She was not quite what you would call refined.
The storm swirls above, below, silence.
Below, she can taste chlorine on her lips.
Nerine is silent except for the thunder that follows the lightning that follows her. Empty, sleeping, brooding, but Popinjay doesn't mind, she will fill its skies with her lightning and its land with the shade of her wings. None come, no Nerinians, anyway, their bones too cold. A boy drops clumsily from the sky and the way his grin mirrors hers makes her own beam more brightly. She closes the distance between them in moments as though they are old friends.
"Why aren't you?" she asks him with a conspiratorial tilt of her head, "It's too quiet, don't you think?"
Overhead, bolts of lightning crack the grey sky and throw their strobing light over the pair while Leilan joins them. His mind voice sounds like ice groaning in her brain and the little mare turns her attention away from the boy with the river on his back to cast her dancing eyes across the northern king. No doubt he expects her to make a proclamation, to declare her worth, but she doesn't, only tosses the curls of her forelock so that it dances in that wild wind. What argument would he have her make except that she wants to do it, and so she has? For a moment, she keeps her place beside the blue-and-bay youth, but she leaves him for the roan, stepping in too close, her muzzle to his ear though she must nearly stand on her tip-toes to reach.
"I'll tell you a secret," there is electricity on her lips when they brush his jaw, though his scaling will protect him from the very worst of its bite, "they say lightning doesn't strike twice, but it actually hits me all the time."
She pulls her sparking muzzle away and grins her mischievous grin, and perhaps it is just enough time for him to leap back - just enough time for him to see the way the hairs of her mane lift and dance in the air, to feel the prickling on his skin - just enough time to avoid the enormous bar of light that engulfs her, arcing towards the sky with a sound that shatters the space around them. The lightning leaves eyes dark and ears roaring when it is gone, and she stands unscathed, laughing, at its center, and everything just a bit too close to her burnt and smoking.
Popinjay lives for dramatics.
"So, have either of you come to stop me?"
Below, she can taste chlorine on her lips.
Nerine is silent except for the thunder that follows the lightning that follows her. Empty, sleeping, brooding, but Popinjay doesn't mind, she will fill its skies with her lightning and its land with the shade of her wings. None come, no Nerinians, anyway, their bones too cold. A boy drops clumsily from the sky and the way his grin mirrors hers makes her own beam more brightly. She closes the distance between them in moments as though they are old friends.
"Why aren't you?" she asks him with a conspiratorial tilt of her head, "It's too quiet, don't you think?"
Overhead, bolts of lightning crack the grey sky and throw their strobing light over the pair while Leilan joins them. His mind voice sounds like ice groaning in her brain and the little mare turns her attention away from the boy with the river on his back to cast her dancing eyes across the northern king. No doubt he expects her to make a proclamation, to declare her worth, but she doesn't, only tosses the curls of her forelock so that it dances in that wild wind. What argument would he have her make except that she wants to do it, and so she has? For a moment, she keeps her place beside the blue-and-bay youth, but she leaves him for the roan, stepping in too close, her muzzle to his ear though she must nearly stand on her tip-toes to reach.
"I'll tell you a secret," there is electricity on her lips when they brush his jaw, though his scaling will protect him from the very worst of its bite, "they say lightning doesn't strike twice, but it actually hits me all the time."
She pulls her sparking muzzle away and grins her mischievous grin, and perhaps it is just enough time for him to leap back - just enough time for him to see the way the hairs of her mane lift and dance in the air, to feel the prickling on his skin - just enough time to avoid the enormous bar of light that engulfs her, arcing towards the sky with a sound that shatters the space around them. The lightning leaves eyes dark and ears roaring when it is gone, and she stands unscathed, laughing, at its center, and everything just a bit too close to her burnt and smoking.
Popinjay lives for dramatics.
"So, have either of you come to stop me?"
@[Leilan]
