[P] til the day you cast a shadow;

[Sabine]

Sabine,

The boy's voice is gravel and grit and everything she might have once feared; for he was a chasm and chasms were never as empty as they seemed. Her father had taught her that with a hard stare and eyes that changed in the mist: blue to red to black to white, and on into shades she had never before seen. Sabine knows what empty things look like, and she knows that this dark little coyote too has learned well the value of emptiness and sin. She can see that his blood has turned grey like soot and dust, she can see it snaking through his veins with a listlessness that makes her skin itch and her heart shrink. What sky had he lived beneath? What did the earth feel like to him? Sabine wanted to reach out and touch the ribbons of stone that rode the rise of his shoulders, if only to see whether her lips would turn to lead. Of course, she did not.

"Because I have to be."

Sabi frowned the way a robin might at the sun, turning her small body away from him now so that she might once again scour the horizon for life. You could never be too careful in a place that sang and stank of death. For a moment she wants to say do you? Who told you that? Why? But the moment passes; it was not wise to pry -- not here, not now. Whilst her gaze remains fixed on the deluge of brittle gold, she replies softly, "Because I have to be here too..." she swallows, and closes her eyes as though in fear of hallucinating the sight of a man dressed in a ghost's gown, "perhaps you can help me? Hell might not seem so terrible with a guide."

(sad birds still sing.)

@abel | "speech" | notes: <3

rallidae