“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
Part of her wishes that the flame had roared over her form like a tidal wave. She wishes it had been smoke and heat filling her throat instead of bile and hate. Perhaps then something other than fury would have fallen from between the snarl of her lips and caught in the golden flash and smolder of her gaze.
And part of her wishes for her old form filled with smoke long and heavy enough to choke with. It would have been easier then, to step closer to her once-lover (her soon-to-be-forgotten-lover) and unmake that brittle heart too weak to catch her chamber by chamber and cell by cell.
Al'Zahra does not think a million wishes would have saved Morrighan then.
She is about to snarl again, and swallow down the smoke like wine, when Morrighan snuffs out her fire and drops her eyes. And she laughs when the mare has no answer to her question but to turn away like a broken and beaten thing. It is better this way then, broken and beaten things cannot hold up all the weight of her want, and desire, and burned-out fire that is still hungry enough to eat a forest.
Morrighan offers to send a owl. Al'Zahra smiles. It is cold, and cruel, and weighted enough to break bones (and hearts, always hearts). “Send an owl and I will pluck off its wings.” She says before she turns to go.
And already each of her steps is turning once again to dace like her soul is nothing heavier than a spring cloud. There is no rain, no sorrow, no brokenness to be found in her at all.
There never really was, she discovers, it had only been a fleeting folly as easily forgotten as a dream.
@Morrighan
