Brinly
Her chest still rises and falls, and her legs feel weak as the surge of adrenaline slowly begins to ebb away, leaving a strange exhaustion in its wake. But her eyes don’t go soft, and instead they remain hard and guarded; her jaw clenched, and her muscles coiled taut beneath her mahogany skin. There is a flicker of guilt when the other girl doesn’t lash out in response to her misguided anger, but it doesn’t show on her face or the defensive way she draws her nose near her chest and backs away another step.
But she takes a moment now to look at her — to really look at her. And she sees the bone that she wears like plates of armor, and the way her skin suddenly turns to stone. There is a moment where her breath becomes caught in her throat, and a strange feeling of longing and fascination breeds in her chest.
She wishes she could be made of stone instead of heat.
She wishes she could protect herself without unnecessarily hurting anyone else in the process.
And just like that, her longing evolves into envy.
“Nothing was chasing me, am I not allowed to run?” The heat of her words crackle like flames, as her dark eyes narrow to lock with hers.
She recoils abruptly when the other girl takes a step forward, her ears immediately falling flat and becoming lost in the tangle of her black hair. “Don’t.” The word is sword-sharp, and is not a request or a warning — it is a demand. She doesn’t know if she will understand what she means, if she will feel every message that resonates in that single word. Don’t get close. Don’t touch.
Don’t leave.
— burn until our lives become the embers —
@[Brazen]