There is smoke pooling in her nose and scratching at the back of her throat like wings each time she inhales. Isra shouldn't feel like laughing but she does. Perhaps if she wasn't always feeling so reckless now it would be different. There is still a war drumming low and heavy in her chest and her magic roaring like a tide in her blood. So when she laughs it's not quite glass bell soft.
If the sea could laugh it would sound like Isra.
Fable swoops low as a hawk. The wind starts to smell a little like brine. “Fable will put it out, but he's terribly inaccurate so we should hurry home.” Isra can't help the way her eyes keep aching to look upward to her dragon as heavy drops of salt-water start to fall across her back. Something terrible and awful inside her welcomes those drops of salt and cool-water. Something craves it. Isra tries to bury that part of her, and each time is harder than the last.
“I'll race you home.” And then without warning Isra kicks her heels up into a canter and turns back towards their city by the sea.
Fable waits until they are gone to practice. The elk and the deer do not come to watch, nothing does, and he tries not to let it make him feel like a monster.
@Morrighan, just a terrible closer so the steppe doesn't burn down.
