06-09-2017, 08:19 PM
the incense that sun on prairie offers to sky
Her ears move back and forth uneasily as he chuckles and seems to make a decision that is half-hearted but also somehow momentous for him. His face betrays him and she sees so much in his eyes, thoughts that move low and quick like clouds across the green prairies. Or maybe she imagines the things that she sees in his eyes and she can feel the fire start to spark and pop in her bones, building as the silence builds between them until at least he concedes to her offer of a home in a rather agreeable manner.
“Well,” she says before pausing to look at him as she submerges her burning hooves in the river. “What do you think?” The water hisses and steams as the fire dies down, and she glances down, not having noticed how easily her hooves had become flame too. Like the magma, they harden back into the familiar shape they always used to be and she looks up at him, somewhat sheepish. “Sorry, I can’t fully control it.” That’s as much as she says on the subject.
“What do you wish?” she blurts out, unable to stop herself from asking him that. She could almost taste a note of reluctance on the air as he says he’ll go but adds as fast as he can that he makes no promise of staying put. She smiles at him, “I never asked you to.” and it was true, she hadn’t. Spark had asked him if he’d like to come home with her, and she left it open-ended so as not to frighten him off, allowing him to think it was more like a visit than a promise to stay that she refuses to ask him to make. That was perhaps the worst thing she could - make him make her a promise he couldn’t quite keep.
“Consider it a visit if you like, until you have a better idea of what you’d like to do.”
Still, her pinkish lips pull up in a smile as she bumps his nose with her own then moves passed him to the trail that leads to her home. “Follow me then,” and just like that, she starts off down the trail that wends its merry way from field to flatter land and along the way, the temperature increases and the smell of sulphur and ash hangs in the air. She can see the shadow of the volcano in the distant, stretching far across the land and it makes her throw a smile over her shoulder at him. “That’s the volcano that my father and a few of his closest companions built a kingdom around.” She explains this much to him, the trek is not all that long of a one and before she knows it, she can scent her father and her brother and the rest of the Tephrans up ahead.
The further inland she takes him, the hotter the fire burns beneath her skin and she cannot help the way that her mane and tail suddenly burst into flames. Her flesh begs to do the same but she keeps it at bay momentarily to not unnerve him at the strange elemental properties that she has come to possess or that has possessed her, that seems more apt. It is a possession that she longs to give in to as she picks her way amongst infant rivers of magma that cool and harden the further they get from the volcano’s bubbling and burbling slope as she brings him closer to the main river of Tephra. Here, the water is cool and deep and runs to the sea that sighs in the distance, not so very far from them at all.
Spark