i’ve been both a saint & a viper
Her eyes.
There isn’t darkness in them. No, not darkness. But something strangely familiar, something that calls to him and bids him closer. It is almost like his pain is her pain (a phrase he had heard before, when his shadow beast had found him and then left him for dead) and even as the fire rages, the blue roan stallion does not attempt to retreat into the cavern behind him. And perhaps he would have let the fire consume him until he is nothing but a burnt corpse with ash for bones had she not suddenly decided that the flames will not take her.
Sabra, she tells him, but her voice is reluctant and distracted. Almost as if it is said because her muscles remember it, not because her mind wills it to be spoken. The smoke is sweet and succulent in his nostrils and he wonders how long he would burn until his heart gave up. You can’t die, the demons remind him, their clicking legs picking and ripping at his skin as they crawl menacingly across him and the burning ground. He wonders if she cannot die too as his eyes glance at the stake in her chest. Has she too been searching for escape in vain? Begging for redemption and only being answered by hell’s minions and their devilish words?
And then, she smiles.
His demons howl in delight as if they know the hidden meaning behind it and it causes Balto to shiver. He nearly steps back - back into the shadows and into the hole he had crawled out of, but he finds he is met with their writhing bodies and flames. He hesitates as she leaps into the darkness before him, his blue eyes weary and uncertain. He thinks of Keeper - how will she know where to find him if he leaves? All he has known is the shadows and it has kept everyone safe that he should live underground. What would become of him out in the open? In the daylight? What would become of everyone else?
They then threw themselves against him, encouraging him away from his damp and musty cave to follow the winged woman into the blaze. As a branch crackles and falls between them and he is left behind, he decides to leap over the burning limb and begins to chase her through the woods.
And though it feels like it had been his decision, he wonders if anything in his own head truly belongs to him.
Balto
@[Sabra]