A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY
Abel’s escape does not last long.
He hadn’t really expected it to - he wasn’t a boy who had that kind of luck - but if there had been no part of him that thought I can do this than he never would have tried at all. For a few moments sweet as air after being in a cave (a cave of stalactites, a cave of hornets-from-bones) all the noise around him faded to background chaos and his heart soared above the smoke and he could see the route he would take out beyond the city gates and free, free, free.
The noise is thunderous as the paint mare bursts into the bar after him; the air is full of the tang of smoke and liquor. Her hooves catch him across the side and he whirls like a cat, sucking in a tight, shocked breath at the burn of the blow; her blue eyes seem to glow like sapphires and he falls back a step, his eyes darting like a coyote’s between her and the doorway. Abel pays no more attention to her words than he would at the bite of a horsefly, only turning back his ears and snapping his tail. All he can think is There is still a chance -
And then the other mare looms up out of the smoke like a devil, big and made bigger by the strange burning light of the night, and Abel knows that he is beaten. The snap of the wood is loud as a shot in the dim tight space of the bar, and the boy ducks his head just below her swing and reaches up with his telekinesis like a hand to try and slow it. Her tail he can do nothing for; it falls across his haunches like the blow of a whip, but Abel has suffered worse than that. What is one more bar across his shoulders, his legs?
He does not cry Stop, does not say Please. The bay only backs up into the corner he has been pressed too, shoulders hunched like a cornered dog, his dark eyes staring somewhere between them both. No more does he look toward the door for escape; there is chaos around them yet but Abel can only hear Toulouse’s whisper just inside the shell of his ear.
I’ll be sure to send Raum your regards.
He thinks: I will be reported as a traitor twice-over and I will be killed for it.
There is no more Abel can do to fight - he is small, and unarmed, and possesses no magic or weapon of his own. Only his wits, and his weary ragged stubbornness, and neither of those were more than average to begin with.
When he closes his eyes and slumps against the rough wood of the wall it is with relief and not exhaustion.
@Boudika @Morrighan
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