[private] she keeps me alive; Ciri

[Leokadia]

she got blood cold as ice
and a heart made of stone

Ciri’s departure had been sudden, and were it not for the trust built between the two women over their few hours together Leokadia might have understood the hurried farewell to be a brush-off tactic. As it was, she believed Ciri, but doubt would set in over time. She had watched her dash away, a crease drawing across her smooth pale brow. In distraction she lowers her vast wings slowly, feathers just brushing the earth once more as she turns over their last seconds together. Leokadia is cursed to see the moment exactly as it was but does not have the gift of interpreting it, so she twists it this way and that like something washed up from the sea. Beautiful, even if she cannot be certain of what it really was.

She looks over her shoulder in the direction Ciri had gone, watches the empty horizon for a minute--her features growing dark, closed off.

When she leaps into the sky, she climbs far up into the cold cloud cover. The chill distracts a little from the familiar hollowing feeling of rejection that tries to edge away the lingering warmth of their connection. The wind’s cold rasp in her ears cannot push away the sound of Ciri’s whispers, but a part of her wishes it would. It had all been too clean and simple in retrospect, and that Leokadia cannot trust.

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The isle lies to the northeast, beyond Nerine’s peninsula. The sky is clear and the sun will dip down to the western sea in a few hours. Far beneath her the sea appears calm, bejeweled with white caps that betray its true ferocity. She keeps herself well out of the airspace of the east instinctively, descending only once well over the waters beyond Nerine.

A great deal of time has passed since she originally began this journey north, too long maybe, but long enough for her to sort herself out and grow curious enough to look for Ciri on the isle. Normally she would circle a territory, take a mental picture of it and any present occupants but not today. She lands a short way inland, folds her wings down onto her short back, and waits.

She could cast her voice into the biting northern wind and call Ciri but decides not to. Who else might come first? Nashua? Leilen? She knows their names but they will not know her, or why she has come. There is an appeal in this for Lo, in catching others off-guard, but she shouldn’t be thinking that way. Not about people who are important to Ciri. She must try not to play her games here. This isle, this is a place to be only Leokadia.

Her coat is clean and creamy white, feathers the same but wind ruffled. At her feet the ground is a little charred, she does not know why and resists the impulse to lie down and roll around in the smudging black that clings to earth and stone. Only looks, neck arched as she studies the ground around her toes.

but she keeps me alive
she's the beast in my bones

Leokadia

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