It is another mercy that she does not deserve that she remembers so little of the battle that left her desperate for death, sides split neatly as a fish to reveal pale arcs of ribs, flesh torn deep into fat and muscle.
It is a mercy that she remembers little of her bleak search afterward, driven on and on only by the desperate need to find her. How many stairs she’d stumbled down, how far below the roiling world she’d been.
“Better than dying by some other,” she says, equally row, rough as the dry desert, “but I will try to keep it from being necessary again.” Her gaze follows the unicorn as Calliope steps away, and she does nothing to disguise the smile the grows as she watches each agitated movement, a storm that builds and builds.
The paint listens with dark intent as Calliope explains. There is only faint amusement at the fact that she has never heard the unicorn say so much at once; the sum of their conversations had always been in glances, in laughs that cracked like lightning and rolled rough as rockslides, in the knowledge of the other’s presence at their back or side in battle.
But she listens well, and as she does her gaze wanders the thick, god-made copse of trees, and she inhales the mingled scents of the mountain. Summer-dry grass, recently disturbed stone and earth, the sharp-low smell of ozone.
When Raymond speaks, Shrike shifts to watch him, and privately she agrees. She will never forget Fantome’s arrogant questioning, or Calliope’s defiance – but neither would she forget when the fire-horses stole her from Velius, or the peculiar gleam in the eye of a horse who thought they were serving the gods’ will.
A thousand new enemies, then, and yet they were always the same.
“I come from the east,” she answers him, and her smile is dry and faint as a desert streambed in summer. “But I have heard mention of Denocte from others in the desert. Did you two come with a court?”
@Calliope @Raymond
It is a mercy that she remembers little of her bleak search afterward, driven on and on only by the desperate need to find her. How many stairs she’d stumbled down, how far below the roiling world she’d been.
“Better than dying by some other,” she says, equally row, rough as the dry desert, “but I will try to keep it from being necessary again.” Her gaze follows the unicorn as Calliope steps away, and she does nothing to disguise the smile the grows as she watches each agitated movement, a storm that builds and builds.
The paint listens with dark intent as Calliope explains. There is only faint amusement at the fact that she has never heard the unicorn say so much at once; the sum of their conversations had always been in glances, in laughs that cracked like lightning and rolled rough as rockslides, in the knowledge of the other’s presence at their back or side in battle.
But she listens well, and as she does her gaze wanders the thick, god-made copse of trees, and she inhales the mingled scents of the mountain. Summer-dry grass, recently disturbed stone and earth, the sharp-low smell of ozone.
When Raymond speaks, Shrike shifts to watch him, and privately she agrees. She will never forget Fantome’s arrogant questioning, or Calliope’s defiance – but neither would she forget when the fire-horses stole her from Velius, or the peculiar gleam in the eye of a horse who thought they were serving the gods’ will.
A thousand new enemies, then, and yet they were always the same.
“I come from the east,” she answers him, and her smile is dry and faint as a desert streambed in summer. “But I have heard mention of Denocte from others in the desert. Did you two come with a court?”
@Calliope @Raymond
get your war paint on
let them know we're out for blood
let them know we're out for blood
