[P] fear makes the wolf look bigger

[Sabine]

s a b i n e a bird held down by skin First, she had walked. Now, she ran.  Out of that hellish hallowed room where glass sung and memories died, down steps that sniggered and snapped in bald hope that she might fall, and out - out - out into the heat of midday. The city groans under the pressure of the sun, for even in the nook of spring Solterra burns like Chernobyl.  She is stunned by the wall of torridity, brought to a withering sliding halt at the neck of a yawning courtyard, but she does not, cannot, linger long. She won't stay here, in this strange salt-licked graveyard where her father wears the face of Hades and she can practice the numeracy he'd taught her on the bulbous ribs of his people. Her mother's people. A godless people.  Sabine thinks Solis does not love his creation, for if he did, he would not have left it to die. As she clacks on into the desolate square, her heart thudding like a cricket bat in pinching discomfort at just how loud her hooves sound against Solterra's stifling silence, she is blinded by the vision of him. She does not see his rage, or his vitriol, or even his blatant wicked bloodlust. As she pushes on into a feverish canter, blue horns refracting the terrible sunlight, Sabine can see only the look on his face when she told him Rhoswen was gone --  the grief of the moon upon the final setting of the sun. She's flying now, because she does know how to stop her heart from devouring itself or how to bring back her mother so that Raum might love again. Past spilled decaying fruit from markets abandoned, past sunken eyes that gawk in shadows and past the guards that had laughed at her lunacy.  The girl makes it all of five stabbing strides out of the gates and into the desert before the very existential force that had driven her out of that throneroom sends her plummeting into the sand. Her knees sink into the dune, and she does not fight back the tears as she watches her life drift up into the sky; a helium balloon carrying the ashes of time.

art created by rhiaan

@ipomoea