[P] unbraiding the sun

[Sabine]

for those who dream of stranger worlds,  S A B I N E ♥ Though she had expected his initial question, she had not expected his second.  Dread finds her, carrying a scythe like its cousin. It is a cruel shepherd; fastening a collar tight around her neck as though she were a sacrificial lamb chosen for slaughter. For she bleeds beneath a swarming black doubt, leaking breath and life with every step she takes toward the capital. What is she going to do when she finds him? What are you going to do, Sabine? What are you going to do? Her truth is shameful and bleak and brings her naivety to light faster than she can hide it. Because she hadn't thought that far. It was impossible to think that far. How could she think of what she was going to do, what she was going to say, when the world was wearing its skin inside out? Nothing in her small, careful life made sense anymore. Because black bloodthirsty moths had torn great holes in the lining and no matter how hard she tried to sew her little world back together, she could not keep the happiness from spilling, spilling, spilling out. As her feet sink like stone obelisks into the sand, she thinks of what she would say to Raum. Raum. She has never thought of him as anything other than Papa, but that loving name does not belong to the man who gouged throats from the souls she cherished or brought once-great nations to their knees. Papa is the smell of frankincense and cigar-smoke, he is the early morning of her childhood and the glint of her first blade. She does not know the creature who stands now at the helm of Solterra. The girl might have wept if it were not for the present emptiness swimming in her heart. "I don't know." Too young, too tender, she doesn't know anything.  And when she looks up again at this stranger clothed in speckled alabaster, she wonders if he might know instead. The words fall from her mouth before she can stop them, "you see, though his body talks and moves and breathes, I think my father is dead."

art created by chrystalunicorn | table by kezz