Sabrael
Beqanna holds nothing for him.
Like a negative image pressed firmly in his mind’s eye, he sees the land as it will always appear to him now: dark, hollow, the opposite of what it should be. He comes without nostalgia, without pretense. He comes, not as a man returning home after many, many moons away (proud and eager, sick of the road and sick for home), but as a surveyor of all he’s lost. He comes without hope.
He comes as the monstrosity he is, a sleek beast that cuts through the autumnal chill in the air above the meadow. His broad wings leave shadows to race below him, touching the ground that he himself has neglected to touch for years. I’ve missed it, he tells himself, watching the familiar hills undulate and roll beneath him. But the thought is dull and doesn’t resonate like it perhaps should. I’ve missed - Sabrael shakes his head to clear it before any truths can rise to the surface and complete his thought. There is no use. There is no turning back, either.
He’s come too far.
The rust-colored dragon finds an open clearing and lands squarely in the center of it. He slams his tail down, upsetting a flock of starlings roosting in the trees surrounding him, before slowly shedding his reptilian skin. The same feeling of vulnerability snakes over him instead without the comfort of his other form. He can’t imagine how the others feel, those without the Beast rumbling beneath their fur. It’s unnerving and sets him on edge as he surveys the place he’s landed in. There isn’t the smell of sickness and death that had wafted over everything before. There is only the scent of fall and the accompanying decay of the earth.
There is only quiet.
Because of this newfound serenity, Sabrael hears the approach of another rather quickly. He turns his angular, speckled face to the sound and whoever is making it, sure that it won’t be anybody he knows (not this time, lightning doesn’t strike the same spot twice). He sees the ravine his tail had raked into the earth and the Beast purrs its’ pleasure.
@[laura]@[Colby] <3