[P] stairway to the sea

[Samaira]

As he speaks, Samaira cannot help but wonder if Cassius, too, feels no remorse for what he had done to her. Is he somewhere, feeling like he lost out on his prey? Thinking of her not like another equine but just some sort of possession or spoil. She looks at this man, standing there on the beach like the manifestation of some far away arctic, and can’t decide whether his own words put him on the same plane as Cassius or not.

“They are poisoned by greed, and greed makes them feel superior,” and she thinks again of Cassius, and every time his name passes through her thoughts her heart aches a little more, the silver of her eyes gets a little more distant and dull. Greed made Cassius into someone she didn’t recognize, someone with zealous obsession. It had made him dangerous, and she believes he would have done anything to get her to be his.

She would never be his. Not then, and not now that she was here, though sometimes in her dreams in the night she still felt like she was running. Still felt like he was there, breathing down her neck, smiling, smiling, smiling. Bright and mad.

Samaira breathes and it is a shuddering, strange breath. Like emerging from underwater after being submerged for some time. She blinks away the hollow, haunting shadows in her eyes and even though he won’t look at her. Even though he cannot look at her and she cannot know that, she does. She looks at him and tips her head and says, “I hope that the next time we meet you will extend to me the same courtesy, should it not be under as pleasant circumstances.”

It sounds like a goodbye, but also like a promise. She will treat him like any animal, and she will fight for her life if she needs to.

@Amaroq