“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
“You are no better than the rest of them then.” The fire in her gaze, caught between the cracks of her smile that shifts to snarl and back to smile, turns devouring instead of smoldering. “Always looking to go back instead of forward. The past is no place for doves.” The wild serenade of the band makes her voice, her words, her cruelty seems both holy and profane.
The look, oh the look, that shifts across her golden eyes like a thundercloud promises that she knows all the ways in which to be holy.
And all the ways in which to be made holy.
Al'Zahra swallows her drink like a leopard swallows a sparrow, or a vole, or a newborn rabbit crying out for water. It does not burn, nor does it wrinkle the perfect lines of her face into anything but that black look, bright eyes, and gold framing the two. When she unfolds from the table it is as a root does, muscle by muscle. And when she turns to move away, it as a flower does, unfurled and dew-damp petals turning hungrily towards the sun.
One of them is the sun. One is a the storm. Between them there are only clouds to drink. She smiles when the music stutters like a jack-rabbit heart as the singer recognizes the curl of her neck, the guitarist the angles of her hipbones. Neither of them is spared a glance as she waits for the girl to stand or to stay. Her face stays full of those dark looks and those darker promises.
“There are monsters in the storm.” The door blows open in the wind. Rain pours in and catches on her lashes like tears as she walks towards the violent sea and the devouring storms. Just before she dissolves into the thunder and the cutting the rain she looks back over her shoulder and says, “You'll have to leap on your own. But if you do I can teach how to own them all.”
And then the storm swallows her whole as she walks out of the tavern.
Or is is Al'Zahra that swallows the storm?
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