I couldn't smell the smoke, now I'll watch the flames; any

[adna]

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

If only she knew the magnitude of the man before her.

If only she knew he was one of the dragons who had come to roost in Beqanna—one of the originals in so many ways. Perhaps she would not imagine sinking her fangs into his throat so easily. Perhaps she would not dream of what he must taste like beneath the surface; would not feel herself hunger for the way that his flesh might split beneath the touch of tooth and the way his blood would spill over her tongue.

She would not be so greedy for violence if she knew how outmatched she is.

(Perhaps she would be drunk on the idea of her own death instead.)

But such things don’t reach the surface of her sage eyes. Instead, she remains guarded, illusive, slipping in and out as she watches him approach, studying the confidence in his step and the strength that seems to simmer there, just out of reach. She doesn’t cower before him, doesn’t simper, doesn’t do anything but watch him with the stony silence of her predatory ancestor. He is sizing her up, she knows in some piece of her, and she straightens, defiant, the loose curls of her forelock falling off to reveal her clear gaze.

When he finally does speak, she doesn’t react at all.

Instead she lengthens the silence, unblinking, as if she has no intention to respond at all. But, eventually, she does. Eventually she lifts her head just slightly, tilting it to the side. “No,” is the only syllable that comes to her and she says it almost dismissively, trying to grab onto any sense of control in the moment.

Then she lets the silence stretch, not bothering to hide the way that she studies him.

When her serpentine eyes finally meet his own again, they are alive with everything that rages within her, all of the emotions she cannot bury, all of the rage and the grief and the confusion that she wrestles with.

“I’m Adna,” she offers but doesn’t ask for his own.

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

@[Sabrael]