Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.
The woman stares and stares and stares. A thing half dead and hardly knowing it – a thing half dead and knowing it too well. “Our dead walk,” Daphne had told her once, casual and cruel with it. “Wings fail when spirits die, but the body can go on.” It was a terrible thing to say, Ianthe realizes now that she is trapped on the ground and living every moment of it, but she looks at this shell of a woman and feels a shiver of fear down her back all the same.
A sun explodes and all the air rushes from her lungs in a soundless exclamation. One wing flares wide and the other flinches violently until a different fear stills it. White splashes across her eyes and dots her vision even as she tries to blink it away, breathing a half-panicked rhythm. The dead walk, she can’t help but think hysterically, and she can’t see.
But the blindness it a temporary thing, and the woman stares through it, stares without seeing, and somehow that does nothing for Ianthe’s nerve. She raises her head and curls her neck, draws her one wing into threat position, and her feathers bristle in a combination of fear and warning. Don’t come closer, she says without saying and curses herself for wandering the mountain trails alone while she is still so vulnerable.
And then the woman is looking, responding with a voice made of gravel and rage. Bexley, the woman says, and it takes a moment to register it as a name, not helped by the demand that follows immediately after. Half dead, dragging herself through life, against that Ianthe knows she can win if it comes to a fight.
With that decided Ianthe huffs, drops her head and tucks in her wing, almost rolling her eyes. Really? The half dead heretic is going to act like this? What a tool.
“At the capitol, last I looked.” Slow moving or not, the General was currently organizing a war effort. Didn’t exactly lead to being able to trot hither and tither outside of important war meetings. “If you want a meeting I’m sure she’ll see you, but we should probably feed you before you die.” Rushing important information to Moira was one thing, getting part way through and leaving the rest to conjecture because you dropped dead was entirely another.
“You look awful.” She clarified, just in case Bexley hadn’t noticed.
A sun explodes and all the air rushes from her lungs in a soundless exclamation. One wing flares wide and the other flinches violently until a different fear stills it. White splashes across her eyes and dots her vision even as she tries to blink it away, breathing a half-panicked rhythm. The dead walk, she can’t help but think hysterically, and she can’t see.
But the blindness it a temporary thing, and the woman stares through it, stares without seeing, and somehow that does nothing for Ianthe’s nerve. She raises her head and curls her neck, draws her one wing into threat position, and her feathers bristle in a combination of fear and warning. Don’t come closer, she says without saying and curses herself for wandering the mountain trails alone while she is still so vulnerable.
And then the woman is looking, responding with a voice made of gravel and rage. Bexley, the woman says, and it takes a moment to register it as a name, not helped by the demand that follows immediately after. Half dead, dragging herself through life, against that Ianthe knows she can win if it comes to a fight.
With that decided Ianthe huffs, drops her head and tucks in her wing, almost rolling her eyes. Really? The half dead heretic is going to act like this? What a tool.
“At the capitol, last I looked.” Slow moving or not, the General was currently organizing a war effort. Didn’t exactly lead to being able to trot hither and tither outside of important war meetings. “If you want a meeting I’m sure she’ll see you, but we should probably feed you before you die.” Rushing important information to Moira was one thing, getting part way through and leaving the rest to conjecture because you dropped dead was entirely another.
“You look awful.” She clarified, just in case Bexley hadn’t noticed.
