Crack.
A sound like a bone breaking. A reminder of the exquisite pain of her femur snapping cleanly in two. Crack, a rib. Crack, a humerus. On and on until she was a pile of waste, of broken bones and severed tendons. On and on until she could not breath, until she was turned inside out, all her organs splayed and shining in the gaseous light of a passing star. Crackcrackcrackcrackcrack. She remembers how it felt to be so helpless that she couldn’t even ask for her own death, couldn’t even beg. Not that it mattered. Kangaroo always put her back together again, stitch by stich, she felt every time.
Crack.
That sound again in the here and now. It is different but so very much the same. Z would (should) have startled, but fear has been forcefully drained out of her. It has been replaced by an instinctual and cold curiosity – the desperate disbelief in one’s own mortality, for she has already died so many times and come back. The demon had taught her not to fight or to flee. She had taught her to be an opportunist, a waiter and a watcher. So that is exactly what this demon does. She shrinks deeper into darkness of her own making, spinning the tendrils faster and tighter around her sleek form. She does not show herself – not at first – and lets the silence grow in the warm summer air.
Reveal yourself, the other says. They are the first words she’s heard from another since her time away from Earth. It is funny, in an ironic, not-really-all-that-funny way. Because since the last time she has spoken to someone from Beqanna, she truly has revealed herself, revealed the monster lying dormant under her skin. Zosma flexes her membranous wings experimentally, thoughtfully. She can hear the other approaching (a woman, by the pitch of her voice). The dulled sound of her steps on the soft riverbank means that she doesn’t have long to wait or to watch. A decision will have to be made.
With a greater, more expansive sweep of her wings, she clears the air completely of her shadows. She reveals herself all right, and with rather a flourish. Twin horns spiral outward from her skull as three more fall in descending size down the flat plane of her face. Her whip-like, spade-ending tail flicks like a feline behind her, agitated or excited or both. She glows like hell, a deep red that emanates off of her scaled skin and illuminates the reeds that sway gently around her. Zosma grins at the pretty girl she finally sees, and it is like the fanged smile of a ravenous and sure predator in their element. “You asked for it.” The dark mare takes a step forward. "Don't you wish you hadn't?"
Zosma
@[Sid]