01-17-2024, 01:37 PM
our time has had no wares;;
She could smell him, faint at first but then一
Like acid rain or wood ash, she thinks. It makes her nostrils itch and she can feel the tiny hairs begin to raise. Not in alarm but in fascination. She was built, after all, to withstand.
And withstand she would.
This time,
the next一
A thousand times over. But the little strawberry mare could not be sure, it was a hunch. It was simply a twinkling in her mind, a soft glimmer like a shiny shell at the bottom of clear waters.
His voice grates against her like bark, catching and snagging her. She notes his smile, greasy and unkempt and Citadelle lifts her chin a fraction. How long it has been since she last heard a voice other than her own and even now, looking at him, she can’t be sure it isn’t her mind.
Maybe she was tricking herself into him, the idea of him. Her delicate ears flick from him then behind her. If he were an illusion (delusion, whatever, she snorts) then she would figure it out sooner or later一figure him out, figure it out.
“Much too long,” Citadelle coos at him, her face tilted to the side exposing her shaggy cheek to this stranger. “Where have you been hiding? Where have you been sleeping?”
Her own voice feels thick and strange to her. Citadelle stares at him with her burning green eyes in the gloomy trees. She feels his bitter heat coming towards her and she embraces it, in her own way. “What woke you up? What roused you to walk? Tell me,” the last is not a question but a demand of him.
Citadelle pulls away from the stranger, she flutters her stubby eyelashes. Her lower lip sags for a moment, comfortable but not relaxed. “Excuse me,” her voice is slick like the snow and cold, “I have forgotten my manners. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m …. ”
She trails off, eyes roaming the lines of his sharp face. How he is so very like a vulture and she is no more than carrion, perhaps.
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m impolite,” Citadelle finishes giving him a smile like rotten fruit.
