like having your throat cut,
just that fast
just that fast
It is not the sun-eye, or the grotesque rib-bridge, or the shops filled with horror-wealth, that draws Amaunet deep into the belly of the Island. She does not froth and foam at the promise of monsters, and treasure, and a terrible crown to lay upon her brow. Her wings do not carry her across the bridge, so lightly that her hooves do not touch the star-ashes and the muck of organs laid out in the sun, for any purpose but one of selfishness.
There is a rumor of the magic in star-bones that might be bent into a weapon. A legend long forgotten in the dusty tomes hidden deep in father’s library that has only now, when the world was first torn asunder, been brought to light. What started as a rumor, a mere whispering of what if when she laid her head down to dream, as turned into an inferno.
And Amaunet, like a starving hound at the belly of a kill, soon found the whisper turned into a bellow.
The screaming store, and the wailing store, and the one with gold enough to burn her eyes with the glimmer of it, do not turn her from her purpose. She walks through the spirals with all the determination of a sun-blooded thing caught in an endless night (she does not know how to do anything but go on, go on, go on, until the sun rises through the dark again). Her heavy gaze settles one everything all at once and yet it lingers on nothing. Garnets, and emeralds, and bones that should be silent that clack instead as she passes, do not hold her attention.
Amaunet does not relent, does not stop wondering what if, until the castle doors wave in the formless wind. It’s only there that she pauses, waiting until each eye has beheld the determination in her gaze and the dark monster that looks at their own bodiless monsters like a dragon come to call the coyotes to heel. And she’s about to brush her wings over the hundred eyes, and push the hundred lashes down into slumber with her wings, when the sound of another hoof falls too close for comfort behind her.
She had been too focused to hear him, too determined to worry about the wants of men.
And it’s only now that she appraises him, feeling the glimmer of recognition but not bothering to name it, as she steps back down the stairs toward him. Her wings snap out in a warning and her head lifts in the same furious challenge she greets the sun with each day. “What have you come for?" She asks.
Because if he’s come for the bones to be welded into weapons she will kill him where he stands.
And if he has not---
@Malik
There is a rumor of the magic in star-bones that might be bent into a weapon. A legend long forgotten in the dusty tomes hidden deep in father’s library that has only now, when the world was first torn asunder, been brought to light. What started as a rumor, a mere whispering of what if when she laid her head down to dream, as turned into an inferno.
And Amaunet, like a starving hound at the belly of a kill, soon found the whisper turned into a bellow.
The screaming store, and the wailing store, and the one with gold enough to burn her eyes with the glimmer of it, do not turn her from her purpose. She walks through the spirals with all the determination of a sun-blooded thing caught in an endless night (she does not know how to do anything but go on, go on, go on, until the sun rises through the dark again). Her heavy gaze settles one everything all at once and yet it lingers on nothing. Garnets, and emeralds, and bones that should be silent that clack instead as she passes, do not hold her attention.
Amaunet does not relent, does not stop wondering what if, until the castle doors wave in the formless wind. It’s only there that she pauses, waiting until each eye has beheld the determination in her gaze and the dark monster that looks at their own bodiless monsters like a dragon come to call the coyotes to heel. And she’s about to brush her wings over the hundred eyes, and push the hundred lashes down into slumber with her wings, when the sound of another hoof falls too close for comfort behind her.
She had been too focused to hear him, too determined to worry about the wants of men.
And it’s only now that she appraises him, feeling the glimmer of recognition but not bothering to name it, as she steps back down the stairs toward him. Her wings snap out in a warning and her head lifts in the same furious challenge she greets the sun with each day. “What have you come for?" She asks.
Because if he’s come for the bones to be welded into weapons she will kill him where he stands.
And if he has not---
@Malik
