the kind of thing that eats you
There is a weed that grows in the desert with rampant disregard for the cruelty of its surroundings. Amaunet has forgotten the name of it but she can still see the miles its root system had stretched when the Davke children made a game of digging it out of the dunes. Some had thought it a metaphor for the insidious, and fragile, flowers filling up the city. Others had thought it an omen about how desert-bred things kept their roots hidden until every dune, and every stretch of nothingness, was filled with them.
Amaunet had thought neither.
She had only seen a weed with no flower to make it lovely an no poison in the sap of it to make it useful. It had been a weed, only a weed, as useful in the ground as it was torn from it.
The way the sunset glimmers on the mare, the way it echoes in her eyes as if the dying sun has already turned to starlight, reminds her of that weed. She can see it in the mare, that hunger for another mile, and another mile, and another mile, that the desert had no intention of surrendering.
But Amaunet is no desert dune. She is not a barren stretch of nothing filled with violence. She is the violence and savage life that fills it.
“There will be another sunset tomorrow, another one after that, and in all of them there will be two skies of twilight full of the same colors. Fill the world with enough of something and eventually it will all seem alike.” Her smile is a terrible thing as it brightens when she wonders if the mare is clever enough to keep up with something other than her flowers and her softness.
Amaunet wants to tear the woman's eyes out for suggesting that she do anything. Her wings rustle like a storm forest at her side as they itch to see how quick another shade of twilight might stumble and fall.
It hurts, actually hurts, to tuck them back to her side and look a the city full of lambs. The colors are too bright for the desert and she finds the citizens paler for the way they must fill their city up with color instead of themselves. Or, she thinks as she turns away from the mare to look back at the stretch of horses below, the way they must braid color in their hair to make them stand out.
“Hello Elena.” She says. But the mare had not asked, not in any way that Amaunet might heed, and so she offers nothing but, “what I would like to see is nothing that your city would love,” in place of a name.
“Speaking.” @Elena
Amaunet had thought neither.
She had only seen a weed with no flower to make it lovely an no poison in the sap of it to make it useful. It had been a weed, only a weed, as useful in the ground as it was torn from it.
The way the sunset glimmers on the mare, the way it echoes in her eyes as if the dying sun has already turned to starlight, reminds her of that weed. She can see it in the mare, that hunger for another mile, and another mile, and another mile, that the desert had no intention of surrendering.
But Amaunet is no desert dune. She is not a barren stretch of nothing filled with violence. She is the violence and savage life that fills it.
“There will be another sunset tomorrow, another one after that, and in all of them there will be two skies of twilight full of the same colors. Fill the world with enough of something and eventually it will all seem alike.” Her smile is a terrible thing as it brightens when she wonders if the mare is clever enough to keep up with something other than her flowers and her softness.
Amaunet wants to tear the woman's eyes out for suggesting that she do anything. Her wings rustle like a storm forest at her side as they itch to see how quick another shade of twilight might stumble and fall.
It hurts, actually hurts, to tuck them back to her side and look a the city full of lambs. The colors are too bright for the desert and she finds the citizens paler for the way they must fill their city up with color instead of themselves. Or, she thinks as she turns away from the mare to look back at the stretch of horses below, the way they must braid color in their hair to make them stand out.
“Hello Elena.” She says. But the mare had not asked, not in any way that Amaunet might heed, and so she offers nothing but, “what I would like to see is nothing that your city would love,” in place of a name.
