for the hunted ones.
there is no safe place
when your body is
the site of the storm.
T
hey are friends; to Andras, it could be no other way. He sees Adonai across the arena and a laugh bubbles its way halfway up his throat before it hits the back of his tongue. Andras aims his arrow at Adonai's hooves and the flash of something that rolls over the man's face makes him giddy before he remembers himself. The lighthearted, lightheaded bliss rolls first into the pocket behind his eyes and then down the bridge of his nose where he breathes it in like the last gasp of fresh air left in the world.Adonai rises like the phoenix he is, bright against the darkening sand, the same white and gold as his city. For a moment, with his wings spread and backlit by the sun as he rises, and rises, and rises, the day king almost looks like a god in his own right. Wreathed in flame. Clothed in the sun itself.
And he, dawn-king, weighed down by the fog of his home, a black spot on the dazzling gleam of Solterra.
"Are you doing me a favor," Adonai asks, "missing like that?" There is that something again, a flash of anger that sets Andras' own on fire. Sparks blow off his skin like a livewire before he can stop them.
The arrow sings past his side, whistling as it slices the atmosphere straight off his skin. Andras imagines it peeling, folding down off his wings like cut wood, or falling in flakes before the sand swallows it up, just as it swallows everything else, given a long enough time. He watches it go.
"Is that you returning the favor?" Andras laughs: high, wild, and frantic. The sort of sound that only comes out of beasts. He raises the bow again, this time aimed at the other man's wing in return. "You wanna try that again, friend?"
A spark, then a crack like thunder, as the crowd falls silent in the wake of Andras tucking his wings to his side and careening toward Adonai, propelled by a cloud of smoke, fire and lightning. Andras breathes: in, out, in, out-- until he is just close enough to loose his arrow, still trained (best he can) on Adonai's wing.
The crowd starts to mumble again, then resumes its full volume. Under its roar, Andras is laughing.
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
