“The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.”
The irony is crushing. Heartbreaking. It turns him cold.
He has never felt as alive as he does right now, here above it all. He will never feel quite this alive again. On one side, thick sheets of snow roll out beneath them, bunching up against the mountains. On the other, the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see.
Michael is breathless to see it, that beast that calls his name day and night, and he thinks that if he has ever seen a singular God it is this deep and still sea that sings to him even when he is hundreds of miles out of its reach.
At some point, Isra ties his thick hair up in a scarf that she waves out of a daydream. At some point, she laughs and he feels like he might pop. Michael says nothing. He is watching the sea and thinking to himself that its horizon is flat and endless, even from way up here.
Before them: the smell of spices and burning wood.
Above them: the scream of a dragon.
Below them: Chaos.
Michael’s heart drops straight into his stomach. His first thought is Oh no, and his second thought is Isra– as he turns to search for her eyes and he knows he will find nothing that he wants in them because she has been baptised in blood and her teeth are sharp and hungry and Michael knows now more than he had even moments ago that she would burn all of Novus to the ground if she had to. He thinks, even as Fable swoops low and Isra surges forth like a dam breaking, that she may have to.
He thinks, on her behalf, that this isn’t fair. It makes him sad. Then it makes him angry. Then it starts a fire in Michael that burns like the city burns, first just a heat that licks at his heels but by the time he and Fable have clattered to the ground Michael is a roaring wildfire and the fury of him sucks the oxygen straight from his lungs.
Michael takes off at a run, glancing at the direction in which Fable leaves as he does. He is a golden locomotive bathed red by his world burning around him and when he does finally come to a stop it is in the midst of a growing and increasingly chaotic crowd. Some are in flight, away. He turns to the ones that remain.
“Fable is coming to help,” he tells them but doesn’t know if it’s loud enough, can’t hear anything because of the roaring in his ears and the smoke in his throat. Michael uses his telekinesis to also knot up his tail, bunching it against his hocks in messy loops, then lopes out to assess the damage that’s already been done.
He has never felt as alive as he does right now, here above it all. He will never feel quite this alive again. On one side, thick sheets of snow roll out beneath them, bunching up against the mountains. On the other, the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see.
Michael is breathless to see it, that beast that calls his name day and night, and he thinks that if he has ever seen a singular God it is this deep and still sea that sings to him even when he is hundreds of miles out of its reach.
At some point, Isra ties his thick hair up in a scarf that she waves out of a daydream. At some point, she laughs and he feels like he might pop. Michael says nothing. He is watching the sea and thinking to himself that its horizon is flat and endless, even from way up here.
Before them: the smell of spices and burning wood.
Above them: the scream of a dragon.
Below them: Chaos.
Michael’s heart drops straight into his stomach. His first thought is Oh no, and his second thought is Isra– as he turns to search for her eyes and he knows he will find nothing that he wants in them because she has been baptised in blood and her teeth are sharp and hungry and Michael knows now more than he had even moments ago that she would burn all of Novus to the ground if she had to. He thinks, even as Fable swoops low and Isra surges forth like a dam breaking, that she may have to.
He thinks, on her behalf, that this isn’t fair. It makes him sad. Then it makes him angry. Then it starts a fire in Michael that burns like the city burns, first just a heat that licks at his heels but by the time he and Fable have clattered to the ground Michael is a roaring wildfire and the fury of him sucks the oxygen straight from his lungs.
Michael takes off at a run, glancing at the direction in which Fable leaves as he does. He is a golden locomotive bathed red by his world burning around him and when he does finally come to a stop it is in the midst of a growing and increasingly chaotic crowd. Some are in flight, away. He turns to the ones that remain.
“Fable is coming to help,” he tells them but doesn’t know if it’s loud enough, can’t hear anything because of the roaring in his ears and the smoke in his throat. Michael uses his telekinesis to also knot up his tail, bunching it against his hocks in messy loops, then lopes out to assess the damage that’s already been done.
