A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY
Up he climbs toward her, paying her no more mind than a shadow on the wall, watching instead his feet as he picks his way among rocks and ledges. A little lizard skitters into a crevice no wider than his hoof but what must, to it, be a cave; he wishes he was so small, to make the world full of hiding-places.
The only surprise he shows is in a little blink when he reaches her, when she shuffles aside to make room. He might have done the same thing if she had instead pushed him, or butted him with those fine arching horns. Instead they stand beside each other and he looks back for a moment, the way they had both come. There isn’t much of their path left to see; too many curves, too much red rock. A wind gusts through the canyon like the breath of a witch.
His mouth feels dry, gritted with dust and sand. If he licked is teeth Abel isn’t sure he’d find enough moisture to spit.
Though he is still young - still growing - here in Solterra he feels as though his body is echoing the barren places of his mind. It dries him out, it withers him, it makes each cell parched in the same way that his loneliness is a yawning desert. If he is not careful, he thinks, anything could blow him away.
He is not sure why he still clings, a stubborn root.
Abel does not avert his gaze, not even as the wind whines between them, threatening his eyes with more sand. At last he nods, just a little, like a dead winter bloom bobbing its head in the wind. “Yes,” he agrees, and says nothing more. When little bits of dried-out scrub flake and crumble at her feet there is no surprise in him, and he only glances mildly as she pushes it away and the wind takes it, greedy.
It has taken him no time at all to learn that everything dies in the desert, just as it did at home.
@Angharad
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