elif
Patience has never been a virtue of Elif’s and she does not possess it now, not with every line of her body taut and expectant, every ounce of bright blood hot despite the bite in the air, the snow blue in the shadows of the court. Still she holds her tongue, and she does not even have to fight to do it: there is much to see, after all. Gods and queens and giants with ragged teeth stitched across their chests. Mocking words and proud ones and the clanging-bell voice of Solis.
Oh, it is a morning to tell children about - and there is no thought of if they win. How could they not? Their god is on their side.
She is secure in her certainty, then, and fighting as though against a bit to begin - but even so her eyes keep drawing skyward, to where that dark figure circles and circles. For this she misses the strange illusions, mad little snatches of worlds, cast at Apolonia’s feet; for it she misses the glances between the others. Elif is not the type who could divine such things like innards or stars, anyway.
It drives at her like a biting fly, that shape, and so as soon as Solis steps forward and nods for them to follow she takes to the air. Elk, she hears, and causing this blizzard, and then she is rising fast enough and far enough that the wind cannot bring more to her ears, though it tries.
Below her is the shining expanse of desert, glistening under the newborn sun. Tears sting her eyes, and cold sets her teeth, but still she dogs that black pegasus, driven on by each beat of her stubborn heart. Oh, but he does not look back, that she might see his face - she is only taunted by each flare of his wings, the wind coursing off of his feathers.
She is almost upon him - until he dives.
Like a hunting hawk she follows, falling into a stoop, and the blinding white ground rushes up toward her. Before her is the pegasus, and before him is a stranger shape yet - blue, with arching antlers, with frost following in each footstep.
Only when she sees it does she pull back, flaring out her wings and stopping her dive; her wool collar is snug around her throat, a blood-bright reminder of who she is. Though her body cries out to attack, the bay only watches them both - the dark man and the blue monster - and waits poised to charge at either.
