i don't have a choice, but i'd still choose you. || hawke

[Ellyse]

your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.

 The gentle caress of summer weaves its way through her ruffled feathers as a quiet breeze touches delicately along her pale golden pelt, a long and drawn out sigh emerging from her parted, whiskered lips. It had been a long time - too long, perhaps - since she had descended into the shadows of a once familiar pathway of heavy rock and sloping foliage. The shadows beckon her forth and she falls into temptation, savoring the way the temperature drops as the sun struggles to peek through the heavy pines that shelter her. 

   Tightly, she draws her wings against her lithe and flexible body, grimacing only slightly as the bristling feathers scratch against the old, brittle bark that tugs and pulls relentlessly at her. She prefers the dim, dark rhythm of the night, in which she is unrestrained and able to move swiftly, yet the thick brush and tightly wound foliage of the forest is a beckoning mistress to her in the heat of the day. 

   At last, she breaks through the grasp and with a gentle toss of her slender neck, her eyes find the open clearing and the shining, crystalline water that moves so freely through the very center of it. Summer has begun to wane, and with it comes a taut, icy chill as dusk surely approaches - a reprieve from the suffocating heat and humidity of the volcanic land she had grown so deeply fond of. She savors it, bathing in the pale but rich sunlight that peeks through the wavering branches above - the sun has begun to fall, and yet the vivid colors of sunset still manages to crawl through the gaps above, cloaking her shining golden coat in its magenta light. 

    Quietly, after taking a brief moment to drink from the icy water, her hazel eyes settle on her own reflection looming before her. The gentle curve of her own cheek (including a healing wound along her right jaw; undoubtedly a scar would be left in the aftermath of battle), the faint indentation of lines lingering along the almond shape of her weary eyes - a ghost of the warrior that lives within; a shadow of her former self. 

   Her heart had grown heavy and weak the further and deeper she fell for Magnus (and oh, how she hated herself for it), and with it her spirit had faltered. She had allowed the barriers surrounding her heart to falter, and so foolishly. Her biting tongue and quick wit lingered, but the fire that once burned so brightly within her had begun to simmer down, leaving a flickering flame in its wake. Her life had no place for love in it; she had no time to waste pining over someone else. 

    Rage festers like a hot wound beneath the surface as she thrashes her own image, pounding her hooves into the smooth, flawless river stones, rippling the still water before turning away from it and tucking herself back into the tightly knit line of pine trees and oak. 

Ellyse

.