Thana looks at him drenched in firelight instead of saltwater, dusted in stars instead of war, and she understands. She could count all the way in which he is a king and she a unicorn with destruction a low, organ hum in her blood. Touching him feels like dying, like he's pulling every black thought through her skin and he's heedless of the fact that there will be nothing left.
If he traced that patch of lightning all she would have thought about was that other unicorn marked with a storm. If she scrapped her blade across his brow (like everything black thing in her is telling her to do) she would have wondered if he was thinking about her at all. Thana thinks he only sees the pieces and gives it a name so that it can be called another other than lost.
She wishes she didn't drop that scrap of paper dripping ink like blood. She wishes she dropped into into the fire and watched it burn down to nothing but black dust and char.
Asterion pulls away and she follows suit because she's still thinking dark, black things. “If there were any traditions I didn't bother to learn them.” Her voice grates against her own ears and she lashes them back to be lost in the wind-blown tangles of her mane. She doesn't tell him that all she knows of where she came from is, is, is....
Nothing.
The skin across her back feels like a fly is crawling down the dip of her spine. Thana shivers and it's not from the cold or the fire.
She shivers because she wants to drag both her lips and her blade across this king dusted in the night sky. The fire doesn't feel warm anymore and she wonders if she could kill flames like she kills flowers. Or would she kill it like she dreams of killing girls with feathers or boys with stars in their eyes?
Blood blooms like a flower across his skin and Thana thinks only of the heart in which it sings through. Her lips quiver with a smile, although she couldn't name the reason why it feels so terrible against her teeth. It feels like a lie. “Did you burn a wish?” Her voice waivers like a hawk in a hurricane, sharp and dying. Thana feels as unsteady as a seed in the stone.
She's still thinking about burning, and blood, and how everything blooms in her like a graveyard each time she looks at him.
@Asterion
