HOW DOES A MYTH COME TO BE?
Iscariot hears the girl coming, hears the sands shifting as she moves. Her dark ears twist back toward the noise; one dirty amber eye drifts open, and as her ears flick the golden web and bright fist of sapphire between them shudder slightly, as if activated by the movement. The sand and the sea whisper to her oh-so-sweetly, and she feels it like a song running through each and every hollow bone.
She sighs, and the exhale runs through her like electricity. The steps come closer and closer, and when they start to ring in her ears, she finally sits up, a waterfall of blue-white sand sloughing from her shoulders and ribs. Her dark hair is a tangled mess, snarled with salt and leaves, and as she shakes it, the bones ensnared in her curls rattle like the sound of drums. In the dark night, her eyes glow a furious gold.
Not many Ilati still remain…
Iscariot surges instantly to her feet.
The girl across the beach is black like ink, black like oil, black like the places where Iscariot isn’t sick yet. Her eyes are a blue that chills Iscariot almost to the bone, and her black, black hair is studded with feathers, bones and beads of gold. Her voice is deep and dark and sweet and cold, and Iscariot’s heart is burning now in her chest. She listens and her pulse trembles. Ilati—how long’s it been since she met one of her own? Even heard of them?
“I’m not from here.” By far the simplest explanation, though not the most thorough or even the most honest; but Iscariot is tired, tired and homesick, and even the though of explaining her mother and Marbas makes her feel a little sick. Novus still feels like a bad dream, like a prison with invisible bars, and as she watches the stranger Iscariot realizes, maybe for the first time, that she is not comfortable here. She blinks faintly. “But my mother was Ilati. I did not realize it was so…”
Her voice fails, and she smiles. In the night, only her burning eyes and blue-white teeth are visible, the rest of her narrow form painted in perfect shadow. “Obvious.”
