elif
Once, as a filly (well, even more of a filly than she is now, back when her wings were too fledgling to carry her) she had been out on the sandy hills near the city with her brother. They had come across a viper, a taut coil pale as its surroundings, and when Elif had surged forward her brother had snapped a wing in her way to stop her.
“Watch it,” he’d said, and Elif fell still; she had revered her brother even then, his words as holy to her as Solis’s. “See? It is afraid, it is only being defensive - watch its head, its tail, its eyes.” So they had observed the viper, the way it flattened its head, the way it leaned away from them, and Elif learned that day that even deadly things did not always seek to hurt.
It is a lesson that has served her well in Solterra, where almost all of them had teeth of their own; it is a lesson that serves her now, watching the lines of his shoulders, the subtle tightness of his expression.
Even so she must force herself from tensing in kind when he recoils, instead keeping her focus in wonder on his wings, the way they shimmer like a handful of gold dust. When he speaks one of her dark ears flicks forward, surprised by the timbre of his voice, and her vivid green eyes find his. “Why so long?” she asks, the words away before her manners catch her, and she might have blushed, then, picturing the way her mother would reprimand her impudence. Still, she has not the modesty to lower her gaze. “Only I cannot imagine going more than a day without riding the wind.” To be grounded - oh, she might as well be tied. Even now her wings ruffle and resettle along her sides, as though alarmed at the thought.
But it is forgotten at his next question, as her head lifts, her smile blooming like a desert rose, proud as an eagle. “I was born to her,” she says, as if it is a mighty honor, and tells herself it is not an insult that he even had to ask. She tilts her chin at him, then, sunlight bright on her sharp cheekbones, all curious. “Have you never been here before? A lucky thing you found this place - it is the only water for miles.”
@Aion
