[mature] Desolation comes upon the sky // Brunhild

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

Does it matter what I'm doing here? Scorch's nostrils flared, a silent but undeniable yes spoken into the space between them as the waves crashed into the shore not far off. Yes it mattered. It mattered because the space between them felt at once like a mountain and like a vacuum, an impossibility of one sort combined with one of another. Two infinities, dragging endlessly in both directions. Scorch ground her teeth. Yes it mattered.

Brunhild, though, faltered not beneath the heavy, cool gaze of her successor. Her own eyes portrayed a strange concoction of emotions that Scorch could not feasibly decipher - the intensity of their depths cause her stomach to clench, to clench as it once had so many decades ago the day that her best friend had dissolved into shadow. The mare's muscles tightened spasmodically, desperately attempting to convince their host that she ought to turn away, to process these ancient feelings of confusion and excitement and pain in some sort of privacy.

After all, she hadn't had that privacy the first time, instead having been forced to step forward and to address her Sisters - not as a fellow sister, but as their Khaleesi. Scorch remembered the way Lagertha had spat in her face, had barely toed the line; but more than this, Scorch remembered the sinking weight in her chest when she realized that her predecessor would not return for the duration of her reign - nor even the duration of her life.

Perhaps this meeting, in what may as well have been both of their second lives, was what made their skin crawl.

I am here now. For however long this is to last. The words sounded like an invitation, one laced with opioids and tranquilizers - drugged. The space between them gradually became tangible, a mixture of light and darkness coming together to occupy the air that each mare felt so poignantly.

Would you send me away if I don't have answers?

Scorch considered this, the twilight barrier visibly flickering, flinching away from the subtly manipulative words. The sober part of the mare wanted to smile, to rejoice, to embrace Brunhild without hesitation; to welcome back a long lost sister, a virtual ghost. But the intoxicated whole of her knew better than to expect her presence to be anything but temporary - to  be anything but here, and now, with her. Her, and no one else.

The twilight parted, moving quickly to encircle the mares, effectively destroying the outside world in favour for only one another.

"Yesterday, I might have," Scorch muttered, ears flicking back as the hue of her eyes changed from their pragmatic steel to a wanting blood-red; a thirsty, heavy burgundy. She took a step closer. "And tomorrow, I would do the same." Another step, and she felt the weight of the world upon her shoulders with a twisted sort of ecstasy. "But today -" and here, with no space left between them, Scorch relinquished her reservations, reaching out to slowly caress the scarred length of Brunhild's beautiful face. "Today, I will not turn you away, old friend."

The twilight around them shifted like a living thing; and if they were to tune in, they would realized that it thrummed to the beat of their collective heart.

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

"@[brunhild]" this is what she insisted on saying, i hope it's okay.