I am the pattern, the plague, and the prison --
He feels her on the edge of his consciousness. Feels the way that the lightning sings through her bones and lights her up. Once, he might have viewed her as something like kin—would have recognized that the storm that makes her up as the same one that he commanded. But now he feels severed from such things. Feels himself cut clean from the very core of his being. It leaves him blunted and dull and lost.
Still, he turns his heavy head toward her as she approaches. His white eyes are infinite and flat at once, giving nothing away to the turmoil that lives within him. “Afraid?” His voice is quiet and yet rumbles like thunder in his chest. Cracks across his tongue with the kind of authority of someone who is used to giving orders and having them listened to—of having his presence noticed, deferred to.
He doesn’t impose such a will on the girl now though. Merely stands like a statue, carved of onyx against the winds and rains that rage against him. His mane hangs in dreadlocks around his handsome face, down his heavy neck. “I am certainly not afraid of the thunder,” he scoffs, dismissing the idea as absurd.
It is insulting to be accused of being frightened of that which he once commanded.
Insulting to be pitied like that.
His nose wrinkles and he looks back again, considering the rebellious nature of the storm and the way that it so deftly ignored him. He feels the rage again and then looks back to the thunderbird mare.
“I am furious with it,” it’s a statement more than anything.
“What is this place?”
This is a question but formed like a demand as he stares her down.
“What kind of place strips you clean like this?”
MORROWIND
