[AW] threnody

[Bexley]

" BEXLEY BRIAR "

Bexley’s adrenaline has turned her so blind, so deaf, so numb to the world that she hardly hears Maxence’s warning, much less reacts to it: her only focus is the shreds of tendon, the bones jutting through the wing above her, the salty smell of blood wafting through the air that is nothing if not satisfying. Her heart races with an irregular patter at the very edges of her chest, hitting bone and bone again. Over the loud rush of blood in her veins Bexley only catches the tail end of his voice, but even as she hears it it floods in one ear and out the other, not registering, not making sense - Run! - just a garbled word that can’t stick, doesn’t mean anything. Gasping, hiccuping, lashing out for air, Bex’s head goes black as she tries to understand.  

Run? Why would he be telling them to run?

The Teryr thrashes suddenly; Bexley loses her grip on its wing and stumbles backward, and as she looks up she sees Maxence flung like a ragdoll through the sky above her head, not even those huge wings enough to keep him from hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Bexley freezes. Too ramped up to be disturbed, she watches him with a cocanic intensity, pupils pin-point under the glare of the sun, zeroed in on his body folding over the boulder, wings splayed around him like an already-dead thing. Get up, prays Bexley, moving toward him without even realizing. Her legs are numb, her muscles blazing. Get up, you dumb fucking idiot. If you don’t, you’re never going to hear the end of it. 

Then that roar, echoing above her head, and Bexley breaks out into a cold sweat that covers her from head to hoof. One of them is going to die. One of them is going to die.

In horror, she watches the throw of the spear, the flash of metal tip in the light, swirling and turning with arial grace, and she’s still horrified as it blasts into the back of the creatures mouth, spits up blood and brain matter out of the newly formed hole in his skull, although she should be pleased: it takes so many long moments for her to return to her body, find her own skin again, looking at the slump of the Teryr’s skull as it hits the ground, its body crumpling and folding, crumpling and folding. A gust of relief, so visceral it hurts, courses like wind through every corner of her body. With a breathless smile Bexley throws her azure gaze up to the sky and says out loud, into the eye of the sun, Thank you. 

Limping, she turns away.

love, space