♙ p a n d o r a ♙
but the fire is coming
so I think we should run
Pandora remembers fire.
As she stands on crest of a great, rolling hill, the voluminous expanses of her red-orange tail flickering behind her like a dancing flame, her lips tug into a rare grimace; she remembers fire. For Pandora, flame is rebirth. Like the phoenixes of ancient lore, her mother’s magic has allowed her to rise from her own ashes time and time again. However, as she stares at the plumes of clumping grey smoke that rise in a lurid haze from the forest that she wandered placidly only days before, she feels nothing like comfort, only a deep – and sickening – dismay. Char dances on the wind, the nauseating smell of burning flesh and bark; the forest is screaming.
She stands, frozen stiff.
Tendrils of smoke block out the sky, advancing on her precarious perch like dreadful, grasping fingers. You should be moving, she chides herself, but she can’t turn her eyes away from the massacre. Pandora has seen terrible things, in all of her years alive, and she normally leaps into the fray without a hint of hesitation, willing to martyr every inch of her soft skin for the greater good, whatever it might be at the moment – but she has no brother to save her, now, no flame to restore her. If she throws herself away now, if she burns herself alive, there will be nothing left of her but ash and dust, not even the words she so loves to string to song-
But she’s sure, too, if she stands still and watches the forest scream, some little part of her will wither away to nothing anyways.
(Her mother has always told her that she is a tragic girl – always living for something else.)
She has no magic to speak of, no great powers to her name; she has no familiar, either. Motivation and determination won’t put out wildfires. Grimacing, she takes her first, trembling step towards the blaze, her eyes narrowing fractionally as her mind runs equations on what to do and how to do it - she can’t just run in, unless she wants her heroic venture to end before it even begins.
Another hesitant step forward. The heat, drawn forward by the breeze, stings her nostrils.
If she makes it through this, she thinks, with another step towards the blaze, it will make for a wonderful story; she just has to figure out what to do. Squinting into the bright heat of the blaze, she begins to scour the wildfire for shapes; certainly, there were other equines – amongst other creatures – that had been out exploring the woods when the fire started, and they certainly hadn’t all made it out. If she caught a glimpse of any of them, she might be able to help -
Or send them both spiraling to their doom, one.
In any case, it wasn’t in her nature to look away from tragedy, even in the interest of warning others – she was sure that someone else was already sounding the alarms, anyways. (It wasn’t as though a wildfire was inconspicuous.) She takes to prowling back and forth at what she deems just an appropriately safe distance from the snaking tendrils of flame, dancing back with each crawling, consuming step it takes towards her.
In the red-gold light, surrounded by a swirl of embers, she might as well have been wildfire herself.
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tags | @Random Events
notes | pandora likes flirting with disaster.
but the fire is coming
so I think we should run
Pandora remembers fire.
As she stands on crest of a great, rolling hill, the voluminous expanses of her red-orange tail flickering behind her like a dancing flame, her lips tug into a rare grimace; she remembers fire. For Pandora, flame is rebirth. Like the phoenixes of ancient lore, her mother’s magic has allowed her to rise from her own ashes time and time again. However, as she stares at the plumes of clumping grey smoke that rise in a lurid haze from the forest that she wandered placidly only days before, she feels nothing like comfort, only a deep – and sickening – dismay. Char dances on the wind, the nauseating smell of burning flesh and bark; the forest is screaming.
She stands, frozen stiff.
Tendrils of smoke block out the sky, advancing on her precarious perch like dreadful, grasping fingers. You should be moving, she chides herself, but she can’t turn her eyes away from the massacre. Pandora has seen terrible things, in all of her years alive, and she normally leaps into the fray without a hint of hesitation, willing to martyr every inch of her soft skin for the greater good, whatever it might be at the moment – but she has no brother to save her, now, no flame to restore her. If she throws herself away now, if she burns herself alive, there will be nothing left of her but ash and dust, not even the words she so loves to string to song-
But she’s sure, too, if she stands still and watches the forest scream, some little part of her will wither away to nothing anyways.
(Her mother has always told her that she is a tragic girl – always living for something else.)
She has no magic to speak of, no great powers to her name; she has no familiar, either. Motivation and determination won’t put out wildfires. Grimacing, she takes her first, trembling step towards the blaze, her eyes narrowing fractionally as her mind runs equations on what to do and how to do it - she can’t just run in, unless she wants her heroic venture to end before it even begins.
Another hesitant step forward. The heat, drawn forward by the breeze, stings her nostrils.
If she makes it through this, she thinks, with another step towards the blaze, it will make for a wonderful story; she just has to figure out what to do. Squinting into the bright heat of the blaze, she begins to scour the wildfire for shapes; certainly, there were other equines – amongst other creatures – that had been out exploring the woods when the fire started, and they certainly hadn’t all made it out. If she caught a glimpse of any of them, she might be able to help -
Or send them both spiraling to their doom, one.
In any case, it wasn’t in her nature to look away from tragedy, even in the interest of warning others – she was sure that someone else was already sounding the alarms, anyways. (It wasn’t as though a wildfire was inconspicuous.) She takes to prowling back and forth at what she deems just an appropriately safe distance from the snaking tendrils of flame, dancing back with each crawling, consuming step it takes towards her.
In the red-gold light, surrounded by a swirl of embers, she might as well have been wildfire herself.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Random Events
notes | pandora likes flirting with disaster.
