elif
It was difficult for Elif to contemplate the end of the world.
It wasn’t that she was a sensible girl - no one who knew her could accuse her of that. It was more that she wasn’t fanciful, having been taught from a young age the brutal realities of life in the desert. While perhaps this should mean she was well-used to contemplating destruction, instead she more assumed life would continue as it always had. The desert was hot. Fall came with long, hard rains. The wheel turned.
But now all the strange things in the world were beginning to live outside the girl’s head. Mazes built from magic, gods who made jokes with queens and drove winter out of the court of the sun. And then Raum, and now the volcano. It was too much for her.
And so she’d fled. Oh, her heart was still on the beach with all that throng of horses, and she knew she would join them soon, but Elif needed something safe, something known. Without a thought her wings carried her swift as morning to the oasis, and the wind buoyed her, and she didn’t think of the way the whip coiled at her side could do nothing against a natural disaster because she didn’t think at all.
That is why she was almost upon the figure before she noticed him.
Elif’s gaze had been on the water, staring like a blue eye up at the mirror of the sky above, and not on who stood at the edge of it. She was descending, the wind a great noise in her ears, her eyes stinging with the cold air and bright glare of the water. It was only a flash of gold that caught her eye, and as soon as she realized what that fan of wings meant Elif threw out her own. As she drew in a sharp breath her small magic pushed the wind up, up to stop her.
She made far from a graceful landing a few yards away from him, landing hard on her hind hooves like a bronco after a kick of particular gusto. The beat of her wings stirred up all the sand and winter-withered grass and Elif had to bite back a sneeze.
Worst of all was how, for a long moment after, she could only gape like a fish at the stranger.
At last she managed to work her expression into something less mortifying. No part of him snagged her first - not the striking gold against his dark skin, not the double wings she had only ever seen on Caine, not his tremendous size. The whole of him, and the near shock of nearly landing on top of him, hit her like a punch.
Yet Elif did not reel. She eyed him with her green eyes spring-bright, and then she shook like a dog and met his eye.
“Nice day,” she said.
