No one comes. Wretchedness chews a gaping hole in his logic, heart and mind; it feasts wickedly on the stew of his despair and the eagle stands motionless with a wrenched expression thrown to the sky - he looks to be frozen there, stuck fast by the weight of leaden sorrow. Ocean-blue eyes close across welling tears of concern, confusion; they web between pale lashes like hot glue and in cliche style, silent images of times past start to swell in the glum darkness around him. The sun again hits her pinnacle and he slips from the baking openness of a long glade into dappled shade. Though now it plays eerily and quiet, he remembers well: Cicadae sing deafeningly, while locusts chant in shrill, sporadic bursts. It is difficult to hear anything else in between and that is likely the reason that he failed to notice her – nestled like a shy doe beneath a den of ragged scrub. His face turns left, then right as sea-green eyes swim between curious, bi-coloured pools; the darkest plane of her face and the sapphire socketed within, drive his gaze right (the paler perhaps is softer, quieter). “Are you hiding?” he’d asked her faintly, lifting his face momentarily to survey the grove - it had certainly looked that way. His impromptu arrival had been an inconvenience – still more, a surprise! She retaliates with unforeseen (unwarranted), hostility, defensiveness, and he shrinks a little from her stormy circle. The intensity of the reaction however, is fleeting and aggression gives way to something more familiar, relatable; uncertainty. The bright blue-green eyes that reflect her splendidly elfin presence shine inquisitively, wonderingly, for she looks like nobody he has before come across. Her loveliness is astonishing, divine. The fairy before him is a queer trick of light, a sliver of shadow, a delicate illusion that might slip just as readily into the waft of summer’s breeze. There are thistles in her long, mahogany mane, smears of mud caked across narrow, coloured toes - the perfect pasterns above; old, subtle green stains upon pallid legs (the fine hair there is skewed) suggest a turbulent time. There is damage beneath her quiet radiance. He observes both the coiled, cautiousness of her stance, and recalls easily the pheromone which had filled each lung. Her dread was bitter, delicious - calling out desperately to the bravado of youth. Beside her petite, porcelain figure, young Noah (barely a stallion) had felt all the more virile. Another memory rises to tackle the turbulence of panicked thought, and it stirs a wistful smile through his demeanour: There she stands, so close that his pores scream for contact, craving the heat of that womanly curve; nearly months ago her angles were wickedly sharp, the flesh had been harried from her exotic bones by fear induced travel (or so he assumes), but now she appears before him like a goddess, an angel aglow that he dares not defile. Yet, he cannot help but be lured a step closer, her succulent perfume in the stagnant atmosphere (it haunts him, even now), so ripe for the taking, guides hungry nares in - something within him grows ravenous - and lips quiver, pressed together as they venture for collision. She - every exquisite part of her - is bewitching, stunning, like the sun to night; more glorious even than his brazen expectation in this moment and his vulnerable male verve reels backwards (eyes sealed beneath quaking lashes, roll), and his lungs are robbed completely of breath. It takes him a minute to recover, chin pitched desperately towards the dark ceiling (for he was drowning indeed), and he wavers on the spot in a drunken stupor, with wings dropped limply to the cold, dewy-stone floor. The breath he had drawn - stolen from the bubble they were forced to share - was long, pronounced, but it restored and invigorated him. Bright aquamarine plunges, at last, lured back from oblivion by the shuffle of hooves; still nearer has he slid, defying the barrier that once existed between them, to sweep away silken forelock from her perfectly enticing eyes. Movement below pulls him suddenly (reluctantly) from that moment - rattling, lusting nostrils suck naught but that soft pollened air of the present - and a web of worry weaves back into his mask. His lover, his dove; her neck bends awkwardly upwards amid heavy, rasping pants. Lips move to touch her, to reconnect and soothe, but something else nicks his focus and eyes glide to her rear, guiding his chin abruptly off course. Where did... how? There is a bundle of bony flesh, piled upon the ground against her; bloody afterbirth is strewn between them, the stench is overbearing, but his curiosity is more. Hesitant footfalls draw the eagle nearer, and gaze caresses the perfectly petite skull which turns blindly in the breeze. For a second, he is unsure and he stalls, swinging cascades of flaxen from one flinching flank to the other. Dimpled chin trembles as it ventures through the open, closing the distance between the fruit of Nora’s labour and the miniature bird as it spreads its toy wingspan through the grass. “It… It’s alright,” he coos gently, voice stirred to life by the very rumble of his softened heart. Eyes examine tenderly the loosely fitted tapestry of liver and white (further colour was hidden below), and alien emotion ignites within him - like those strange, sultry, steaming waters of the basin, course within. Teeth inch nearer, tempting towards to the tiny creature’s ears to free them of sticky sac; likewise, he begins - a matter of instinct rather than want - to clean his daughter of the larger fractions of mess. |
