and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

She slips into silence, into the darkest corners of Beqanna. 

She slips away from her family, from whatever friends she can pretend that she has, from everything that she has ever known. She falls into the undercurrent of her depression, of her rage, and she finds that she can hold onto the diamond core of it there. She can cling to the edges of her fury at the way that her life has turned out and she lets it harden her, she lets it wear away at the soft edges of her until she is her father’s daughter. She lets it strip away her youth until she is a young mare with harsh eyes and no smile.

It is easier when she can pretend that this is all she is.

It is easier when she can close her eyes and feel the edges of her fangs against her mouth and let that be the beginning and the end of her. The poison that drips onto her tongue is sweet and she wonders if she could simply drink it down, dose herself, let it rage into every branching edge of her veins.

Would it bring the darkness?

Would it pull her under?

She is not quite ready to know, although neither is she ready to dismiss the possibility altogether, and she instead lets herself contemplate it for a while—moving through the edges of Beqanna but not quite letting herself get trapped within it again. That is, until she sees him, that faint glow of a halo and the gold of him  drawing her forth from the shadows into the proximity of the common lands. She is older than the last time that they had met and while the lines of her face remain as lovely as her mother’s, there is something that sharpens it, an undercurrent of rage that she doesn’t quite turn on him. 

She walks closer to him, head lowered and just a hint of fang showing against her lip.

“Ophanim,” her voice sounds strange as it wraps around his name. “It’s been a while.”

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

He is calm, like a river, and she wonders what it must be like to live a life so unaffected by the things around you—to simply accept what comes, what happens, as another part of the day. She cannot live like this, no matter how she tries. She simply feels everything too strongly—whether it be love or joy or even hatred. It seeps into her bones and fuses with every atom. It transforms her into the beast of the day, and she wishes that she could have his tranquil nature, the ease with which his lips tip upward.

Perhaps it is this that brings her back to him. Perhaps it is jealousy of him, a desire to unlock the secrets of his easy manner. Perhaps it is some deep-seated hope that being near him will allow her to pick up on the secrets of his soul; perhaps she hopes that, one day, she too will be able to smile so easily.

Regardless, she has not picked up on such secrets yet, and she is left feeling open and vulnerable before his blue ocean eyes. “I haven’t looked,” she says bluntly and only after such things have left her lips does she wonder if they are unkind. Her mother would never exhale such things, she thinks with shame, but she has long since forfeit any hope of growing into her mother’s calm loveliness.

She is not to possess such grace, such a soft heart.

But neither will she experience the pain her mother has—that is a promise to herself.

At his question, she laughs but the sound is dull and she looks down, brow furrowing and the corners of her lips dropping. “I ran,” she rolls her lean shoulders, “but I don’t know if I have a home to run from.” She looks back up at his confession and something rolls across her features, an undercurrent of something that she can’t quite name. “I don’t deserve to be missed,” a glimpse of fang against her lip as she studies the depths of his gaze, “but I have missed you and I don’t deserve to miss you either.”

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

There is something of a promise held in his soft voice. Maybe not a promise of forever, or even an extended period of time, but of escape. Of something gentle and easy. She has no way of knowing that his heart is hopelessly tied to another. She has no way of knowing that he is twisted around the mind readers finger, but it doesn’t matter. Perhaps she, like her mother, is destined to want that which she can’t have.

Perhaps she is cursed to love things from afar.

But he is close now, the warmth of him hovering over her, around her, and she closes her eyes for a second on a sigh as she slips into it, letting it rise within her chest. “I have never been give anything,” but that’s a lie and she knows it. Something like shame hits her, leaves her breathless. “That’s not true. I had a beautiful home when I was a child but I lost it. It didn’t last. Maybe it never can.”

She shakes her elegant head, the same delicate features of her mother shining through the serpent. She exhales slowly as his lips find the curve of her neck. Her breath hitches and then she feels a flush of something unfamiliar as he retreats. Her sage green eyes open slowly and she studies him, wondering at what made him jerk back, at the sudden, cold distance that opens up between them.

“We aren’t,” she agrees, her voice soft—too soft. “But we could be.” She frowns and looks down before looking back up beneath the curls of her forelock. “For tonight maybe.”

Enough time to make her forget this ache in her chest.

This jagged need to find acceptance in the curve of his body and the fever of his mouth. It is a dangerous, reckless thing that pushes her forward again, her fanged mouth finding the masculine angle of his jaw and lingering there. He smells sweet and she feels a tightening in her belly, something like relief to find this—an escape, an opportunity, a momentarily reprieve. “Please,” she whispers against him as she steps into his haloed presence once more. “I just need to forget. I need to not think tonight.”

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

Adna has so many lessons to learn that she doesn’t even know where to start. How does one learn how to live a life that is not plagued with sorrow. How does one learn to live a life that is not constantly weighed down with the need to run away, to find hope in tomorrow, to find some ability to lose yourself.

But she doesn’t want to be smart now—she doesn’t want to learn a lesson.

She wants to make mistakes, and she wants to make them with him.

So she does. He begins to touch her, to find the curves of her, and she makes a soft noise in the back of her throat. Something like a growl, or a hiss. Something that is predatory in its roughness and yet delicate in its fragility. It is something that she clings to; this duality of need and want, give and take.

She leans into his touch, a shudder running down her spine as heat flickers to light in her breast. This is dangerous, she knows. This is a game she should not be playing. This is going to hurt. But she wants it to. She leans into the knife’s edge and hopes it breaks the skin. She hungers for that taste of devastation.

When he lifts himself, when he enters her, she can only say his name. It whispers out of her serpentine mouth, flickers between her fangs, and she focuses on the feel of him against the scales on her back. The feather light touches of the wings against her sides, the sweat the builds beneath her mane.

She says his name—again, and again.

Until it a noise, a murmur, a moan.

When it is finished and he slides from her, she wonders at how she could feel so empty. She feels a pain that is nearly exquisite in its beauty, piercing through her ribcage. This will not last.

“I can try,” she says quietly, but even as she says it, she knows he will never truly want her.

No one ever does.

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home