“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
There are a million things her wild and ancient soul is prepared to handle. And this--
This is not one of them.
Nothing in her understands the ways in which to be gentle, or loving, or anything but a lick of flame racing across the mortal coil. Her own gaze is not hopeful, or loving, when her steps almost falter (she is too graceful to stumble, too holy). The look in her gaze is a bit of wildfire trapped in flesh. It's full of rage, and violence, and a hundred other looks too dark, too bright to name. And she tries to bank it, to water it down to something less violent than the storm roiling in her core, but she knows it's too late, too late, too late when she says “oh” and it comes out like a sigh.
She lets her movement stop once they reach the wall of nothingness between the crowd and the night. The darkness rushes over her, taking with it the last flare of fire in her gaze. Al'Zahra does not try to get it back, but rather lets the blackness start to feel like suffocating. There is a peace in it, a place where her soul is not racing for the edge of a cliff like a cursed thing begging for death. And she lets her soul race into that abyss, before she turns to lay her lips against Morrighan's cheek like she is full of something more than dread and wildness chewing a bit of iron between its jaw.
It is not a feeling she enjoys, these words and the hope in Morrighan's eyes each echoing in her thoughts like links of chains. She wants to run instead of kiss, to dissolve into ash and float away on the breeze until the grass turns to forest and to mountain pass.
But she tries to settle her ankles into the links of chain, and she tries to smile against the feeling of falling.
She tries. Oh, she tries.
“Have you chosen a name?” There is still soot, smoke in her voice, and heat made to singe and devour. But tonight, with the weight of chains holding her down like stones in her belly, the magic in them does not sound like song and dance.
For the first time she does not know what else to say, not with all her blood begging her to run, run, run.
@Morrighan
