the blood on my teeth
begins to taste like a poem
begins to taste like a poem
T
he only good thing about Solterra, he supposed, was how easy it was to become lost in it.Toulouse could walk for days without seeing another soul, which made it the perfect place for certain meetings he had planned. As he walked beside the canyon walls, wandering along its deep gulch, there were few eyes present to witness his passing. And of those that were, most of them had long turned lifeless.
For a second he wonders if he’s truly looking at the dead, or the still-living. They all looked the same these days: gaunt and bloated, skin dull and manes raggedy. Their eyes were not much different, he thinks to himself as he steps around one of their corpses. They were glassy and wide, as if even if death they couldn’t look away from the tragedy that had befallen their Court.
There is no remorse in him, as he winds through the canyon. Only the weak or the stupid die like this. Did they not know better? They could have pledged their allegiance to the king, and in turn been fed and sheltered. Even if they disagreed with him, even if they wanted to kill him - after all, it was easier to dispose of someone when you were closer to them. They could have drank from his cup and bided their time, but instead they died without names, without stories, without anyone left to care.
The sun is hot against his back, the green scarves flowing against his sides providing little respite from it. Each step felt torturously slow; and when he looked ahead at the walls rising around him, it seems as if the canyon must go on forever, trapping him inside with the bodies of the forgotten. But he lifts his upper lip in a snarl, and lowers his head and continues on in defiance.
It’s only when he rounds a corner, stepping carefully around an outcropping of rock, that he sees her: bonded at her side, head bent over the bodies.
He could almost laugh. Toulouse recognizes her, although it’s been so long since he last saw her, standing outside a wall of trees built by the gods. She had not seemed then like the type to mourn the dead.
Perhaps there was still someone who cared.
“Did you know her?”
Do you know me?
There might have been a taunt in his voice, a hiss of violence hiding beneath all his layers of indifference. But if there was it was well hidden; his voice was sharp, but not unkind, not yet.
He sidles closer to the viper, and his green eyes look down, down to the mare’s orange mane, down to the dark slashes of markings across her face. And it is not lost on him the resemblance, and distantly he wonders if someday this mare, too, will join her sister in death.
@avdotya | "speaks" | notes: was actually going to use the other toulouse but i like this one more
