someday i am going
to walk out of here free
to walk out of here free
N
owhere. Oh, that cannot possibly be true. Angharad cannot imagine a life in which she would have the luxury to go nowhere, and the scrawniness and fear she sees in this boy is doing nothing to convince her that he is any better off than she is. Her eyes narrow; she drops her head, wide and striped-dark, to a place where it is almost level with Abel’s. In the desert light, the bright blue of her gaze shines like ice. They are unnervingly contrasted against the black swath of hair seeping down from her eyes like tears.She does not lean back as he starts to climb toward her. No, the curl of her lip is not fear but amusement, that a skinny little thing like this is so confident accosting her. And yet there is something impressive about it: in another world, maybe, they could be two sides of a coin, a body and a shadow, each other’s tethered halves.
This is not anywhere close to that world.
Finally she sidesteps, so that he can fit next to her on the ledge. Not without some measure of hesitation. Up close he is almost worthy of pity - the way his hair falls so thinly against his neck, the sharpness of his hip bones against his skin, poking out like an arrowhead. The feminine instinct in her wants almost to put him out of his misery. But she is young, and not so hard-headed, and so she merely watches him and wishes she had been born a little less soft.
Hm, she answers. And still watches him - heavy-eyed, still against the brief wind, swishing her tail absent-mindedly against her back legs. That would only help if you knew what I was looking for.
Angharad cocks her head at him, wearing a dry kind of smirk. At her feet, underneath those dark, dished hooves, little pieces of desert brush start to curl, wilt and fall away to dust, and she pushes it over the edge of the ledge with nothing more than a little blink of surprise.
@abel | "speaks" | notes: text
