10-03-2021, 10:29 PM
The river of lava courses just below her, its incandescence competing with the glowing cage of her bones. The men had called her a cursed and horrible creature because of those bones - as if they did not walk every day among gods and monsters already. Shock settles across her and time grows fuzzy and soft, the orange glow of funeral pyres turns the inside of her eyelids bright red and the spear in her heart dissolves like a cough, traded instead for Carcinus' claws digging through her entrails.
Some piece of her disappears into the dark gash of his mouth. She tries not to think too much about it.
'How long will you stay down there?'
Down where?
Pain leaks in from the edges of her awareness. Light breaks through a crack in her eyelid, its lashes clumped together with blood that wells up from a cut across her dark brow, and Sintra blinks slowly, dumbly, and makes no response except to groan softly as the muscles of her haunches spasm and ache. Memory returns with agonizing slowness, reluctant, and when she lifts her head atop the articulated bones of her neck and looks up towards the voice, that purple eye does not seem to see him. Not at first. It's slow to focus, but at last catches on his wild blue gaze.
He seems pleasant enough, but his promise confuses her. Make what quick? There's something screaming in the back of her head but she can't hear it through the mire of her weary brain.
She tries her legs and finds them clumsy, but whole and unbroken, though she sways when she finally stands, looking away from the winged wolf to peer at the lava flow oozing away from her. There's no obvious safe path below, and the steep bank makes her battered and weary legs tremble.
"Can you help me?"
Her voice wavers and breaks, genuine helplessness and confusion still muffling the claxon call of alarm bells that makes her head throb and rings her vision in a shimmering spectrum of color.
Some piece of her disappears into the dark gash of his mouth. She tries not to think too much about it.
'How long will you stay down there?'
Down where?
Pain leaks in from the edges of her awareness. Light breaks through a crack in her eyelid, its lashes clumped together with blood that wells up from a cut across her dark brow, and Sintra blinks slowly, dumbly, and makes no response except to groan softly as the muscles of her haunches spasm and ache. Memory returns with agonizing slowness, reluctant, and when she lifts her head atop the articulated bones of her neck and looks up towards the voice, that purple eye does not seem to see him. Not at first. It's slow to focus, but at last catches on his wild blue gaze.
He seems pleasant enough, but his promise confuses her. Make what quick? There's something screaming in the back of her head but she can't hear it through the mire of her weary brain.
She tries her legs and finds them clumsy, but whole and unbroken, though she sways when she finally stands, looking away from the winged wolf to peer at the lava flow oozing away from her. There's no obvious safe path below, and the steep bank makes her battered and weary legs tremble.
"Can you help me?"
Her voice wavers and breaks, genuine helplessness and confusion still muffling the claxon call of alarm bells that makes her head throb and rings her vision in a shimmering spectrum of color.
@Gale
let's pretend two weeks haven't elapsed
