[P] it starts with a spark

[Antiope]

antiope

forever may you reign
forever may you reign

T

he other woman’s words are not of a friendly tone, and Antiope doesn’t blame her for it. She is practically a stranger after all, even if the spices and fragrances of Denocte have begun to cling to her skin as of late. Antiope is sure she recognizes the painted mare, but they have never spoken before now.

“From what I’ve heard of this man Raum, I think he’d enjoy that,” she responded, her blue eyes focused on the fire instead of her companion as she speaks. Antiope doesn’t know much about him, she doesn’t know much about the struggle she has seemingly landed in the middle of, but there is enough going around, spoken on people’s tongues, that she has heard plenty.

“You would be doing more harm to the people than to him.”

They have already been through so much. Although Antiope doesn’t know what’s it like to be beneath the rule of a corrupt King, she has been created, possessed and betrayed by pervert gods. This King, she imagines, is no different. And less immortal.

She did not come to this world for a war, but the lioness in her veins still calls its desire. It still seeks out that thing it had so readily available on her old world, when Antiope was as good as a goddess to the equines in the jungle as she led them to battle.

Blood.

Antiope looks at Morrighan as the fire flares slightly, and there is more than just the flicker of the flames sparking in her eyes as she does. If fire is this woman’s element then she is surely a fighter, hot and keen.

Fire… fire is such an abundant source of energy. It sings to her, calling for it, even as its heat brushes across her curves. Antiope looks into the flames and considers, for a moment. Only one other has seen her magic, and it was unintentionally. Septimus had seen her trying to reign it in, to control it, out on the prairie. But she had been running then.

With her eyes still on the flames, Antiope lets the lioness in her bones loose. Slowly, her eyes begin to glow, until they are swallowed completely in a golden light. She doesn’t have much control over this, but as her magic drinks of the fire and transfers its energy into Antiope, it shrinks. She loses her grasp on it too soon for her liking—oh, she would have liked to taken the entire thing down to nothing more than coals—but it is enough.

Antiope strikes out with a hoof at one of the rocks keeping the fire at bay. Even laying, even at the distance she is that she can just, just reach, when the edge of her hoof meets that stone it fractures into several pieces with a loud, echoing crack.

The pieces fall away from each other and settle against the ground. By the time the woman looks back at Morrighan her eyes are no longer emitting light, no longer gold but blue. The lioness inside her will settle for now, for another time.

“I can take energy—from the world, from things—and use it to make myself more powerful.” She says. From myself, from you, she thinks but does not say. Or, once, she had been able to. Now however Antiope is not so sure. How is it she had gotten here? “Where does that leave us?” A girl who can make fire and a girl who can take it away.

@Morrighan "speaks"

rallidae | rhiaan