I don't know how to pray
'Cause if I did, I'd be worthless, all I know is curses
'Cause if I did, I'd be worthless, all I know is curses
There is a faint tickling upon his chest, like a tiny procession of a thousand centipede legs. He looks down, warily, and yelps.
A line of fire ants marches steadfastly from the dewy detritus up his cannon bones and over the swell of his chest, in a valiant campaign to reach the other side of the blackfurred mountain.
“Saints!” Hurriedly, Caine leaps to his hooves and swabs a balled-up mass (his shadow cloak, which he’d draped sleepily over his eyes to imitate night) over the army of ants. Little red bodies careen down to the plush moss, right themselves with affront, and scurry off to continue their ambitions elsewhere.
“Nature forsake me,” Caine groans, as he checks himself over for lingering ants. He hates ants. He hates insects in general, but ants—something about a writhing mass of legs and shiny bodies and buzzing antennae, topped roundly off with a pair of fierce little pincers, is inherently menacing.
Though—dozing carelessly in the middle of a forest deep in the heart of a magic-steeped island—he decides quickly that fire ants are a more fortuitous alternative than opening his eyes to find himself half-devoured by a bat-winged not-jaguar.
When the sun froze at its apex in the churning sky three days ago, Caine had demanded that the task of investigating the island be assigned to him. “I have been there twice before already,” he’d insisted to Jem, the scarmouthed captain of the King’s spies who was anything but. After deftly spinning an excuse as to why (Raum had been spotted there, hadn’t he? He’d gone to secure his safety, like any loyalty-sworn spy worth his salt.) he’d swallowed the smoldering ball of unease lodged in his throat and made haste for the ominous emerald shores.
He hadn’t found her. Her, being Fia. Maybe she had the good sense to stay away, but a nagging feeling in his chest whispered the opposite. It wasn’t that he worried over her. It wasn't as simple, as cleanly cut, as useless worry. It was the fact that, when he’d seen her last, her jewel-bright eyes...
(had belonged to someone who cared little for her own life anymore.)
Death-touched. His eyes narrow as he recalls the encounter. The boy. The beast. A revolutionary suspended on her last two stilts of hope. (Masquerading as other things, perhaps. Revenge, fury, justice. But strip it to the bone, dig into the marrow, and it was hope. The last emotion to leave the eyes of the dying.)
Swiftly, he combs the tangles from his hair and braids it into a row curving along the length of his neck, neat as tin soldiers. Stepping carefully over the glowing mushrooms—who knows what magic they’d release crushed underhoof—he cleaves apart the draping vines and pauses mid-step when he sees it.
A trail of hoof prints.
His head tilts, lips thinning, a hair to the left. The weight of his dagger digs into his wings before he shrugs off the instinct. No one had walked past him in his sleep loud enough—purposefully enough—to leave such prominent prints. To call Caine’s sleep light is an understatement; without the sticky pull of dreams and its ominous cousin nightmare, he never sleeps deeper than a doze.
The island. Always, always, the island.
The iron tang of magic stinks in the forest gloom like a sword dipped to the pommel in heartsblood. He lifts his head towards the lance of filtered sunlight and swivels his ear to the foliaged beyond.
A crescendo of voices titter behind the susurrous knot of trees. His cloak unfolds behind him with a soft whoosh. Settles upon his shoulders with a shadowy sigh.
There is no harm, he ponders soberly, in following.
STAFF EDIT***
@caine has rolled a 5! She has been awarded +300 signos.
