The buzzing doesn’t subside. Dulls for a moment as a figure approaches. A bone-white canvass highlighted by the shimmering quality of gold. Such a creature appears out of place, immaculate in the hellscape. Noam raises his head, neither facing nor greeting the stallion with a submissive bow. Muscles recoil below the surface of pale blue, while maintaining a rather indifferent expression. One that hasn’t changed, despite the stallion’s barbed tone.
Noam stands tall, winged limbs hanging by his sides. Left partially open, as they flagged the breeze of hot air breathing between them. He sets a glassy eye on the figure. “Nowhere.” The voice is half parched, heavy and rough. He decides to divulge, just a smidge. The ornate stranger does not fit the description of a head-hunter, unless – he has been fooled to believe so. There is always a level of threat that hangs in the balance. Even if the sweat on his skin emits a glow from his labors, and for a moment appears ill at ease with the desert. There is an air of command that follows the fellow, in a way Noam has trouble piecing together. Altogether familiar and foreign.
“For one who hunts. The dunes will show me where I must go.” The nagging to return to the Day Court pulls at his chest. It aches, vexed by the quarry that has disappeared into the maw set before them – gaping out indefinitely. To the lands blessed by rich soils and blooming foliage, not here – where the bones are bleached and left forgotten. Only Solis knows of the graves, of the peoples consumed by war before them – repeating, over and over again. Inheriting their taste for blood, and their love for warfare.
“You look Solterran,” he muses aloud. Considering the lithe build, the flesh that wraps nearly thin around bone and sinew – limbs that are meant to traverse miles of sand and heat.
“Why come here? There’s nothing here.”
Except for the vipers, the poisonous creatures lurking beneath their feet. Or the desperate, the lost – the guilty.
For a moment Noam breaks his gaze, lowering his head as it moves in the direction of the sun. Rays fierce, as the afternoon wanes. Noam can sense its strength ebb as the seasons change. And yet it continues to bare its teeth, give no reprieve – even the weary are forbidden alms.
