—like held breath,
the stars drew in their panting fires
☼
In due time. If the flickering surge that caused her steps to stutter was any indication, she knew that he was right. Beyond that, his words didn’t pry; nor did he linger on the subject. The look she gave him was one of slow consideration, the wheels within her head turning as she deliberated upon his character. Her distrust hadn’t waned even a sliver, but her curiosity fanned to life with each passing moment.
Beyond that, their exchange remained a welcome distraction, and Hälla wasn’t yet ready to let it go.
The kindly smile he passed her way was not returned, the slopes of her badger-marked face remaining marble smoothed, the scar upon her dark lips not bothering to twitch into an answering smile. Her moony eyes appraised him as he spoke, assessing his features with bewitching intensity, as a throaty laugh answered his words.
“If we venture out of the bounds of our Courts, are we not all wanderers and vagabonds?” She challenged, though her interruptions were otherwise scarce. He’d ventured outside of the jurisdiction of Dawn, even her waking-self knew that much, and even a blinded fool could’ve seen that the deserts of Solterra were a wild, lawless place.
The sand cared not for heritage when it claimed its victims. Only for the warmth, the blood, the flesh, that it could pull into its wretched arms. Hälla had only just managed to claw her way free—she knew others had not.
(Camaraderie was the furthest thing from her mind at present, for the selfishness of survival had mostly overridden any affection for her past companions, if she’d had any at all. She was alive, but whether faces from memory had dug their way out, too, she couldn’t say for certain.
Her heart knew it had been loved once. But it knew, too, that it had been hurt. Whomever had pressed a blade to her breast, she could only pray that the desert had ground their bone to dust, and that their grave lay far beyond her would-be tombstone.
She hoped. She hoped—)
Another laugh, breathy and loose, echoed his words. No, she didn’t believe differently.
“I would much rather wander,” her emphasis upon the word was a pointed directive, as if their definition of the word were some small conflict she sought to win. Childish, almost; but also, miraculously, playful. “Than turn to stone somewhere.”
The irony of her words made her lips twitch, her head turning to look ahead as she paced onwards. The desert continued to span on, and despite the overwhelming nothingness that perpetuated over the vast horizon, she couldn’t help the itching claustrophobia. They were surrounded by everything and nothing all at once, and the compulsion to bolt became a nagging itch.
And it coincided with his question. Was she running from something?
Yes, her mind heaved, a livewire spitting embers. From the past. From the dark. From the tombs. And maybe, just for now, from the desert.
“If you need no answer,” she said slowly. “Then why ask?”
His words were soft, and Hälla flicked her hoary eyes to meet his own, her chin tilted to compensate for the height that cleaved them apart. She was silent, her muscles corded with contradictory stillness, even as she continued to move.
Her concession was a slow, deliberate one, and she swallowed the acid that threatened to overtake her words, betraying her gradual willingness to indulge him.
“I’m uncertain,” which was true. She had taken no consideration as to what her destination was or where it was she was going, only that Arjun’s name beat a drum inside of her skull. Zakariah’s was a distant echo, the Betrayer just as fresh of a wound within her mind, but she knew she loathed the Liar more than the man that’d lured them to their fates.
It was the dreams she’d been fed—the visions that had unfurled over the span of ten, suffocating years.
She didn’t yet know how long it’d been, but the creeping horror of wasted time was a lingering one. The endless dark had blurred into one, perpetuating lifetime, and even now, the heat of the sand upon her soles, she wondered if she was still sleeping.
“I was imprisoned in magic for some time,” she divulged, but the crispness of her tone invited no pity. Although, she wondered if he would ask what her crime had been. Pride, she supposed; stupidity. “I’d rather just breathe, for the time being.”
She wasn’t running from anything—not yet, at least. She was running toward freedom.
Speech, @"Avallac'h"
