Isra and her thoughts of war
“then you speak it like it's a still-beating heart clenched in your fist ”
“then you speak it like it's a still-beating heart clenched in your fist ”
A
A million thoughts are running through her head in pillars of spiced smoke. There are maps blooming out in the space behind her eyes like blots of ink. Weapons are etching runes into surface of her bones. All of the trees start to look like arrows and blades jutting into the canopy instead of something mighty and full of life. This journey up the mountainside does not feel to Isra like a pilgrimage. It feels like a rising, like she is flame and smoke and the mountain nothing more than a pile of dried wood begging to burn.
Each step blurs into the next and they're still walking. She's as aware of Seraphina's introspection as she is her own whirlpool of change that's dragging her under. Fable is a steady current at their side and each wolf and cougar in the woods only watches them pass with something like wariness staying their predator wants. The ground slopes up and up and Isra still thinks not of gods but of magic and the beast it's becoming inside her bones. (she thinks of rage too, always rage).
And if the pebbles turn to bits of rust and bone at her hooves who is there left to blame for the beast?
She wants to swallow the story when Seraphina asks it off her. She wants to drown all the words in blackness and silence. Isra doesn't want to think of anything but fury now. She doesn't want to cry. But she's still a storyteller (though she wants to be war) and the words are already pooling like magma and rock against the ivory of her teeth. So she narrows her gaze to nothing but the span of Fables wings and the darkness gathering there.
The words start to pour out like ash and she tries so very hard to not think of them as anything more than words. “It started out as a disagreement between only he and I on what motivates those with empty bellies and broken-hearts. I did not think violence would be the only answer for them.” Something in her own gaze shatters when she realizes that all she has left now is violence-- violence, magic and a dragon. All she has is hope of revenge and that maybe, just maybe, peace might come in the shadow of Raum's grave. “Perhaps if I didn't turn his blade to a daisy only words would have lived in the space between us. But I did and he attacked and the war between us was mounted.” This time when she looks away from Fable her eyes catch on the sleek shine of gold in the dim light. They blaze a little brighter, a little more like a sea lit by a hundred falling stars.
“I should have killed him then and then Acton, my first friend in this place, would still be alive and your court would have been safe.” And oh, her look promises a thousand injuries destined to be carved out on skin pale as bone. All her regret has turned to rage and all her rage to purpose that pulses like a sun in her bones. “He used a boy to drug and steal me away at the end of the midsummer festival. I awoke in a cave on this mountain.” She swallows all the details that might suggest the existence of that wickedness lurking in her skin. That part she's still saving for war (hoping that perhaps she might drain it out of her with the drops of Raum's suffering).
Her eyes still blaze when Fable interrupts with a soft huff and the thought, there are statues up ahead, they look broken.. Isra remembers then that this, for Seraphina, is more than just a path to the battlefield. The brightness in her gaze gentles as much as it can, becoming a moon instead of a burning star. She tries to smile too but it's too tense to be soft. “I hope your god can help you.” Her voice falls short to the silence because what she wants to say is that, even if your god does nothing for you I will, I promise I will.
But she knows how hot the fire of religion can burn. Once she believed in the sea and the night, now she only believes in unicorns and dragons. And so she looks back into the gloom and shadows like she imagines a protector might.
Isra and her dragon begin their waiting, and between them runs not comfort but plans for the coming war.
@Seraphina | "speaks" | notes: <3
