there's fire in your blood
 | Mazikeen can see her mistake in the way Firion’s eyes light up and each use of her nickname feels like a cut. She snarls when he steps closer but does not back away not even when she can feel the breath that carries the name only her friends had ever called her. The one that had felt like such a triumph when Selaphiel had said it for the first time. The one she had given Firion back when she had been a stupid girl stuck as a fawn, back before he had ran. The one Sabal had cried into her skin when Mazikeen had lain in a pond of her own blood by Hyaline’s shore without eyes or a heart. The one Ryatah had whispered softly when she had come to save her for a second time.
She hates every single memory tied to that name, hates how nice it sounds on Firion’s tongue as he taunts her with it. Mazikeen isn’t made for nice things any more. She’s made for darkness and rage and curses and nothing else. Gale’s contentedness to stay in Hyaline may infuriate her but at least he doesn’t make her feel like this. There is no dredging up of past selves with him, they were both willing to leave those corpses alone.
Now she feels the same way she had in the meadow - like an animal being backed into a corner as he grins at her - so she’s surprised when that memory is pulled into her mind with intense clarity. Her red-orange widen, ears twitching at the combination of his voice and the memory. How full of life she had been then, with only a few scattered scars and her eyes dancing with a different, brighter fire. Only the anger is the same, burning hot in response to Firion and so easily needled into existence.
Mazikeen hisses a wordless response to his words but they brand themselves in her mind all the same. Even now she was so sure of his indifference, had attacked him because she believed that simple touch had meant nothing to him when it had meant so much to her and she wanted to escape that pain (and only found more).
She does not know if she believes he's telling the truth but she is saved from having to answer when he enters her mind. Mazikeen leaves her entire self open to him. There is nothing there, nothing to hide. She watches as his breath hitches, his eyes cloud, and she wonders if he can feel the way she considers trying to kill him again or if that means she’ll have to suffer his consciousness inside her forever. The satisfaction would not be worth that price.
Her breath is ragged when he returns into himself and she stares, waiting for the agreement that there is nothing, and infuriated by what he says instead. There is plenty to stay for still.
Mazikeen does something she’s not sure she’s ever consciously or willingly. She steps back and she lets the desire to run course through her. She could grow wings and fly away from Firion and his words, away from anyone who ever knew her. When she speaks, there is plenty of venom in the words but they are far quieter than she intends as she shakes her head like she can erase his words. “I don’t want you to stay.”
She can feel that something has changed in her mind but it remains obscured. There is something else in the emptiness apart from the rage but though she searches she cannot find it. She unconsciously shifts, her mind turning her into a white panther. “Take it back.” His words, his confessions, whatever he had changed in her. “TAKE IT BACK.” She screams before she shifts her weight backwards. But when her clawed forelegs come up from the ground she doesn’t lunge for him. With a wordless roar, she digs into her own skull like she can tear out her ears so she will never have to hear that nickname on his tongue again or find whatever he had planted and rip it out.
The pain is unbearable and intoxicating all at once, everything she thinks she deserves and enjoys, but she does not close her eyes - not even when blood drips into her pale lashes - because if there was any truth to Firion’s bullshit this would be hurting him too and she wants to see it.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ firion
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