Fire slicked along black skin, leaving white hot agony in its wake. Golden eyes drifted closed as a shiver ran through her still-broadening frame, two and a half years bulking out her shoulders and hips, thickening her legs, leaving a solid growth of feathering along her lower legs, lengthening her hair to a thick tangle of crimson flowing down her neck.
Two years, she had been on her own. Two years since Beqanna itself had turned her away from her home and her family, had warped and twisted the fire in her veins until it burned her with every touch, a fickle friend flickering between warmth and searing pain in the space of a heartbeat, beckoning her close and sinking fangs into her skin, dragging the sharp edges along her neck, her shoulder, her spine.
It had brought tears to her eyes at first, and screams to her throat. Now, though? Now it glazed her golden eyes and made her heart race, and when it passed it left her wanting more. Today, with the final dregs of winter still clinging to the earth, the last snow still clinging to the ground in slippery glaze that collapsed beneath heavy hooves, today she wore that fire like a cloak, shimmering along her skin, warming a body that had never quite adjusted to winter’s bite, had never quite grown a thick, shaggy coat to protect from her icy touch. What need did she have of such things when the fire kept her hot, and did so with a delicious fervor that lit an altogether different kind of fire in her blood?
The ice cracked and crunched and compressed beneath her hooves, a sound that grated on Lilitha’s nerves far more than the hiss and sizzle of steam when her steps were shrouded in flickering flame but did far less damage to the plant life slumbering beneath the surface, waiting to burst forth with the springtime thaw. Still, she could hardly stand still until the ice was gone, and restless energy stirred in her chest in a way it hadn’t in ages, almost since the fire came back to her so long ago now. It pulled her, all unwilling, out of the depths of the forest where she had retreated a turn and a half of the seasons past or more. Just Lilitha and the fire, and the vicious, delicious pain it woke with every use.
But now...
Once interacting with others of her species had come so easily to Lilitha. Once, what felt like lifetimes ago, she had been gregarious, a bright young butterfly flitting from one person to the next with a hapless flutter of her magnificent wings, black edged in red just like the rest of her.. Now? Only jagged scars remained of those glorious wings, and it had been long enough since she’d interacted with others of her kind that she had rather forgotten how to do so.
She glanced around, drifting through the forest that had once fit her like a second skin and now felt like jangling metal and jagged glass, stark and sharp and dangerous. In her restless wandering, she cast about for a familiar face...or perhaps an unfamiliar one would be better. She wasn’t the same wide-eyed girl she had been; darkness warred with the firelight in her golden eyes, and she roamed the woods, treading through the shade of towering trees where once she would have pranced and frolicked and stumbled carelessly.
So little had changed here in the forest, though seasons passed, one year spilling into another, into another. The world had settled into its strange new rhythm, and strange was not so very different from the one before. And yet. There was still no place for Lilitha, not in a world that had turned its back on her when she was young.
What am I doing here?
Two years, she had been on her own. Two years since Beqanna itself had turned her away from her home and her family, had warped and twisted the fire in her veins until it burned her with every touch, a fickle friend flickering between warmth and searing pain in the space of a heartbeat, beckoning her close and sinking fangs into her skin, dragging the sharp edges along her neck, her shoulder, her spine.
It had brought tears to her eyes at first, and screams to her throat. Now, though? Now it glazed her golden eyes and made her heart race, and when it passed it left her wanting more. Today, with the final dregs of winter still clinging to the earth, the last snow still clinging to the ground in slippery glaze that collapsed beneath heavy hooves, today she wore that fire like a cloak, shimmering along her skin, warming a body that had never quite adjusted to winter’s bite, had never quite grown a thick, shaggy coat to protect from her icy touch. What need did she have of such things when the fire kept her hot, and did so with a delicious fervor that lit an altogether different kind of fire in her blood?
The ice cracked and crunched and compressed beneath her hooves, a sound that grated on Lilitha’s nerves far more than the hiss and sizzle of steam when her steps were shrouded in flickering flame but did far less damage to the plant life slumbering beneath the surface, waiting to burst forth with the springtime thaw. Still, she could hardly stand still until the ice was gone, and restless energy stirred in her chest in a way it hadn’t in ages, almost since the fire came back to her so long ago now. It pulled her, all unwilling, out of the depths of the forest where she had retreated a turn and a half of the seasons past or more. Just Lilitha and the fire, and the vicious, delicious pain it woke with every use.
But now...
Once interacting with others of her species had come so easily to Lilitha. Once, what felt like lifetimes ago, she had been gregarious, a bright young butterfly flitting from one person to the next with a hapless flutter of her magnificent wings, black edged in red just like the rest of her.. Now? Only jagged scars remained of those glorious wings, and it had been long enough since she’d interacted with others of her kind that she had rather forgotten how to do so.
She glanced around, drifting through the forest that had once fit her like a second skin and now felt like jangling metal and jagged glass, stark and sharp and dangerous. In her restless wandering, she cast about for a familiar face...or perhaps an unfamiliar one would be better. She wasn’t the same wide-eyed girl she had been; darkness warred with the firelight in her golden eyes, and she roamed the woods, treading through the shade of towering trees where once she would have pranced and frolicked and stumbled carelessly.
So little had changed here in the forest, though seasons passed, one year spilling into another, into another. The world had settled into its strange new rhythm, and strange was not so very different from the one before. And yet. There was still no place for Lilitha, not in a world that had turned its back on her when she was young.
What am I doing here?