A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY
The desert is a little better after dark.
Gone is the punishing sun, the hard stare that makes sweat bead down his back regardless of the breeze, that makes him wonder if Solis is still there and watching. (Surely not, surely if any of the gods still cast their eye over Novus one of them would have spoken by now, struck them all down).
In the dark it feels almost as cool as Denocte, though even when he closes his eyes it is nothing like home, not without the scent of salt over everything and the distant sigh of the sea. He misses the alleys he’d known, the cast of each shadow memorized, the torchlight and the bonfire-smoke. At least in the darkness he can forget his name.
For tonight he is only an enforcer, only one more of Raum’s followers. He stalks the windswept streets and most of them are empty. It is hard to argue with a Ghost, he thinks, and harder to argue with a monster - even the thought of the basilisk sends an instinctual shiver wending up his dark spine.
He finds as he walks that he is learning each corner, each intersecting street. He finds as he walks that he doesn’t mind the silence, even with the way the wind moans as it follows him, the way it tugs his hair like a mother might.
Abel rounds a corner and there she is: tall and slender with a face pale as a moon. He can tell from here how young she is (never mind that he is only a boy, too - he has not felt like a boy since he was weaned). The bay lowers his head with a soft huff of breath, stirring the sand beneath his feet, silver as powdered glass in the starlight. And then he makes a beeline for her, his silver eyes empty empty empty, and stops just short of her shoulder.
“It’s after curfew. You shouldn’t be out.” Even Abel is not sure if it is rebuke or warning.
@Evangelina
x | x
