A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
Patience is a virtue, or so the saying goes.
Phasus, however, is wrought with iniquities and so it is of no surprise to know that her patience is really rather limited in supply. Out there across the ice a nerve had been struck in her, and she can still feel it as it oscillates through every atom of every molecule that she is made of. The explosion had been a culmination of uncalculated weakness; wildly childish, and even by her own standards.
Regardless, it had left her reeling.
She had been close to its epicentre, shrouded by smoke and falling debris when the darkness had wrapped her close again and cradled her. Rock and ice flew towards her in shards but were met with resistance in the form of thick veil of shadow that seemed to stop them in their tracks. Cocooned in shadow, she had not hesitated in making a hasty retreat. After all, a mission in the name of self-preservation is hardly won if, instead of sickness, you’re removed by other methods, now is it?
Now, on her back and hips is the faint smattering of island that coats her skin like ash. She can shake it loose with the switch of her hips, but decides against it — like it is, in itself, a trophy earned by her survival this far. For a moment then, she wonders about her comrades. She doesn’t know if they’ve survived the blast, or the events transpired immediately after it, but she takes a moment to mourn them all the same.
More so, perhaps, because it means she has more seats to fill if she is to see her newly found vision to fruition.
She is wearing the detritus like a medal as she stews, contemplating a violent retaliation when the lemmings reveal their cheeky message. There is never any doubt that she will obey the beckon, not when curiosity eats her alive like a plague from the inside out, but the paths they highlight are a welcome gift. How convenient, she muses, pleased to pieces when the alternative is a jaunty hike through the snow. Phasus has never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
So she goes, and when she sees him at last beneath the leafy veils of a weeping willow a slow smile curls across her mouth.
Of course she had known he would be something to behold. The lemmings alone had given her every indication, mewling up at her with wide, witless eyes. She doesn’t expect it to radiate off his flesh though, like waves of heat out into the atmosphere — like there is so much of it that if he chose to contain it all his skin might rip just apart at the seams.
Oh, the things that she could do with him.
To him, even.
Though her eyes are hungry, though they drink down every inch of him as though he is red wine, and she, a lush, she stills remembers why she has come. She draws her body parallel to his, and she draws it close - closer still, until the pointed-bone tips of her wings threaten to graze against his mottled flank. Until she feels the heat radiate off his skin, and with it — magic. She reaches inside herself to tangle her own magic with his to see if she can see it pulse and tremble under the weight of its own might.
“Will you be joining us in the ring, then?” She asks as she drops anchor, a kittenish expression on her ever-so-slightly dished face as she simpers.
phasus