04-21-2017, 12:51 AM
He’d been hot with rage, so hot, that for a time there had been no emptiness, no heartache, and no mourning. They’d left him behind. Stealing away in the night like thieves, everything that’d meant anything carried away on their young, naive shoulders. Blood meant nothing. Their bond cracked and as dead as the cold sand which had once buried his hooves. His mother’s indifference had only stoked that angry fire. As ‘He’ rounded on him, his teeth gnashing, spewing words of hate. That they were weak, weren’t hard enough, unworthy. ‘He’ told him to forget them, and for a time Sakir did. Until the fiery rage which had consumed his spirit burnt out and down into ash. His body cracked and seeping with a sorrow that had always been there, but which had been sealed behind the twine of anger that’d encased his heart.
Amet was older, stronger, capable of running further. But Iset... he tried to shake her from his mind, to find some other focus. But in the dark, with the canopy shielding the gleam of the moon, there was nothing to centre on but gnarled branches and shadow and chilling thoughts. He had not truly believed Iset would run. Despite her defiance, her ferocious resiliency. She’d come to him in that time when there was neither sun nor moon, but a dusky haziness when the wind twirled the sands into ribbons. She’d placed her nose to his ear and whispered… he’d told her no, her plan was impossible. She could not see what he did as he’d looked upon his sister, battered and hurting, her new wounds red and too raw. She wasn’t strong enough, not physically, not then. But then like Amet, she was gone.
Perhaps Iset had not even come this far, the dunes still a hold of their fiery daughter, her bones bleached and buried beneath the ever-shifting sands. Sakir shuddered, faltering forward until the earth slipped from beneath him and his knees fell upon the teeth of jagged twigs. He felt the pain, little pricks of sharpness as he blinked away tears. It was nothing. Nothing compared to what Iset had endured. There was a rustling in the underbrush and the dulled thump of a hoof striking earth. Sakir snapped his head towards them, his large child eyes growing as wide as the unseen full moon far, far above.