She is a million different pieces standing before him and a hundred blood-white drops of water. Each piece is a hollowed out spiral of bone, blood and flesh. Each sings in her like the wind and the water make music from her horn. Each pieces hurts a little, like glass dragged across stone, when she starts to close the distance between them.
Every blade of grass that touches her dies, melted down to black rot and decay. The sharp shard of her that is mortal hunger sobs and cries in her chest. It's a silent death knell of wanting and hunger. Thana wants sweet grass and water made of light to flood the dry desert of her throat. She wants fury and blood and the pieces of his body broken beneath her like dead, bright leaves.
But when he says why all she can do is lift her eyes with her horn casting shadows across her like the base of a cross. There is nothing in the world that she wants more than the word that comes after why. She wants it more than rage and grass. She wants it more than death. Thana would happily pluck the words out from his skin if it meant that she could know. “Who.” The word is more the demand of lighting through a black sky than it is a question.
“Who do I look like?” The grass keeps dying under her hooves and the light keeps dripping from the hollows of her horn like blood. Soon the distance is smaller between them and her eyes are bright enough to be small, amethyst flames in those deep shadows cast by her horn and her hair. The gemstone on her brow makes a tapping sound when she impatiently tosses her dead like a lion.
All those pieces of her are still grinding like glass on stone and she quivers with pain, hunger and fury.
She almost tells him that she is Thana. But with all those words that might come after why she's not sure who she is anymore. All she's sure of is that she is hungry and that there is some brightness in her eyes she needs to wish on like a star and like bright water.
Thana doesn't even notice how he protects his heart like she's the monster and he the light.
@Asterion
