[P] A blood-red thing

[Isra]

Isra thinks of nothing as she leads him through the streets. There in only the echo of their hooves in her brain and it rattles like a nightmare and sets all her bones to rattling. He could be whispering stories to her, or begging forgiveness for claiming to be a devil. He could have been stone for all the notice she takes of him he leads. Only when he sweeps past her like a rage of a wind, a torrent of needle thin rain, does she think. She thinks that perhaps he writes in blood, a bright and deadly as that skin he wears. Perhaps all the whisper of ink over paper is nothing more than the drip, drip, drip of blood. She wonders, as she watches the raven's sweep out over her head if he has given them a plague to carry, a weapon of war. Again she wonders what end she has brought. When the last raven swoops low enough to press a cruel kiss of feathers across her back she turns away. Run, run, run. Her body has not forgotten that command and it sweeps over her like a tidal waves as she resurfaces from her dread thoughts enough to remember that he is still before. He speaks and she hears not the words as she watches the way his lips move, the way he teeth could be fangs in the shadow of him. I am the devil. It's all she hears, as he speaks a litany of fear given a name that repeats over and over and over again through her mind. Oh but then his words start to make sense as she turns away from him. She's tensed and ready to run and it feels like there is a tether to the mountains that reels her in. Her hooves are already following the demand of the dead that call her so. “I will say nothing. I do not wish to remember you.” It's no more than a whisper, a flutter of her lungs but it's enough to know that Isra will speak nothing of this red man who might write in blood. Only stories live on her lips and legends on her tongue. * * * * * listen to the bitter sound @Raymond