Isra doesn't know when she started fighting for something more than her own emotions.
Once all she wanted to be was brave, something more than a ghost running with bones beneath her hooves through the mountains. All she hoped to feel was a fire in her belly that whispered to her of walking, of looking up towards the moon and seeing something other than stars that looked like silver tears in the darkness. Each step she took once felt like a dying night, glory (so much glory) that had nothing left to do but end.
Once she wanted to be full of nothing more than love. The organ in her ribs pulsed and it beat in a steady lub, lub, lub. Then it ached in a steady song that that spelled, E-i-k. Her eyes shined with only bonfires and tiny dragon wings. Each day a dream came to her of magic, of her shining city by the sea, of love enough to live, and live, and live. And the moon always brought with it more wonder, more love.
Once. Once. Once. Isra doesn't know what it is now that makes her fight against the eternal call of the distant sea. Once she knew. But oh, oh she knows almost nothing now. She is fighting though, oh she is fighting.
All she knows is the way Eik paints a fire across her skin that she once wanted to fill her belly. There is a dream in each of his kisses that makes her want to lay her head down on a pillow and never greet the sun again. This is the sea on which she wants to drown, somewhere in all that fire spreading fast and furious between them. Isra doesn't know if she's burning with the dregs of anger and the smoldering coals of justice, or if she's on fire with love, sorrow and briny graves.
She. Is. Just. Burning.
“Don't.” The word is painted on him with sharp kissed filled with the fading acid burn of poison. Isra burns it into the flesh of his hip with all the heat of her love as he turns from her. If she should she would etch it across his bones with magic, so that they might never kiss and say I'm sorry to each other again.
Isra isn't sorry. She's not sorry that the monster himself was foolish enough to forge the blade that would cut out his heart. Isra will never be sorry for that.
Fable though, as all dragons do, knows exactly what it is he's ready to go to war for. The sea might be his world, the deep dark the blackness that soothes away the wildness of him. Isra is his. Raum hurt her. Raum will die. He's not sure why his unicorn and this gray horse are full of apologizes and second thoughts. To him it's all black and white, sunlight sea and deep sea. But he still says, You're welcome. to the stallion because he thinks that the horse needs to hear the words. And his touch is ocean cold and salted when he brushes his nose across the stallion's brow like a mountain oak brushes the wind.
Isra, with the wildness in her eyes, steps forward towards Eik when he turns back. She brushes a kiss across his dirty cheek and there's cave-dust on her lips.
Isra, the weapon forged, is never stepping backwards again.
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