You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
Prior to her entombment, it had been only very occasionally that Cyrra chose to leave Solterra for purposes besides war and duty. She had found her vices slaked perfectly fine in the walled city of sand and sun—she wanted for nothing. At least, wanted for nothing she felt she could have. It wasn’t in her to long for the unattainable—those messy and uncomfortable things were safely locked away beside the kernel of resentment she felt for living a life foretold, for never finding balance in it. And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
For never opening herself up.
She could throw off the yearning to explore, settle it deep in her breast, the frustration she felt for having married burden so perfectly to violent pursuits. She turned to training harder; to tempering herself like steel at a forge until what lay beyond the desert’s sill was a quaint fancy or a hoard of enemies. Whatever it needed to be for her. Until what branded her body was a sun-fire rage and a delight for destruction—and destruction comes in many forms.
Then came the disillusionment, the very systematic way it pulled her limb from limb and set her back together again in disorder.
She had spent so much time with her own rapidly unravelling thoughts. Terribly alone, in a liminal space built for her punishment—for their punishment. And it had not come from an enemy, it had not come from Denocte, Terrastella, or Delumine. She had not been consigned to darkness by a foreign sorcerer—no, that would have been understandable. She could have accepted that. Not by an enemy, but by a friend, by a brother and by a crown she swore to. A knee she had bent, if a bit reluctantly. And so, when she surfaced, baptised once again by blood and sun, she had found herself unmoored from Solterra.
Distant, like drifting friends. The Arete were gone. Not just gone, forgotten—dried ink in historical tomes. She had Zayir. Cairo was alive. But their bond had been severed, poisoned by the treachery, and she struggled with putting the puzzle back together. It is a freedom, maybe even the freedom she had always wanted, but it came with its own messiness.
Halfway across Mors, she began to wonder why she hadn’t just stayed at The Duneworm Inn to drink at the bar with Ridouane and Bisar until the world became fuzzy and one or the other, or both, followed her upstairs. But, in truth, it had become choking. She felt the nearness of the catacombs like an unrelenting omen of something that could never truly be past. Something that would persist like a deep bruise on her skin, spun from darkness and dust and bone.
She walked the streets and often found herself at the entrance as by trance, staring at it like staring the ferryman in the eye and if she lingered too long she was afraid she would follow him down…
So she flies and flies and flies away, until the tap-tap—like hooves against the insides of a sarcophagus—becomes too faint to hear. The rippling patterns of sand below fades to a rocky sill that gives itself away, in time, to grass and it is there that she lands. Buffeting the cooler air with her pale wings until her bronzed hooves touch down on the ground with an elegant slide that rips furrows in the yellowing grass. The Viper Slayer shakes them out and wraps herself in them; hard, blue eyes setting out across Eluetheria. Midday sun catches on the bronze serpentine around her neck and on the rings that hold the buns in her hair; bathes the sea of swaying vegetation of lemony light.
There is a kind of uncomfortable quiet here, it sets her jaw in a tight clench, but after a still, unsure moment, she moves forward.
Sometimes, discomfort is good.
She could use a drink, though.
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
