little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.
the Indian's axed your scalp.
Aion, he says, a mouthful of vowels that round out the word like wind filling billowing fabric, and something in the name makes Elif think of time. Of a circle, curling around itself forever and ever, of eternity.
You’re thinking eon, her brother might have said, laughing - but her brother is dead and Elif doesn’t know what she’s thinking, except that she will not forget his name, even if he comes from Delumine where (she is told) the horses are as soft and peaceful as daisies, bobbing graceful heads in golden fields. She has never seen a daisy, but she could always picture it - but he does not seem like a soft man. Not in that way.
As if echoing her thoughts, he speaks again, saying she is not hard. The little mare slants an ear at him, unsure; in her mind (where she is no noble but something quick and brave and fearsome) it is almost an insult. But he had not said it that way, with a smirk, or the glint of anything cruel in his eyes. She had looked for them and found something else instead, and so she settles her restless, sharp tongue and does not lean away when he curls in close.
His words blow cool, or maybe it is his skin, or maybe it is only the wind, a wind that comes from beyond Solterra and still has the breath of something else. “The records in the capital go back more than a hundred years of rulers,” she says, wishing she had paid more attention at history lessons - too easy, for her and those of her age, to prefer to focus on the bloody wars and the shining golden conquests. “But it must be far older than that. I heard from a merchant once there are trees in Novus almost a thousand years old. How could that be measured?” She laughs, as though the idea is ridiculous, but she shivers, too, a little shiver of her skin as on a stream with a pike passing just underneath the surface.
There is still no mocking in his eyes, when she meets them again, no sign that he finds her a fool the way so many adults seem to. And when the stallion speaks again, his words are just as fanciful, and they delight her, despite the doubt of it that must be part of her belief in Solis, a belief that has not yet begun to wear away, little grains of sand that are the beginnings of erosion.
“Yes,” she says, playing along, “and maybe we all breathed under water and loved it, and we can’t anymore, and that is why so many Solterrans seem angry all the time.” Before shyness can overcome her, she reaches over to nudge his shoulder, a brief touch like a proving. Then she pulls away, and the desert bathes her in warmth again, wrapping her in golden arms. She is struck by a sudden urge to walk the markets, with their sharp scents of spice and undulating music, the streets holding the sun-baked warmth long into the cooling night. Elif is still new to being along, always giving in to each whim.
“I’m going back to the city,” she tells him, though there is doubt in it when she looks again at those golden, dragonfly-thin wings. “It was good to meet you, Aion. Don’t forget where this place is, and perhaps I’ll see you again. May the winds favor you.” Almost shyly - like a girl again, and not a half-wild thing, she inclines her narrow head in a little bow.
And then (for she hates goodbyes, the way they’re too formal, or hardly necessary, or maybe, terribly, permanent) she turns away, bursting into a gallop, churning the sand behind her and feeling the last of the sun on her shoulders, faster and faster until the wind is a whine in her ears until at last she snaps wide her wings. Down she thrusts them, and down again, the process her body knows as well as it knows to circulate blood, to pump the heart, to fill and empty the lungs. And Elif soars.
@Aion is a lovely man <3 (ignore the html switch, someday I won't be too lazy to fix that one)
