If there was a time that she had once recognized warning signs, she cannot remember it.
She sees the beacon of light flashing across the storm-ridden seas, warning her away from the rocks that she was sure to splinter and break against. She sees it – and she is drawn to it.
“I think I’ve heard that before,” the words could have almost been flirtatious, and maybe spoken from anyone else they would have seemed brazen. But from her, even with that perceptive smile and flicker of her sable eyes, they are unusually innocuous. She doesn’t know the things that are said about her; she doesn’t know the reputation she has earned within the circles that knew her. There is something still so strikingly naive about her, and it’s difficult to discern if it’s just a mask she wears like some sort of flimsy defense mechanism begging to be stripped away, or if there is still a genuine innocence that survived the charred ruins of her soul.
He hums with that familiar electricity she has grown accustomed to, that she has learned to look for, but she doesn’t know what to do with it. He is a stranger – a mystery. She has learned and become familiar with her own particular brands of chaos, has learned what to expect from them, but he is all new territory.
She almost regrets the way that thought makes her blood start to turn hot, the way her subconscious stirs a strange flutter in her chest.
“Beqanna,” she answers him with her eyes locked on his face, unknowing of the way her memories flock to him. She says the name, and with it comes a flood of memories – kingdoms that no longer exist, lovers that have disappeared, lovers that still haunt her. They are fleeting but vibrant, until they are gone. He says the word magic, and there is a curious tip of her head. “All kinds of magic. Some good, some...less good,” there is a lilt of amusement, but she does not offer to elaborate. She was no stranger to magic; not just the kind that lit stars under her skin, but the kind that bled from the ground of this land and wouldn’t seem to let her die, magic that has turned her to stone only to let her breathe again, magic that gave her sight when she had no eyes. “I’m Ryatah.”
@[fyre]