" everything inside me screams for just one more "
She is dreaming about running through the dark again. There are only miles, and miles, and miles of blackness stretching out before her and each step brings another quiver of weakness to her dream-legs. Her horn is dripping black ink and it's filling each hollow crease on her face. She can feel it, and it's the only sound she can heart in her dream-- the drip, drip, drip of black ink falling from her black nose to the black endless floor stretching out in horizon waves before her.
Drip, drip, drip.
Isra can still hear the sound when she wakes up. It's in the beat of the blood running through her veins and in the way the curtains are hitting the stone wall when the breeze blows through her open windows. Even when she blinks, and blinks, and blinks she cannot shake the sound of dripping ink, dripping black, dripping terror. She stretches and rises, hoping that moving out into the early night might fill her with fire-light and jasmine smoke instead.
The way down to her city is turning to gold and wheat-grass as she walks over stone, garden, and through the soft hangings fires leading the way. Constellations are flickering out stories above her head and smoke signals are rising up, up, up towards the moon. But she still feels like she's running through the dark, and there is a weight to the wind that has a sound (and it sounds like dripping).
You're needed. Run. Fable says in the silent sea between them. Isra inhales and and all the jasmine smoke on her lips starts to taste like panic. So she runs. Through the dark she runs again--
And runs, and runs, and runs.
Isra runs until she can spot Katniss and the body laying bloody and still beside her. The sight breaks her heart but she still does not stop until the gathered crowd parts at the sound of their queen running and her dragon swooping down to land on a nearby turret. It's not until she's close enough to count the wounds on Metaphor that she stops. Tears start to build in the corner of her eyes and each, when it falls, turns into a diamond that makes a sad sound when it falls to the stone.
Fable starts to keen. The sound makes Isra's heart ache and even that sounds like-- drip, drip, drip. Every inch of her is pouring out sorrow and it's black, blacker than black. It's times like these she thinks there is no light to be had in this world. (or at least not until she blows the sky off and pulls the moon down to the sea).
“Tell me what you need of me. Anything.” Even her words sound as cracked as all the pieces of her are becoming. Isra wants to offer solace, and love, and vengeance. She wants to tear down the world as much as she wants to rebuild it. But now all she can do is step closer when Katniss pulls away from Metaphor (oh Metaphor!). And as much as she wants to brush her nose across Katniss's dirt stained shoulder she does not.
Because Isra is afraid, oh she's so afraid, that she has forgotten how to heal.
Below her hooves the earth ripples and shivers like a snake who has not decided which skin to shed.
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