It takes no more than a glance to still the keeper of the ring as he goes to call the next fight. This is the language they have always known-- a look between their white-rimmed and wild eyes. He is perhaps one of the few that knows how to read the hunger rippling in the edges of her shadow like a nest of young snakes. He knows what it means when she beds her teeth down in a tangle of mane and skin.
He knows.
But perhaps this fool (her fool) does not know what it means when she trembles and stills beneath the liquor stained fire of his touch down the hollows of her face.
A bit of light scrubs her face as she echoes his step towards the ring. She wonders what magic is calling to him, what blood lust; what song of violence might be echoing in his ears where the sound of his own heart should be. She wonders if it's a dull mimicry of the cacophony of her own wrath and rage singing around the marrow of her bones like a siren song. Would he be so bold without the lingering insidious kisses of her magic against his need?
Amaunet uses the crowd to push his steps closer and closer to the keeper of the ring. She follows him as if he is the lion now and she the lamb bedding down from the storm. Light dances like starlight and moon-fire in her gaze as they cross the ring of lights hanging between the crowd and the ring. She does not pause as she crosses the line of them. It is like coming home.
Her hunger is scalding now, as she turns to pluck a feather from her wings. It crawls like fire down her insides as she braids her feather into his mane. Another stallion approaches the other side of the ring. This is the type of hunger that takes men to their knees and fills their lungs with blood instead of air. She drags her teeth down his hip and nips at the soft flesh between bone and tail.
“Survive,” She says in teeth, and voice, and kiss. The keeper looks at them as her voice rises above the dull roar of the crowd as they turn as one to the boy with the silver eyes and the golden skin. “and I'll meet you at the bottom of it.”
And when she pulls away her laughter echoes like a gong that goes on, and on, and on.
To the belly of the beast it goes on.
@August
