[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

Can Antiope even say that she has felt death before, truly? She’s not certain, for even in that moment when, on the battlefield, that spear was plunged between her ribs and pierced her lung she knew that she would not die.

Perhaps, in a way, a piece of her died in order for the rest of her to continue living; but more simply than that she slept in what looked like death, so that her body could rejuvenate. And then she woke, knowing no pain, having no scar.

“If that is what you wish to believe,” Antiope says, looking curiously into the beast's strange, strange eyes. Eyes that are like nothing she has ever seen before and, she imagines, like nothing she will ever see again.

If her life is anything, it is certainly not blessed.

Her attention is taken by the man again, who seems to elaborate on—or rather correct—the statement that his companion has made. The Denoctian sovereign considers for a moment. “Pain comes before the type of death that I know, too, just not my own.” She remembers the first time she recognized it, in their eyes. She never had before.

When he laughs, her head tilts ever so slightly. Almost imperceptibly. “I do not mind it. I find it… compelling, the thoughts of a creature such as he.” It is not many who can say that they have spoken with a dragon, she assumes. Antiope did not imagine one to be much of a conversationalist.

She wants to tell him not to visit Denocte, when he asks. She wants to tell him nowhere, because as intrigued by his great beast as she is, a part of her is still wary. A part of her is still reminded of the judging eye of the moon in the sky.

“I think you would find the markets to be our most spoken of attraction,” the woman says after a small hesitation, as though thinking. She begins to turn away, toward the coast. Toward her home, her court, her people. “Vendors from all over Novus, from across the world, come to sell their goods,” she says lastly, almost as a parting.

The Night Markets sell everything from the luxe to the macabre, if one knows where to look. Antiope wonders, as she leaves him, if he is one who knows where to look.

“Speaking.”

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