from the mind of Chaos’s lonely daughter
and the sun fell heavy and thick
to warm the blood of a world"
They are two different stars pulsing with the furies of suns. Amaunet can see the fire in him, banked and dull, when the lion presses between them with spit dripping out between his snarling teeth. She trembles for the feel of fur against her side, and the feel of rage knocking at the ivory gates of her magic. Her wings snap against the lion and her teeth bare themselves back in a snarl.
The line of paint across her face shines like fresh blood when her glow turns to gold. Beneath it, and that lick of magic, every bit of her trembles for the fall into violence, into desert-born fury. She almost slips into it when the knife-sharp glare of his smile settles something ravenous in her skin. The smile she offers back is shark-sharp, lion-sharp, dangerous-girl sharp. Her mouth might as well be full of stars for all the brightness of it.
“Of course.” The echo of his words is not dark on her lips. It's fire and moonlight when she laughs around the same sound his lips curled like a cage around. Goosebumps race down the sides of her spine. She steps around the lion (and resists plucking at the mane ringing his neck just to see how deep his snarl might bloom). “But walking is no way to think.” And this time when she snaps her wings it's against his side before they settle above their heads like a canopy tucking them away from the rest of the world.
Somewhere beyond this canopy of feathers, silk and golden light, the poet starts to strum a violin. Ancient lovers press their cheeks together in the crowd and start to dream of the years where they were young and immortal. Children start to dance and tuck cactus flowers in their manes. The city comes to life.
But here, between the king and the girl-who-does-not-fear-burning, there is only darkness edging the light. There is only the possibility of so many things in the places where the lion does not glare.
Amaunet pulls at his mane again. Hard. “Things like us are made to run while we wonder. We are made to be wild, and free, and faster than a comet.” She pauses and scrapes her lips down his cheek. We are made to rule the world. This she thinks but does not say. It lives only in the sun-bright flash of her golden eyes as she blinks slowly as if she's only just now rising from slumber. Like she's only just now remember that she was once something else.
“Keep up king-who-does-not-know-how-to-burn, or I might be forced to leave you behind. ” She laughs and crashes through the crowd, wings spread wide as a harpy, as the crowd parts around her like lambs. And even when she breaks past the crowd, and the market, and the garden, she does not stop her wild gallop.
Not even to see if the King with his snarling lion, was brave enough to follow.
@Orestes
