Riptide Isles
Zahra & Ilham
It was pride that turned angels into devils
Why did she even care?… when barely one week before (had it been that long?), she’d wanted nothing at all to do with him.
Was that even true…?
So many confronting, confusing thoughts and emotions had been stirred to the surface of her cess-pool mind, gnawing, corroding the wretched soul underneath. Zahra had needed some time to think, to process the phenomenon which was his reincarnation; to adjust the basis of her understanding, to suit a whole new philosophy…
Perhaps it was hope, yearning and relief, sentiments that had been so lost in disease, that they were easily overlooked, undermined.
The winged girl had slipped from his company into the breath of those swirling, unfeeling shadows, intending entirely to descend into the refuge of isolation. The decision had come easily for the coward; it meant running, abandoning the cold, complicated face of reality and hiding from all that penetrated her brittle exterior to wound and scar her inner psyche. What she had not expected, was the rude slap of guilt forced down upon her before the sound of her own drumming heartbeat had been given a chance to settle.
She had left him there, weak (undeniably), vulnerable, without offering any insight into the unpredictable dangers that loomed beyond the face of that neon landscape - the breathing, walking forest and the intoxicating plants stretched beneath their towering arms, flesh-eating creatures and others whose strident screams turned the blood cold. Some small, stubborn piece of her, just couldn’t leave him to fall to the merciless hand of this treacherous world; she couldn’t let him die again.
And so from a distance she followed, stalked, watched.
As the time passed, they - he, seldom beyond the reach of her culpably attentive eye - descended still deeper into the bizarre contours of the rift, further even than she had been. There was a moment too when the resonating tone of her beloved sister’s voice rose above the turmoil in her mind to severe the ravelled web of noxious thought; ‘do not go on living…’ she'd murmured softly, weakly through their sickly, uncertain bond, ‘in the ashes of dead happiness.’ Ilham, ever the quiet mentor in her life (little Bird had been the brave), knew of, felt, and agonised over the torturous reunion, and sought to comfort as best she could.
Together they began to weave, concealed well from view by large golden leaves and breathtaking, velvet-grey trunks, sowing through the sticky, sun-spared days and long sleepless nights; the tiny bark spider compelled her older sibling to learn a new pattern, one that delved beyond the superficiality of just skill.
When it was finished (perhaps hours, maybe even days later), meticulous and without flaw, Zahra stepped at last from the murk of that evergreen jungle, hoof sinking through the clingy caress of sand as she made a slow path down his beach.
"Da?" She called softly, hesitantly, unsure whether the suddenness of her own appearance - now - would, in turn, be well received; never had she lashed out so brutally at another living soul and the fact that it had been her father that received the trueness of her hate, filled her all the more with shame. Those last hours had been spent too engrossed to follow his movement, and she wondered now, as wistful eyes drew a path both up and down the pale coast, whether her repentance had come too late…
Note to Admin: Crafted: 1x tiny plush phoenix
