He feels her in the way that he feels the promise of winter. It is an alarm bell that rings in his head—a warning that flashes through his veins. It crackles like the first lightning strike of a monsoon and he whips his face upward at the sound of her voice. His lips want to peel back and he wants to reveal his young, blunt teeth as though a predator were staring him down. But he is also a predator. The son of the sand and the storm turned into summer incarnate, the sun shining eternal in his ashen chest.
So he doesn’t bare his teeth and he doesn’t run.
His red, unending eyes just find her own and he studies his opposite in a way that few are afforded the ability to do. “Hi,” he says and the word booms from him, laced with everything that has gone unsaid between them. The opposites of the seasons clashing together, their own gifts blossoming around them.
“Existing,” he answers honestly and the flames he had smothered crack back into life around his legs once more, rising higher and then whispering down his spine to dance harmlessly amongst his mane.
“What are you doing?” he counters, finally moving his gaze from her eyes to the rest of her—noting all of the ways in which they are the same and yet wholly different. The way the cold clings to her while the heat drapes over him, melting and lazy. His broken lips crack into a smile that is anything but and he nods toward the ice that reshapes over her shoulder. “You look cold.”
@annapurna