I KNOW BY HEART THE SALT AND SMOKE
ELIXIR OF YOUR NECK AND FINGERS
The end of the world does not scare her.ELIXIR OF YOUR NECK AND FINGERS
Angharad is not allowed to be afraid because she is not allowed to be her own. Her own anything. All of her is formed from perfect clay, her eyes sweet jewels, her heart a tough stone, and Una would frown upon her if that clay or jewel or stone were to feel anything but duty. Even the thought of it makes Angharad tense. She cannot afford to be afraid — to be anything but obedient — and so when the first tongue of smoke fills the sky, black lapping up the blue like a dog, she is not perturbed. Only confused.
It reminds her a little of her birth. When she crawled from the carcass, a maggot from a piece of overripe fruit, the sky was filled with smoke like this. Smoke so thick it lay across the ground like a blanket, twisted its thick fingers around the bodies and the tree trunks, choked and ran like watery silt into her lungs. But it had not burned. Angharad was made in fire and almost certainly will die in it. She wonders, as she watches the plumes of black smog rise like spires into the bright-red day, if this particular explosion is nothing more than Una calling her to the grave.
Then she realizes how selfish that thought is, and briefly admonishes herself for it before starting toward the sea.
There is already a crowd forming on the cliffs; she can see it, a writhing dark blob against the sea as more and more filter in toward the volcano. Angharad is not sure what they expect to find except for a mirror to the end of the world, but that is not her problem. She is only here to gather information. To watch closely. To look, with sharp bright eyes, for aureate skin, for pure-white hair, for a wreath of perfect gold around a neck that begs to be snapped — Bexley.
Angharad is too new to know anything of Acton, of Raum, of the war that brews between Solterra and its god, live there though she might. She is too young to imagine what it might feel like to die. She does not fear the way the air has grown dark around her, nor the way it tugs at her hair with a hard, hot breath; it only makes her feel a little more alive, stirs the pulse in her chest to a more rapid song.
Up ahead the ocean starts to tangle with a wall of ivy, and Angharad strides toward it as if she is sure it will bend down before here. Under her feet, where her hair brushes the ground and shimmers with bare gold, the ground seems to curl into an even darker black, as if rotting away under her magic weight.
<3!
STAFF EDIT***
@angharad has rolled a 2! She has been awarded +40 signos.
