The cool stone against Noam’s chest tethers him down – grounds his spirit. Even as the mind began to drift – to a city thrown in chaos, to a palace decorated with bodies. There are moments his eyes catch their faces – weary, haunted glances that melt in the fire light, of stolen youth – that ebb and wane with the bodies below. Flesh pressed into bone like fine, translucent paper. Wafer thin.
Small reassurances resided in the cues of his breath – how far it could deepen, how much it would pull and stretch – ribs chaffing against skin.
The desire to take off and challenge the depths of that ink sky grew evermore. He grates his teeth together, yearning for such release. He knew better than to challenge the force behind his arrival, Solis willing… There must be a reason for the struggle building up behind his eyes, and the desire to purge what little there was in his stomach.
Noam tilts his mismatched gaze to the new arrival. The sound of her hooves – no matter the music – gives way to sprawling limbs, and refined, feminine curves. His sunken eyes remain blank, devoid of the energy bounding in a distant chorus. They rest upon the gilded neckpiece, set behind her skin of cream – the sand at dusk.
You’re a miserable recluse too, are you?
“Miserable is an understatement.” Noam lifts his gaze to take in her eyes. They’ve escaped him – off into pyres, into the bodies of the young and old, and everything in between.
Cyrra.
Takes a whiff of the beer, “Noam.”
It isn’t really a name, more of a placeholder, a shroud. ‘32’ made more sense – as an object, a thing to be used and identified. Catalogued and hung up to dry entombed with the others – were there others? Noam understood to some degree, that he had had a real name once – one in a forgotten language. A forbidden tongue, a savage speak that came and disappeared with the wind.
He considered the beer in hand. That it might dull his senses for once and blot out the shadows for a time. He presses the cup against his lips, takes a gluttonous swig and grimaces post taste. Letting out the hot, spiced air behind his lips.
“See anything worthwhile?”
He finds his gaze, again, above the crowds and into the sky. Where old friends shine unchanged, beaming cold indifferent light. Their language reads between them, in the forms they hold and the old legends they whisper of. He glances back to her – the woman who lurks beside him. Devoid of the humor or the mirth that speaks so loudly into the night, that hums and burns with the ale washing down his throat. Bright and fierce – beckoning, calling out good will, and indulgent joy.
“Will you dance with them?” She harbors the light of the night sky – hollowed out by the cold, the distance that sends her eyes upon the masses. He cannot tell if she yearns for their haste, for their cradle – or despises them, repulsed by the maggots that feast upon the castle.
