[P] creatures of the night

[Antiope]

-- ♛ --

T

he sun limping its way across the sky, leaning heavily on the western horizon and staining the clouds in its blood. I have peeled myself away from the river and traced a path down Amare instead. The creek babbles in my ears as I walk along. Low hanging tree branches sweep across my spine as they reach their leaves toward the water longingly, hoping for a single touch. The sound of the water is as pleasant a white noise as I could hope for, drowning out the hunger of the lioness in my bones.

I walk for several long minutes before stopping. Fylax rests in the hollow of a tree, against the bank of the creek. I watch them curl up into a marble white mound, looking startling out of place in the spring green growth—like a lingering pile of snow. The gryphon’s feathers fall flat to their neck, long tail curling to cover their beak. I cannot rest. There are too many gaping spaces inside of me for sleep. I am too busy thinking of the mountains, and the moon, and the stars, and how they will all judge me one way or another. I am too busy thinking of the sea, and of the ways I would like to be something new.

I have spent so long as an other-thing, I am not sure if there is a way back through; a way back to something that is not caged and pacing and feral. I lean my shoulder against a tree and lift my head to the sky. My hair falls back like a curtain, revealing sapphire blue eyes darkened in the slowly vanishing light. I have blades and armors and starving magic and I have always tried so hard to be anything other than what those things have made me. I have failed, every time. I know now who I was meant to be. There is no escaping the way the gods carved me, what they breathed into me when they gave me life.

all that blood was never once beautiful.
it was just red.

∞ | @Lysandros