[P] it's an old story, really

[Antiope]

when the shadows come
and cover the horizon
i will be the one to
slay all the giants

She does not know why it is that she dislikes him so readily. If you were to ask her, Antiope might say it is because he was a strange man on her shore, with a dragon no less. A strange man with no apparent affiliation to any court.

She might say it is because her relationship with Caligo was tenuous, her belief that she truly should be Queen thin. Wanting to prove she could protect her court and be the sovereign they needed.

But maybe the truth is this: that Antiope has never distrusted anyone so completely, so quickly. Not even the gods that made her, that later took away her child and her lover. Perhaps the Denoctian sovereign has simply learned from that. Perhaps that is where her first impression comes from.

“Who isn’t?” he asks, and she thinks who isn’t, indeed. Even Isra, black and sharp inside, even Morrighan full of fire, even Orestes fulfilling his purpose. Even her—

The dragon, Damascus, rises to meet them and she feels the weight of him in everything. Her magic feels the well of energy inside him, deep, deep, deep. And then, he speaks.

Antiope is surprised, to say the least. She has only heard of a talking bonded once before, Solterra’s sovereign’s before Raum. A demon bird, some have said. Demons, gods, mortals. One thing the striped woman has found is they are all more similar than they seem,

“Ah, that is where you are wrong,” the Queen says after a pause. In perhaps the first completely forthcoming thing she will tell them, Antiope looks at Damascus and says, “My first language is death.”

She does not smile, nor frown. There is a sea in her sapphire eyes. The anguish did not come until later, until after the anger. “Perhaps that is the difference,” she doesn’t say it, but she means between me and the rest. She has always felt other, a feeling that hs never gone away.

“Speaking.”

∞ | @Vercingtorix c;