it was meant to be simple
just one golden rule
just one golden rule
E
lif had left the island well before the end. It had been too much, a dream she’d half wanted to wake from; she’d never seen so much color in her life. The pegasus wasn’t sure whether it made everything else - all the unnatural things, all the god-things, all the wrong things - stranger or less so, all that green, a kind of wealth she’d never really considered.
But even before the Relic started calling, before the sun stood still and the sand built itself into a snake and the nightmares began, she had gone home.
And yet her curiosity lingered, gnawing like a desert coyote on her thoughts, always at the back of her mind. She worried for Ipomoea and the others she knew; she wondered what was happening, what adventures she was missing, what wonder and what terror. Solterra was only a skeleton, by then, full of skinny horses whose eyes glinted fever-bright and round in their skulls. An end must be coming, because nothing could continue like this, not for long. Every time she left the desert, grateful for her wings, it became a little easier to turn her back, and a little harder to go.
Now she stood at the edge of the sea, where the black bridge had first risen like an obsidian spine, and forgot about her Court entirely. Even from here she could feel the ground shuddering like a great beast beneath a swarm of flies. And, like those flies, she could see small shapes (growing larger every moment) fleeing from the island, racing down the bridge, flying through the calm blue sky. Her heart trembled in her chest as though she was among them; her mouth was dry, her teeth set.
Horror and awe kept her feet planted, though in her high feeling the breeze swept around her like an anxious lover, raking its fingers through her short hair, blowing its breath on her feathers. It smelled of the salt and brine of the ocean, and not smoke, or black metal, or magic, and had she been paying attention she would have been grateful.
By the time the bridge began to buckle and break, by the time the waves were distant white teeth cutting at the island (too far to see that it is sinking, near enough to see it is terrible) her thoughts were screaming for those escapees, get out get out get out, and not for the first time this year she was helpless, helpless, helpless but to watch and worry.
STAFF EDIT***
@Elif has rolled a 4! They have been awarded +3 exp.
