The wind should feel like a promise of horror against her skin. Each grain of sand should feel like a bullet of dust when it slams into her like a million, small needles hungry for blood. The storm, the howling wind, the way the sand sings of death and destruction should make her feel anything but free.
But it does. It does. It does.
It feels like freedom whipping against her in lashes of sand and dark promises. Each howl of wind makes her smile brighter, and brighter, until it's ivory slashing through her red lips instead of teeth. Thana feels monstrous and feral. She feels like death magic and rift magic formed into flesh. She feels more whole than she has ever felt in this world she's searching endlessly.
Her hooves carry her fearlessly through the storm. She doesn't know to be cautious of the sand, of the dunes ripping at her ankles that might swallow her whole. All she feels is freedom and wildness and she laughs when the wind rips at her smile like claws. Below the wind the groaning starts, and she can feel the sand roiling beneath her with something other than wind and storm-promise.
Thana can feel then how hungry that thing rolling in the sand is. She can feel it pulsing through the sand like a heartbeat. It's a hunger she knows for it beats and sing and rages in the hollow places in her body. She recognizes it in the way that all monsters can sense each other in the darkness. There is no need to see the teeth to know they are there waiting.
She lowers her horn and her blade whines at her back when she swings her tail round and round like a hanging rope at her back. The wind still feels like freedom cracking against her skin. Everything about her is ready and waiting, like a lion poised in the tail grass with a dry, aching tongue that needs to be cooled with death.
Just as she's ready to step closer to the pulsing coil beneath the sand something collides hard and fast with her. It doesn't feel like freedom whipping against her now but war. She screams and whips around, the running and the storm made her too feral to turn his words quickly into meaning.
At first it's only her horn between them when she spins. Then it's her teeth pulled back in a lion's snarl. Her tail arc behind her like a cobra and her blade glints in what sunlight makes it through the sand spinning furiously behind them. But her fury cools almost as soon as it started because she she cannot taste whatever it is she's hunting for on his skin. “Why?” She says the moment she can make sense of his words through the freedom wind and her own fury.
She's still looking at him, tracing the spiral of his horn with her gaze. She's wondering who has the stronger horn. But the keening rises it pitch behind her and she trembles with the excitement with war. Thana swings her horn back towards the monster in the sand. It's grotesque and it rises a flood inside her when she looks at those strange teeth hanging in the black cave of its mouth. Her own teeth flash like stone as she sneers back it at.
Monster. Her heart beats out the name.
I know you. The wind whistling through her horn sings.
Shall we see which of us is the better beast? The blade on her tail asks in sharp sighs and glints of light on the tip of it.
Thana steps closer and the wind between her teeth still tastes like freedom.
@Jahin
