[P] Does it still hurt

[Raum]

 


The rain drives in across the plain, thrown from a sky bleak and dark. Stems of grasses bow beneath the sheeting downpour. The meadow ripples as winds rush before the oncoming clouds.
 
A storm grumbles out at sea, crying out as if it were a monster, lured in by the power of the gods. Ahead of it, flagged by the charging winds, the Crow stalks through the plain. Verenor is little more than a black peak rising toward the monstrous cloud. Lightning splits the sky and lights the jagged face of the mountain.
 
The Crow does not return to Delumine, but neither does he return to the open gates of Denocte. Rather he stalks, his skin lit by the electric glow of the crashing storm. The meadow is alive with static, it prickles along is silvered skin, and threatens him with the might of the wild.
 
Slowly Raum’s skull turns, those blue eyes glinting in the haphazard light. There, beside him, her body a shadow, made angular by the spear at her side, is Avdotya. Even in his dreams he would know this girl; a creature with sand in her bones and sunfire in her blood.
 
His dagger sings with the presence of her spear, and he wonders how much it thirsts for violence. Raum wonders if it hungers for a taste of her skin, her blood. He wonders if he does too. The girl was an enigma, a rebel. Disgraced, fallen from her position, she stalks with pride, with malevolence licking at her heels. Curious his eyes are as they behold this blackened girl, made more frightening by the storm that rushes to embroil them both.
 
In the silence between them (the spaces where the storm does not cry its thunderous call) he drinks in the snake of Solterra. He knows what it is to carve a solitary path, to seek vengeance and retribution. Maybe that is why he does not move to rile her, to caw like the crow he is, across the distance between them.
 
No, Raum merely offers her a simple, “Avdotya” that purrs like the thunder and cuts like a blade.
 
Again he wonders how they both might bleed; in black, in gold.

@Avdotya