“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
The thought crosses her mind, as the cliffs start to tremble at low tide, that the earth has finally started to sing. Each bit of stone at her hooves is humming and chanting a song of creation. Her bones echo and ache with memories, and want, and then after she's run out of feelings...loneliness. All the gold at her sides, chiming like small bells, feels colder than the sea she's watching (and yet somehow hotter that the pillars of smoke rising like dragons).
There are horses moving along the shore finding comfort in their togetherness. There are horses on the cliffs watching the island before turning away from the smoke billowing towards them like an oil spill. Al'Zahra inhales. The sulfur, and the ash, and the char, tastes like home on her tongue. Her heart aches for the taste of it. Part of her yearns to toss herself into the smoke, to be free and as she once was, if only for a moment.
But there is still some comfort in being the last, in knowing that her bones burn for freedom. She wants to know what it feels like to be old and sway-backed. Mortality is a grand adventure and she's not ready to turn away from it.
So she dances for that island. She tastes each bit of smoke in the air and calls it, sister and sometimes brother. Until her lungs are heavy with exhaustion, and the wind is turning too quickly towards her and the smoke is coming for her not like a dragon but like a storm, she dances. She dances until her legs feel like rust underneath her and her mane is dry and wanting only some brine.
And when she turns away from the cliffs, her hooves ring like a bells peeling out not a farewell but a someday soon.
***STAFF EDIT
@'al'zhara' has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +20 signos
