from the mind of Chaos’s lonely daughter
and the sun fell heavy and thick
to warm the blood of a world"
Her magic feels like an almost incandescent thing, a spiraling tail of a phoenix wrapping around her bones like she's nothing more than a branch in a oak tree. It echoes in the cavern of her ribcage, and dances in the golden embers of her eyes. And it purrs to see the way the girl smiles and wraps the scarf around her throat like a noose.
How easy it is to slip between girl and monster, dance and devour. How easy.
Amaunet watches the girl take her coin, and she watches the way the merchants face flickers between brashness and caution. There are not many of those coins left, fewer still without blood caught in the cracks of the engraving pressed into the gold.
Her smile is full of promise: of violence, of fire, of teeth laid sweetly against throat. Brine sinks into her wings when the ocean breeze ripples through the market. Embers spark and float lazy as dragon above their heads. But not a single ember catches, the market is still too full of marble, and magic, and peace.
The world is due for a little trouble, a little strife, a little wolf-hunger.
A wing settles across the girl's back, possessive as it is protective when a group of boys stumbles behind them. Tonight she does not chase them, or take their payments from their skin by way of tooth and hoof. Tonight she only pulls the girl away from the merchant by the edge of her silken scarf.
Tonight her magic has not stopped echoing in the cave of her ribs. The glow of it settles across her skin, making her nothing more than another ember crawled out from the belly of the fire.
“Do any of us really need to do anything? I wanted to. It's as simple at that.” The sharp shards of banked fire are still dancing in her golden eyes. She echoes the girl's smile with a laugh. Ahead of them the boys are still shoving through the crowd, their steps stone heavy. Her magic purrs and starts to open its jagged tooth mouth. It starts to feast, and feast, and devour.
Amaunet does not offer an answer about the coin. Not yet. She starts to follow the beastly boys.
“I live here.” Her voice is simple, but the laugh caught in it is not. It's a tangle of amusement, and wanting, and the echo of her glowing holy skin. “But you don't, do you?” For a moment she lets her eyes trail away from the pack of boys pretending to be lions. “No one who does would ask that question.”
Because they all know that blood runs towards the center of the earth, no matter the form from which it falls.
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