You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
Dead.And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
But she knew that already, has convened with the dead down here for too long not to have developed some bond with that ceremony, with that transference from one end to the next. Perhaps, she held felt it, like a shiver down her spine or the livewire of shock across the ever-weakening formation of her bones. One for each, for Umma, and Big-Spear and Zorif; for each of them as they made their own procession across the great above. (Had Big-Spear summoned a Rayir for Umma—to oversee her final breath, to bleed her one last time upon the sands, to cut the stilled heart from her body, below the open sky and sun, and read the portentous way it pooled.
Or, had Umma been the one to wish Big-Spear to Solis’ side, in the end?)
So, her tight body is wracked by a single, lurching sob, as she lays them to rest, finally.
Anger mixes, bitter and acid, with sadness. It turns to ash in her mouth.
How much had they taken from her? From them?
From them all?
Her breath becomes ragged again, heaving, throbbing. Pounding. She blinks and reels, steadies against the blood-spattered stone wall, grinding her teeth together. But he knows her too well. He grasps her frail hand and leads her down more fruitful paths than those paved in reprisal and gilt rage.
She nods, almost absent, as he speaks—
She searches within herself for their names, all of their names, in rows upon rows as she inspects them. The straight, tight, scarred, coiled lines of them; their well-sharpened weapons and the glint edges of their armour and shields. She eyes each; eyes herself, in that same military-tight stance, like a statue. Like a machine. Like a war-thing, coughed out from some violent and blood-red forge. Halla. Cairo Sobec. But when she reaches Halim, jaw tight and square, eyes hard and resolute and gods, Solis, damn me to hell, blood curls from the cup of his swart ear, like a snake traipsing the mortal curve of his trembling cheekbone.
“Gods,” she mutters again. No. it isn’t enough.
It’ll never be enough. One lost—one Halim—was enough, the margins were dark and listless beyond that single death (by ones own hands.)
Perhaps she recognizes the guilt in his eyes. If she does she recoils from it. Not physically, exchanging his brush with a soft, acquiescing sigh. But she rebuffs it, with strength, in the way she turns her eyes from him moments later, quells its kin in her own breast. Could any of us have known? Maybe? Probably?
Irrelevant.
“Fucking fools,” she hisses, finding not nearly as much joy as she thought she might at the idea that they, too, may have made their own tombs. It was too nauseatingly perfidious; too grossly weak-minded. She shakes her head, “we have to find them,” her eyes draw between Zayir’s pale, gilded legs, to the lifeless gawp of Halim, cringing, “because I want—need—to coax answers from their—,” she squeezes her eyes shut, stifles animus taken form in curse words she hadn’t thought of in a decade, “their lips.” She snorts lightly, and with her own telepathy, lifts the blade from their feet, before sticking Zayir with a knowing look.
‘Would you like me to lead you out?’ She nods, hissing against the ache in her knees, as she pushes past him, to stand over the crumpled mass. “Da'mayiit,” she whispers, knowing full well she hasn’t the time, space, or tools to do this properly, she sinks the blade between his ribs—trying deliberately to keep her gaze from the gash where his eye should be, failing—avoiding the spires of protective bone as she knew far too adeptly how. Plunging until it could go no further, until she was as close to the heart as she could hope to get, and with a twist to make room, she pulls it back carefully, cradling the blood on the flat of the blade.
“Get me the hell out of here, Zayir.” Anguish. Anger. And yes, fear.
Hover for translation
@Zayir
@Zayir
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
