“But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it.”
The darkness is a weight in this hallway that travels down into the belly of the castle. It presses into Isra's spine like lead, like touches leading her away into the forest. There is too, in the blackness, a wetness, like jasmine petals dripping dew onto a moonstone pathway. When Isra swallows down the darkness, as if it's wine instead of color, she can taste what moonlight is leaking through the thick stone walls.
It tastes like a memory, like before, like it always has.
Their shoulders are almost brushing by the time Boudika breaks the silence with something more than the soft ring of their hooves on the floor. Isra smiles without teeth softly, quietly, like the autumn breeze rolling against her birch jungle. For a moment, between one step and the next, she brushes her nose against her champion's shoulder. She does not wonder how her magic feels trapped between her skin; but she thinks sometimes, that it's electricity running aimlessly without direction in the gap between sinew and bone.
“For every place that I've changed there are a hundred more secrets the castle has yet to show me. But no, I have not always had my magic. I was born a slave with only mortality running through my blood.” The weight in the darkness changes her voice. It makes it strange, older and dripping with black ink instead of sounds. There is always ink in her voice now-- ink, blood, and black magic. Isra almost says more but there is light creeping through the black and a humidity that starts to pool against her teeth like dew (always like dew).
She pauses at the edge of the darkness where the dusky, twilight of small hanging fires begins. The scales dusting her belly reflect the light and turn to something more violet and lilac than sea-stained. Isra inhales all the jasmine and oak heat that's blended in with the humid air. The desert starts to seem so very far away. When takes the first step into the hot-spring fed pool, she sighs when the water chases away the last of the black-coldness of the heavy hallway. She smiles and it's fierce and storm wild.
Isra looks at Boudika like a lion, like a wolf, like a dragon that has only just learned it has become a god.
“This pool was one of the first places I discovered. No one knows who created it.” There is no brine on her tongue when she pauses, only the lingering metallic tang of fresh-water filtered through stones she cannot name. “Very few know it's even here.” Isra walks deeper, until the water covers her dusting of scales and makes the chain running around her leg look small and silent below the surface.
She does not look at Boudika when she speaks again with her lips resting just above the water. Each word is muffled by it like the blackness muffled their steps (how it made them secrets in the dark). “I think my magic came from drowning.” Her voice makes ripples in the water, small stretches of movement that reflect the light and make strange things out of it.
“If you could choose, would you choose to have magic?”Isra does know what she would have chosen. Even now, with power enough to change the world, she does not know.
@Boudika
