darling everything's on fire, Pollock

[Ryatah]

“What have I become, my sweetest friend?
Everyone I know goes away in the end."

Even in her age, she can still be foolish. She does not accredit her ability to read emotions to her blindness, for it is something she has always been empathetic towards.  She has always been able to smell it on them — the arrogance, the ego, the need to taste fear. She can feel it as it lingers in the air between them, and despite all her wisdom, there will always be flickers of the old Ryatah that glimmer through the dusty window when the right situation presents itself. She can see the warning signals, like a lighthouse beacon. She is the ship being tossed aimlessly in the storm, and he is the rocky shore, and instead if changing course, instead of heeding the warning of that flashing light, she continues straight for him. She always wrecks herself against their shores, leaving herself tattered against the rocks, pieces of her floating on the waves, and somehow she always wants it again.
 
Sometimes their voices are oil-slick, but his is harsh and grating. She doesn't mind it, and her slender ears prick in his direction, listening to his footsteps, his breathing, the silence now that the scraping sound had stopped. She wonders what that was, but she doesn't ask. Instead it his him that asks a question.
 
Most are not shy about her lack of eyes. There weren't many in Beqanna bearing scars similar to hers, and probably even less that had had them ripped from their skulls by another's teeth. His question reminds her of the type that children often ask her, yet there was nothing childish about the way he asks. "Sometimes," she begins her reply. "But just because you can't see things doesn't make them any more or less scary. A wolf is still a wolf regardless of whether I see it or not." She laughs, such a mirthful sound for a statement that wasn't all that joyous. "I'm Ryatah." Once queen, once lover, but always a fool.

RYATAH

you could have it all, my empire of dirt