i've never cared for anyone so much
i was born with a bomb inside my gut
She sees her, of course, but does not think to regard her. It does not occur to her that the mare’s trajectory will land her within earshot. It does not occur to her to think that she herself is what has so fully arrested this mare’s attention. So she closes her eyes and exhales a shuddering sigh that hitches and catches.
She does not mean to react. Does not mean to fling back her head at the sound of the mare’s voice. Does not mean to swing her gaze around, wild-eyed. It is an overreaction, to be sure, but there is nothing theatrical about it. The breath she drags in to steady herself is subtle – not a gasp.
Her muscles twitch and her heart slams out a staccato rhythm, beating itself against its ribbed cage as she focuses her attention on that little mare who’s offering her name and a smile that Lilian neither deserves nor has any use for. She does not smile back, merely blinks.
“I’m Lilian,” she says in that unremarkable way she does before her attention is quite suddenly arrested by something else entirely. Another voice, though a cursory glance at the space unfolding outward around them provides no obvious source. It is then that she glances down, catches sight of the lizard and skitters backward.
She has seen many things in her travels but nothing quite like this. The lizard speaks again and she blinks once, casts a suspicious glance in Noah’s direction, curses the way her skin ripples as her muscles tremble. How queer, she thinks, studying the lizard from a safe distance. “Okay,” she says after a long, tense moment. She speaks through teeth gritted in fear.
The muscles pull even tenser as she forces herself to stay stock still despite the fear swimming quick through the network of her veins.
