She grunts, unengaging, but Cairo still feels the way her response resonates deep into his soul. It did not engage him, but oh behind that one gesture is a whole wealth of unspoken words. The picture, he thinks is a terrible one. It is chasm deep with all of its layers and horrors.
They had all been buried, separated and slumbering. He does not know, he has not hard word yet of how she had not slept. She was awake the whole time. It would chase the smile from his lips, if he knew. But he does not, because Cyrra, ever brave, bold Cyrra carefully folds her pain away, and focusses it into violent retorts.
I’d like to wear their bastard skulls as helms into my next battle. He smiles, menacing, indulgent, rejoicing in her vindictiveness. “I like the idea.” He murmurs, feline, though the eyes that watch her remain sharp as an eagle’s talons. She drinks briefly, but the silence is enough for him to think, to imagine such a vendetta. “I would help you.” He muses, lightly. Yet deep, below the tranquil surface is a raging current. “Yet after, I would trample their skulls amidst the ruins of our foe. I would not want even their skulls to partake of our victory.”
Such violent ideas pass between them so casually as he tilts his head to peer at the water. Water. He went a decade without wetting his throat. The first taste past his lips had been liquor. Even as he watches her drink, he knows he needs something stronger. But Cyrra has always been, better. Wearily watching Zayir and Cairo’s endless push and pull. “I saw Zayir earlier.” Cairo adds, casual, too casual for how he left him, drunk amidst the dancing, failing to answer and only fulfilling Zayir’s question of why he left, always.
A moment passes as Cairo watches the sun, the water, the endless desert beyond the oasis. “I do not know what to do now.” He says, vulnerably, of life within Solterra, of his love for Zayir, of how to live after, after a decade of nothing.
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