from the mind of Chaos’s lonely daughter
and the sun fell heavy and thick
to warm the blood of a world"
The thrill of the run, and of the steady drumbeat of his hooves behind her (like a beast nipping at her shadows wishing for flesh, and blood, and bone), races through her with all the violent glory of a harpoon thrust through her heart. Adrenaline races through her blood in veins of storm-fire, driving her on through the desert like a wave racing over the shore in a riptide. Her spine vibrates and hums electric as her wings catch the air like banners instead of a weapons.
And a part of her, a very small part, pauses before sliding comet-quick down the side of dune. It wonders what it would feel like to let him catch her like a lion and wrap his dull teeth around her throat like the bottom of a noose.
The king-who-does-not-know-how-to-burn is not quick enough to catch her. Not tonight, not with the storm-veins in her form and her magic pulling from him like a tornado from the wind. He would have to earn her submission, and tonight (oh, it's a night for so many things) it is not her fall that the desert is bellowing for through the soft howl of a midsummer breeze.
The sting of his teeth at her back is nothing more than another stab of that harpoon. It opens up another hole for the light, and hunger, and danger to pour into. She's flooded with it all--
His light. Her light. The vibration of the sand beneath her hooves, the way it's tapping out a silent message she'll understand.
I am thirsty, the sand seems to say.
Hurry. It roars.
She laughs to the melody of the sand and of their hooves pounding louder than their hearts. This is what it feels like to be a god, she thinks, this reckless feel of pulling the tide instead of drowning in it. This is what it feels like to be wildfire, to devour up the world just because it's kindling. Her laughter turns to song as they race up the next dune. Even his lion seems like such a small thing as she snaps her wings and turns to him with violence and lust warring in her moon-bright gaze.
“I have only just begun.” When she leaps into the air before plummeting towards the belly of the desert the wind almost seems to roar through her feathers and regalia--
And it turns the start of her challenge into something that sounds more like we than I.
@Orestes @Avdotya
