Isra and the roaring beast
“ I can reassure you - whatever you have conquered, it shines through your mind.”
“ I can reassure you - whatever you have conquered, it shines through your mind.”
F
able is too concerned with the roaring over the mountain to listen in to the mares as they talk. It's waking something up inside him, something that has slumbered since he first learned how quickly (how like the tide coming in) it can rise. The sound racing through the mountains reminds him of the basilisk and of the way his whole body said to hunt, and be, and consume. Isra can feel it too, that rush of water clasping her heart like a first, when Fable focuses on whatever it is that's too far away to see. And if her heart leaps in joy she says nothing of it when the bow on her shoulder flickers like a dying star.
“Thunder-birds were one of the creatures that came to Denocte the last time the gods decided to shake loose reality.” Her tongue wants to shape the curl of a story and her heart wants to beat out the thrumming of her war-drum soul. What comes out instead is some strange combinations of the two, rusted wonder and sharp sided rage. “At first they attacked the warriors trying to defend the city. They have skin like glass and their wings can cut as cleanly as any blade.” And when she says cut her own horn sighs in the air like it's the world Isra's is dreaming of cleaving in two. Like even that curl of bone upon her head is dreaming, and smoldering, and preparing for the hunt.
“When they came back a second time it was a story that turned them away. Or it could have been the god laying beside me listening that changed their minds.” Isra doesn't tell Callynite how much she distrusts their god, how much she still hates her for letting her city flood, and burn, and some of her citizens die. She doesn't say that she's wondering what color gods-blood is.
She doesn't say that she's wondering if her own blood would be the same color if they cut her open.
Isra is about to say more but there is another crack of thunder coming in from over the distant mountains. Beneath her skin her magic opens its mighty mouth and prepares to roar back. Her spine trembles and her heart starts singing that war-drum melody. Fable brushes his nose against her hip and it's enough to remind her that Callynite is still there. It's enough to remember that her magic is a terrible thing-- a dark godlike beast waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
Just as she's about to turn, to run off with her friend into whatever shadows there are waiting in the thunder, there is another sound. It doesn't sound like thunder; it sounds like a cry of fury (or maybe of pain). Isra's bow flares to life. She doesn't smile, but it's there in the way her lips tighten in a way that has nothing to do with fury (only wanting).
It's getting harder and harder to remember how she once was a slave with ghosts nipping endlessly at her heels. Sometimes all that sorrow seems like nothing more than a dream.
“Maybe that's what you're looking for?” She says even though she doesn't think magic would make a sound like that. But for now it's a good enough excuse to kick her legs into a gallop and rush into danger. And it's a good reason, she tells herself, to forget that she's both a queen and a mother.
Because today she wants to feel like a warrior and nothing more.
@Callynite | "speaks" | notes: <3
