You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
She is consumed by the seething, heady crowd; gives herself to it. And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
Or what slips of herself that can be clawed back from the hard, vain cage of quiet, contained animus; from the scowl of lip and the narrowed, indignant slit of bright, sky-blue eye.
That scorched, elemental rage that had subsumed itself to her like venom as a young girl. First, as the fangs sunk deep into her knee. In the swimming, white-hot reverie that followed, as reached up to Solis and found she could wrap herself around the radiant, holy rays of Him to pull grace down upon herself like fiery armour; swirling into the Beyond-Beyond-The-Sand as a crusader. And second, before she lost grip of her consciousness, as she brought the small, curved janbiya down and pinned the writhing, furious stygian serpent to the dunes.
Blood pooled on the sun-baked sand, staining it a red so dark it was almost black.
She had died and come back that day.
El’Alafir-Uquaa.
The Serpent Slayer.
—died and come back many times after, too.
Cyrra shoulders inebriates out of her way with grunts and sharp, barbed stares, as day passes, bruise-purple and bright tangerine, into night. Her pale wings are held tight against her body, extending roughly now and then to claim distance between herself and the rabble. Moonlight begins to pool in the crowded streets as braziers and strings of lanterns are lit, one by one, offering their own oily, dancing light to the market streets; catching, warm and golden, in the burnished curves of her serpentine neckpiece.
She had awoken, moonstruck and feeble as a sprig grown in a place without light—a place where light goes to die—to a Solterra invaded. Inviting. Opened, like the arms of some indiscriminate lover, libertine and rowdy; redolent with spilt wine and ale, like petrichor, but sour and fermented. Sweat, bodies, exotic perfumes and something more. Something many-tongued and violent in its greed. Something she could not place her finger on, but could feel its heartbeat trying to match her own—warpaths and bedsheets; skin rent and skin touching.
All the trappings of the festival that she wished to lose herself in. To take and remake herself with; to replace the putrid, charnel abyss with music and brutality.
Anything, at all, to remind her she is alive.
To pull back the layers of swart and funereal aloneness.
A spare, elegant man, dressed in a hooded cloak of brilliantly vibrant beadwork, rings of jewelled gold in his nose and ears, approaches her, extending delicate, crystalline bottles of clear, suggestive attars—jasmine and oud, rose and saffron. ‘...Something cool for you, sayidat alnaar, to temper your flame—might I suggest honeysuckle and citrus…’ Her iron gaze lingers for a moment on the oils, listing in their glass containers as he tilts them back and forth slowly, beckoning.
She is jostled and groans, teeth clenching. She shakes her head curtly and hisses, “bother someone else,” before moving off, gripping herself all the more tightly. Guarded and ungiving in the dizzy night, she meanders, searching and seething; moving through pools of light and dark, merchants hawking fine jewellery and indelicate bottles of thick, homemade brews. The once-Arete, now errant ember of a dead sun, shakes her head to most but throws a couple of gold coins to a hard, aged man selling strange, floral wine in sea glass bottles.
(Then, she almost runs into you. Some wasted and wonton stranger bumps into her, slurs uncouth and bawdy apologies and disappears into the night-clad streets.)
She mutters a string of creative expletives, iron gaze falling on the gilt, gunmetal stranger, breath smelling of lotus, vanilla and alcohol; body as hard as coiled springs, “gods-damned tourists.”
Hover for translations!
@Raziel
@
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
