[AW] threnody

[Bexley]

" BEXLEY BRIAR "

Bexley’s stomach hums with premonition, with the promise of something about to happen, and it goes all the way into her bones, grinding and chattering until she feels like a thunderstorm personified. Heat sings over her skin, at least, and that’s something to find comfort in. Solis smiling down on them. His white teeth bared in a grin, his gaze welcoming. But still, overwhelmed with anxiety, her eyes flicker uncertainty from here to there and back again, trying to soak up what information she can:

Walls on each side. Fine sand mixed with tiny pebbles under her feet. A sky blue and only barely cloudy, streaked with white and smoke. Sun still streaking in a yellow comet through the air, dripping, sparkling, like a silk across her skin. She swear she can feel the earth speaking under her feet. Speaking of something monstrous and wicked. And, in the way of all Briars, she trusts that her planet is saying something true, and then, trusting, the cold blush of fear spreads over her skin, into the map of nerves behind her eyes, and renders her, for a moment, immobile.

She thinks of her father. She thinks of the sacrifices her family has made, and how she’s grown up around blood and bone. In her mind the Elder Teryr warps into something magical, were-wolfish, an amorphous creature half-flesh but mostly drooping, eyes sliced into its body in multiple places, tails swirling in a vortex, trying to make it as terrifying as she can, so when it appears it won’t be so horrible, a pathetic attempt at exposure therapy, to remake her fears into something killable, punctured, only strong enough to be satisfying when crunched. Leviathan appears, and for a moment that’s a comfort, something she doesn’t really want to hold on to, but does.

And then it’s not enough.

An unearthly shriek rattles through the entirety of the canyon, into Bexley’s ears, her bones, her teeth, and her muscles flex involuntarily, lock and tense as she feels the descent of a body overhead, shadows spilling into each corner of their earth. The sweet, organic smell of carrion wafts through the air - her nostrils flare. She knows she only has a moment. You have a moment to do this. She thinks, or attempts to, against the blazing in her head.

Walls on each side and the fine sand and the blue sky and the teryr swooping sideways, she ducks close to the ground, avoiding the hard beat of its wings as it whooshes overhead, wind buffeting her so hard she almost trips at the ankles, but doesn’t, sticking the landing by stamping each hoof into the sand with as much force as she can muster. The silvery smell of blood fills the air, but it’s not her own. She sees Inkheart crash to the ground - Seraphina sliced in multiple places - Leviathan injured too, and he’s supposed to be one of their best warriors, shit! The thing is dangerous, it’s horrifying. Her body is rife with adrenaline now instead of fear, so that everything simmers hot and red, the canyon twisting and dipping in her vision. 

Bexley blinks, and it’s above her. She swells with something angry and powerful, with heat that radiates from every pore. Her head tilts back to look up. She thinks about birds. Thinks about things with wings, hate those fuckers, and about how their body weight is mostly fat and feathers to cover those fragile bones. She whips to look sideways, at the leg that rises on her left like a pillar, stretching almost endlessly, the foot lined with scaly skin and claws, the reptilian kind of body that she finds viscerally disgusting. 

But it’s weak. Weak in the place where bone-meets-bone, and the place where that becomes visible, jutting out from under the skin. Without another moment for thought, Bexley digs her hind hooves into the sand, jerks the front of her body sideways, and lunges for its foot, where she rears up to smash both hooves into the closest joint, hoping to hear the saccharine crack of bone - something to punish this thing for hurting her friends, loathe though she is to call them that.

love, space