little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.
the Indian's axed your scalp.
From the moment she’d turned away and put her back to that black and roiling cloud, guilt had begun to gnaw at her. It was a fat cat lying across her shoulders, a hot, self-satisfied weight. You coward, it whispered, well-pleased; you’re absolutely right to run away.
O wouldn’t run, she knew - neither would Caine - neither would Veer, for that matter, and by the time she landed sweat-slick and ash-grainy on her own quiet window-ledge she was near to seething with herself. But oh! she thought as she paced, stiff-legged, it had been too much! All the birds had been fleeing, too, even as the horses gathered on the beach, and Elif had let herself become the small and fearful girl she’d fought so hard against.
When at last she forced herself to sleep, she was resolved: when she woke, whatever was waiting there at the edge of the sea, she would meet it with the others.
She was a little bemused, then, to wake and find the sky a bright and spring-like blue. But now her curiosity was the hungriest thing in her, and as she surged back into that clear expanse she did not spare a look for her court, once more crouched under tyranny, once more threatened by disaster.
At first she tried to fly out to that sunken island, and the end of that long strange bridge. She did not trust the water, not like she did the air and the wind (elements she had been born to, elements that she was sure loved her back). But the air grew thick and slow and her wing-beats each more ponderous and heavy than the last until she was forced down, to land with a new nervousness among the throng of horses. That worry fluttered like a moth in her throat, made her green eyes wary and watchful; she did not see anyone she knew. Elif was grateful for the band of scarlet snug around her throat, for the wind that brushed her wing-tips when she whispered come.
And so she joined the long, long march to the end of Novus.
There were prayers all around her, but Elif offered none of her own. Perhaps this was a path built by the gods, she thought, but she no longer has the surety she was born with; such uncertainty felt like standing on quicksand, like feeling an eruption beneath your feet. But once they reached the wall - before she dared fly up to find the end to those strange vines, before she thought if it was just another maze, before she put her mouth to that strange fruit - another pegasus caught her eye, her dark mouth moving, her eyes alight. Elif drifted near enough to catch her question.
“I’m not sure I want to be standing here when it does,” she said, and almost shivered.
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STAFF EDIT***
@elif has rolled a 3, and has been awarded +80 signos!/blockquote>
