You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
Zayir had mentioned Cairo among the roll-call of the living-damned when he came upon Cyrra and the… rather unfortunate circumstances surrounding her reawakening (which implies she had ever been asleep… not so; if only). Cairo. Somehow, she hadn’t been surprised. He always did—does, even now it seems to her, as he alights upon her life again, hawklike and striking—seem to have a sort of… hunger. Was it for life? It was overindulgent and self-serving—enough, she thinks, to have kept him alive and well enough. And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
That hunger—not unlike her own, but maybe that’s why it bothers her so; looking in a mirror can be hard—had been a subject of many an unhappy, explicit mutterings from the Viper Slayer. It was, truth be told, tiring to watch the dance him and Zayir, so like a brother to her, had entangled themselves in. Pushing and pulling. Ducking and diving.
It was enough to drive a girl to drink.
...that all seems soo distant, now. It all seems trifle and petty... silly, in the grand scheme of things, really. In the deep-dark, she would have given anything—laid her scimitar down for good; swore off all of her vices—to play audience to their restless games again. To sit to the side as everyone around her squabbled and hurt themselves and each other—(you did just the same, don’t lie to yourself)—just to feel in control. Or to feel less lonely. Or more lonely, if they were so inclined to a spot of masochism.
And many of them were.
She smiles, a little looser now, but always sharp. Always tight like a snake—scaled and barbed and fanged, never quite making it to pleasure, or joy. Not while the sun is still shining, anyway. She would be compelled to greet him as a brother. With enthusiasm and with a vibrance that would likely stun him a little, so unlike her it would be; too familiar, but she steels herself. That’s what an endless, dust-filled solitude does to you—it makes you appreciate the way your name sounds on some else’s lips. So different, so much more enjoyable, than the way it sounds as you scream it into the charnel abyss, just so that you don’t forget it yourself.
‘I heard you had awoken too.’ She grunts in reply, wonders if Zayir has told him the state he had found her in—warm, sticky, fresh blood dripping down her chest. Had it not been another Arete’s blood, it may have just been another successful night out after a decade of entombment. As it were, Halim’s body slumped at her feet had given it away. Her breath hitches for a moment—she holds it all it; she’d be damned if she let Cairo see her faltering—thinking about those wild, crazy eyes. Knowing full well they could have been hers. Had been, in her own personal hell.
She appreciates his teryr’s ire—she had found Zayir maddeningly calm.
Her lip twitches as he speaks, as he describes the way the shadows around her sometimes become darker. Sometimes become fouler—putrid and dusty, stagnant and above all else… cavernous. Abyssal. She does not break eye contact, but her heart begins to pump, hot as sun-fire in her veins; her teeth clenching, popping striations of muscle along her jaw. “It clings,” she nearly spits the last word out, “I go back there every time I dream.”
She had imagined pressing her blade to Zakariah or Arjun’s throat, time and time again. Held on to it, like the dying ember of the final flame as she marched the labyrinthine halls of the arcane mausoleum Zakariah had made, just for her. Zayir had wondered if they ended up sealing themselves away with their own magic—posited that Zolin would have never have let his pawns see the light of day, themselves.
If so, mores the shame.
“I’d like to wear their bastard skulls as helms into my next battle.” Her brow cocks, and before she leans down to take another quick sip of water, “just one idea, anyway.”
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
