life's but a walking shadow
The promised drink, when it arrives, is a mesmerizing thing, glistening gold in the fairy light, smelling of honey and lemongrass and fire. Indra does not miss the speed with which Eik throws his back, and she offers him a droll little smile. “Hit the spot?” She can almost see it coursing through him, in the way he shifts his weight, sharpens his glance—as if he’s somehow been both put at ease and wound more tightly up.
She sips her own drink more slowly, rolling the liquid in her mouth, liking its smoothness on her tongue, the way it scorches down her throat. Only seldom has she tasted alcohol, and that not in a long time; there were no drinks, or pretty festivals, or stone palaces in the world she walked before this one. There was only the yawning maw of the riftlands, devouring and cruel.
But right now she feels light, weightless, the liquor and starlight wrapping her mind in a golden cocoon, and the rift is the furthest thing from her thoughts. Beside her, Eik has called for another round of drinks, and when he turns to her again Indra sees something different in his gaze, something dark and intent.
He asks her for a secret.
Indra feels herself go still, the dizzy balloon in her chest deflating slightly as her golden eyes flick away from his. Surely all creatures carry secrets of their own, but hers feel unduly heavy, half-hidden even from herself. It has been a long, long while since she has spoken her heart to anyone—perhaps longer yet since she had such a one with whom to share. And how can she explain a secret that she herself has only just begun to unravel?
And yet she finds, somewhat to her own surprise, that she would like to. She drains the remainder of her drink, her horn glinting as she lifts her head. “I said that I had been here before,” she begins slowly. “That was—five hundred years ago.”
For a moment she falls silent, unsure how to continue, unsure how to defend the words that sound ludicrous even to her ears. “Perhaps you have met Florentine, the Dusk sovereign,” she tries again. “I don’t know if you have heard of her dagger—one with the power to cut through time, and between worlds.” Another pause, and then: “She and I were born into a place on the brink of destruction. When I was a foal and she but a yearling, our parents contrived to have her send me back, away, for my safety.” Indra swallows. “She sent me here, at the dawn of this world, though I do not think she knows it.”
She casts a furtive glance at Eik, as if to gauge his reaction, before looking quickly away again. “I lived among the Ilati for a time. Back then they were more numerous by far. I wandered for a time, on my own, among the wilds of Novus and other lands. And then I found myself pulled, somehow, back to my first home, in the midst of a great war that should have happened before I was born.” There were no words, there was no language, that could explain the way it had felt to walk that winter battlefield, her heart ringing at the familiarity even as her mind remembered nothing and no one.
“And now I am here again,” she says simply. “And no one I ever knew or loved survives.” Except for Flora, her mind whispers, and she crushes the thought, unready still to grapple with that truth. She had watched Flora die in the raid, had watched the winter herd mourn her. That the flower girl lived and flourished, here in another world, was something Florentine had still to answer for, and there would be a reckoning yet.
“And you, Eik of Solterra?” Indra asks finally, aware that she has been speaking too long, and too gravely, for any passing conversation with a stranger. And yet this does not seem the sort of chance encounter one might expect on a night such as this. She leans closer, drawing deeply from her second drink. “What secret will you trade for mine?”
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