03-17-2020, 09:22 PM
"Will they be afraid of me?" she had asked him, lost, terrified, reeling, and he didn't speak. He didn't speak because the answer was yes, that they would be afraid of her. She was a lion and they were rabbits, but saying it was too much, would have broken her. He couldn't have known, then, what the Mountain would show her, the darkness that she had inside of her, balled up like a fist.
"I have."
She is wrapped in shadow and hard to see, stepping between the trees, and her voice is hushed, almost grim, still troubled by the visions in the painted mare's dream world. The dreams left her breathless and confused when they were over, when she blinked and she was not the ghost of an elderly mare that had committed hundreds of murders, including the murder of her friends and... a lover? The thought of love now makes her stomach flip and she feels foolish. Halcyon is a friend and nothing more, and she would never kill him. She would never let her desire for freedom destroy everything.
Would she?
Fear stings her belly like the ice that grows around the pale mare's ankles, crusting the surface of the river with shivering white. She has seen a trick like that. Leilan - her father, the ice dragon, now. He rears up in her mind out of smoke and fire and ice and mist - the burning of the Isle and she flinches away from it. The thought of him being a dragon fills her with guilt and the shadows draw up more thickly around her, but the youth forces them away. She does not want to be the shadowy assassin in the forest. The shadows fall reluctantly, trailing instead at her feet like hounds following their master, and suddenly she is away from the trees, away from the darkness, and the clear light of spring falls golden on her. She is equine, still. That trick of the paint mare's dream stayed. For now, the young lioness remains quiet within but for the slightly feline hint to her movement.
"My father can do something like that," the confidence of her steps does not carry into her voice. The grimness fades a little, remembering... perhaps not happier times, her childhood was not filled with joy as some are, but there had been love, and a shaky smile tugs at the corners of her grey lips as she looks up at the pair, one white as snow and moonlight, one like a wren, flitting through the undergrowth and chattering boldly, "He doesn't like when the water gets too warm, either."
"I have."
She is wrapped in shadow and hard to see, stepping between the trees, and her voice is hushed, almost grim, still troubled by the visions in the painted mare's dream world. The dreams left her breathless and confused when they were over, when she blinked and she was not the ghost of an elderly mare that had committed hundreds of murders, including the murder of her friends and... a lover? The thought of love now makes her stomach flip and she feels foolish. Halcyon is a friend and nothing more, and she would never kill him. She would never let her desire for freedom destroy everything.
Would she?
Fear stings her belly like the ice that grows around the pale mare's ankles, crusting the surface of the river with shivering white. She has seen a trick like that. Leilan - her father, the ice dragon, now. He rears up in her mind out of smoke and fire and ice and mist - the burning of the Isle and she flinches away from it. The thought of him being a dragon fills her with guilt and the shadows draw up more thickly around her, but the youth forces them away. She does not want to be the shadowy assassin in the forest. The shadows fall reluctantly, trailing instead at her feet like hounds following their master, and suddenly she is away from the trees, away from the darkness, and the clear light of spring falls golden on her. She is equine, still. That trick of the paint mare's dream stayed. For now, the young lioness remains quiet within but for the slightly feline hint to her movement.
"My father can do something like that," the confidence of her steps does not carry into her voice. The grimness fades a little, remembering... perhaps not happier times, her childhood was not filled with joy as some are, but there had been love, and a shaky smile tugs at the corners of her grey lips as she looks up at the pair, one white as snow and moonlight, one like a wren, flitting through the undergrowth and chattering boldly, "He doesn't like when the water gets too warm, either."
Beryl
Litotes x Mehendi