the cinders are falling like snow; raelynx

[Cordis]

She forgets that others are not so burdened with history as she is. She forget there are creatures who exist without worlds on their backs, Atlases with shaking knees. She is selfish, in this way, narcissistic, so deep in the trenches of her own pain, her own torments, that she forgets they don’t know the story. (There are creatures who have not heard His laugh, great and terrible. There are creatures who do not know what it feels like to have every bone broken. To have your one greatest love say ‘I can’t’ and walk away.) Her muzzle is still pressed against him. She has touches so few who were not her family, it is odd to cross such boundaries without even knowing his name, or giving hers. But she is a different woman than she once was: she is alone, and it makes her reckless. He tells her ‘yes, stay’ and stay she does, pressed to him. She hears his name, sounding muffled and distant above the throb of his heartbeat, but she registers it: Raelynx. “I’m Cordis,” she says, so that he can name her, later, name her and give her power. “I have a secret, Raelynx,” she says, finally lifting her head. She sounds like He did, back in the lair, but she realizes she can’t stop herself, she is gathering momentum, an unstoppable force with no immovable object to stop her. “Do you want to know what it is?” c o r d i s she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake and she learned a lesson back there in the flames