Beqanna holds nothing for him.

Like a negative image pressed firmly in his mind’s eye, he sees the land as it will always appear to him now: dark, hollow, the opposite of what it should be.  He comes without nostalgia, without pretense.  He comes, not as a man returning home after many, many moons away (proud and eager, sick of the road and sick for home), but as a surveyor of all he’s lost.  He comes without hope. 

He comes as the monstrosity he is, a sleek beast that cuts through the autumnal chill in the air above the meadow.  His broad wings leave shadows to race below him, touching the ground that he himself has neglected to touch for years.  I’ve missed it, he tells himself, watching the familiar hills undulate and roll beneath him.  But the thought is dull and doesn’t resonate like it perhaps should.  I’ve missed - Sabrael shakes his head to clear it before any truths can rise to the surface and complete his thought.  There is no use.  There is no turning back, either.

He’s come too far.

The rust-colored dragon finds an open clearing and lands squarely in the center of it.  He slams his tail down, upsetting a flock of starlings roosting in the trees surrounding him, before slowly shedding his reptilian skin.  The same feeling of vulnerability snakes over him instead without the comfort of his other form.  He can’t imagine how the others feel, those without the Beast rumbling beneath their fur.  It’s unnerving and sets him on edge as he surveys the place he’s landed in.  There isn’t the smell of sickness and death that had wafted over everything before.  There is only the scent of fall and the accompanying decay of the earth. 

There is only quiet.  

Because of this newfound serenity, Sabrael hears the approach of another rather quickly.  He turns his angular, speckled face to the sound and whoever is making it, sure that it won’t be anybody he knows (not this time, lightning doesn’t strike the same spot twice).  He sees the ravine his tail had raked into the earth and the Beast purrs its’ pleasure.      

  

He, too, has struggled with the truth of all that lives inside of him.

There was a time where he hadn’t understood any of it: the building and blinding rage, the lava that ran hot under his skin, or the release that came solely with the spilling of blood.  He had fought to keep the Beast contained and caged within his breast.  Wanting the world to be safe of the murderous whims of his counterpart, Sabrael had discovered the lengths he would go to protect everyone from himself.  He had fled, time and time again, only to come home with unknown gristle between his teeth and his snout stained crimson.

Fighting the dragon hadn’t worked.

Caging the dragon hadn’t worked.

It was only when he realized what he should have known all along – that he was the Beast, that they were one and the same – that everything fell into place.  

There is still a sea of guilt he treads in for all the sins he committed before.  He still climbs a mountain of bones built from names he’ll never know.  He tries not to think about it.  He’d kept them safe, at least.  All the faces that he cared about hadn’t melted by his unwitting fire.  Sabrael is thinking of one of them when he sees the girl lingering against the treeline.  It’s not her, of course.  Those luminous green eyes have never connected with his gold-flecked ones, he’s sure (sure, too, that they haven’t sparked with the same secret longing and desire).  It’s not her, but it’s somebody.  And he’s tired of being alone.

The bay roan ambles towards her, in no rush.  There is an easy grace to the way he moves, like the soft flicker of a flame.  He gives no indication of the predator poised beneath his horseflesh, only reveals the confidence of one who thinks he holds all the cards.  She’s a wild thing seemingly born from the forest itself.  He instantly likes how they mirror each other.  She seems of a similar mind the way she squares against his approach, defiant, almost.  Well, two can play at that.

Silent still, Sabrael tilts his head to get a better look at her.  Even in the lowlight of the woods, he sees the scales that make a mosaic out of her.  He sees, too, the slight lifting of her upper lip that suggests there might be more going on, that he might not want to be so quick to piss her off.  There is always a level of tension when two predators sense and meet each other.  There has to be sizing up, a jockeying of positions.  One has to come to terms that they are the weaker of the two.  After an uncomfortable (not to him) stretch of time, he breathes smoke out of his nostrils into the air between them.  “Come here often?”  He quips, the corner of one lip quirking ever so slightly.