she drank my past, like the finest of wines; flower

[Warlight]

Warlight

Soul as sweet as blood red jam

For the second time in a year, Warlight returns to Tephra defeated.

She hadn't let the fairies heal her battle wounds, preferring to feel the ache as she put the red-clay fields behind her. Much like her return from the mountain, she doesn't teleport home as she could. Instead, she wanders vaguely westward, taking her time and avoiding the main arteries of travel.

Her sprawling crown of antlers is half what it was when she had left for the Alliance a week ago, splintered by her opponent's powerful kick. Her side still bleeds when she gallops, the skin stretching and the scab cracking, but these trivialities compared to the storm in her breast.

On her fifth morning away from home, the wind brings her the scents of ash and salt, and she thinks just maybe, her daughters. The morning grows late, and she decides it's time to return home.

Warlight chases the sun, crossing into Tephra as it dips into the just-visible ocean. Puffing and covered in dust, the leopard-skin mare halts once she reaches one of the first streams that cross along the borderlands of her home. It's a deep, slow-moving stream that disappears into the jungle a little farther upstream, and when she looks down into her scowling reflection, her gaze unintentionally lingers. The scowl deepens, threatening to etch itself there permanently before she finally breaks the image with a strike of her hoof and a long drink.

She doesn't bother to wash the grit of travel off herself, there was no one to go home to this time. Vitriol and the urge to hit anything are burning in her gut; she knew what would happen if she found Raul tonight. So she slips into the darkness of the jungle, to wander or sleep alone until the sting of defeat lost its edge. 

It won't hurt like this forever. She was never down for long.
But damn, it hurt now.

<3