders if perhaps her stories are not an infection, another stain on her soul that her words that once made a god take her are the same that might lead mortals to their deaths and level worlds with hate. Every breath she takes before that fire gaze of his feels like a stolen moment as she watches a blaze reach out to offer her a final death. It would be a gift to be free of that rage in his eyes, that fear she feels as she watches his tail tighten at his back like a noose. “I believe you.” She whispers as she widens the space between them and shrinks as much as a horse might be able to. Happily would she pull herself down to the size of a speck of dust so that she might forever disappear in the air. Isra doesn't ask for his name, doesn't ask who he is. This is not a story she will ever tell, where she raised up a devil to burn with the power of her words and her sorrow. Again she remembers she is no real unicorn, only a slave in a lie of flesh, bone and grace. Still she bends to his request, afraid that he might tear apart her neck with that blade of his. Drowning was always a better option to her, rather than die by blood and pain and enough feeling to die with a scream. And as she turns to lead him to where he might send a letter his gaze feels like a brand on her skin.  Surely she will be condemned before the gods for standing so close to such a devil as this and bowing to his request instead of running far, far away from the dark promises in his gaze. * * * * * bury me in the moon-dark @Raymond