I will conquer.
She was drowning, sinking, plunging into the rapacious sands so gleefully, so merrily, it ought to have been that she resided beneath the crust; that her true home was down there, and here she came, the triumphal return. Somewhere inside her head there is the ominous cry of alarms, of a voice blaring,
move, you’re
dying, this is a trick—and she sighs out a trembling breath, cool, her skin writhing with icy dew.
You’re tired, something else hums, so friendly, so caring.
Rest, and like the martyr held in the grip of the python she calms, feels herself about to slip, slipping,
leave; everything was warm, and there was a sweetness on her tongue, and barley under her hooves. There is a stretch between her and a roaring like the sound of a thousand waves, crashing, churning unto the shore at once, mud showers her stomach and then she sees what it is; a waterfall, streaming over the lofty hills with so much majesty it makes her weep.
This was where she was born. This was her kingdom—she’d had a nightmare, a dream of dreams, but she was
home, she was
finally here. From the saplings behind her she hears a stirring, the crackling of leaves, and as she turns and sees the face of the intruder, her heart soars.
“Welcome back,” Delinne says, there is no madness in her gaze, only amusement, and yes,
yes; there was Dezba at her fetlocks, the scars across her maw evocative of ravines, chasms. Her mother must see the look on her face, because she laughs, low and so, so warm,
“You were asleep for a long time.”
From beneath the hanging branches of weary oaks the crunch of her hooves in the freshly fallen snow seem preposterously loud in the silence, and she hesitates; feels his gaze on her, dissonant and lingering, she wants to plead, to demand he tell her the truth; she is the same as he is, but she isn’t, she’s a mongrel, a halfblood. So when she tries to speak and all that comes out is a croak and suddenly her eyes are too watery even though her tongue feels like sandpaper and he’s at once by her side she grows livid, wrenching away from his worried touch as if she’d been scalded.
“Why do you care?” she spits at him, not meaning any of the venom, he’s the paragon of a flawless son, brave and lordly and so high above she cannot possibly reach him, and she is a coward and a mistake.
Why didn’t he despise her? He ought to have. He should have.
“Because,” and she looks up, meets his gaze, and finds that it seems tired, too, like the oaks.
“You’re my sister.” Not really, not like Destry
is, she wants to be say, to be furious, but all she manages is a sniffle, a gurgle somewhere in her throat, and Azarel roughly prods her onwards, mollifying his tone.
“But if you don’t hurry up, you’re going to be a icicle.”
(She can’t stay mad at him, he’s her brother, so she ends up laughing instead.)
“Mom—” she chokes, too joyous to form proper words, sentences, ballads of silver. And then she’s vaulted towards them and buried her face in Dezba’s velvety fur, sobbing with effervescent laughter and when she raises her crown and feels the glowing sensation of the sun on her skin she thinks she may never stop. Delinne had never looked this vivid before, so tranquil, as if there wasn’t a care in the world, and for a astonished moment she realizes
why.
“You’re smiling,” she says, and mother reaches towards her, tugging affectionately at her forelock.
“Ought I to frown? Come, now. Your siblings are up ahead.”
She doesn’t have a choice, driving her briefly chilled legs onward after mother as she bounded ahead, and as Cahira reaches her side she capers a perplexed exhale,
“My… siblings? You mean Azarel?” But mother only seems entertained at the flummoxed inflection of her words, warbling a hymn of mirth into the wind before replying humorously,
“Siblings, child. I think—out of anyone—I should know the amount! What an odd dream you must’ve had to be so muddled...”
And she had, she
did, so with a weary smile she tells her the tale, the adventures, the places she’d gone, the monsters she’d fought; up until she sees the woman before her, and all the oxygen her blood held seemed to evacuate out her lungs.
“Destry—?”
“Puuur-pl-eee,” she’d exclaimed with ineptness, the result of an unruly tongue, and oh, how she could drink this silhouette in, lilac and charcoal and with a gaze like rubies, precious gems; she was superb, she was magnificent and finesse and everything Cahira wasn’t, so she struggles to make her happy, to see the hatred reflected back at her meld into pride. So she goes again, vigorous and determined,
“Purple!”
And it was elation, it was bliss, filling her grin with jubilance and thrilling her with her achievement, with language, the woman would be charmed; she would love her, and so she preens, swells with unspoken praise. She receives screams instead, and like a sail without the breeze she shrivels away, there was so much ire, so much violence in that voice; so much
disgust with her that she feels it burn in the back of her throat, bile. Spittle flies from the seraph’s mouth and then it is over, she is gone, and Cahira flounders for air.
“Don’t you dare even think of speaking to me again. And keep that thing out of my sight.”
(Be careful what you wish for—sometimes it comes true.)
“So I guess I’m scraps,” her brother chimes in, and there isn’t a crown laden with the souls he had slaughtered in his crusade for power on his head, none of the bitterness, or the age.
“No ‘hello, Azarel, I love you too,’” and of course she does, she wants to say; but all she can manage is a feeble wheeze. Destry rolls her eyes at Azarel before lugging Cahira forwards by a tumble of mane,
“C’mon, silly. Time for us to go,” and then the words bolt from her lips like lightning,
“You mean—that is to say—y-you aren’t mad—you don’t hate me?”
Azarel squawks something incredulous and mother only beams at her, patiently, as if she were young and foolish and she’d inquired why the grass was verdant, or the flowers bloomed.
“Why would I hate you? You’re my sister, dummy,” and all she hears is thunder.
She is caught, captivated, so infatuated by the lie she sees and hears and feels, that the ocean of sand up to her cannons and steadily rising doesn't register in her mind. Cahira is sinking.
And she doesn't care.
@Azarel
Halcyon Flats
