feed the fire and burn it slow; laura pony

[sochi]

there are wolves in my head and their howling
there was a garden of evil in the palm of my hand

Perhaps his honesty pleases her. Perhaps she simply finds that he is not interesting prey, something about him too compliant, not frightful enough—at once responding to the flash of teeth and leaning into it. Regardless, she calms slightly, the hunger roiling in her belly turning to just a murmur, the yipping of her predatory mind quieting so that she can focus on her molten eyes on him, somber and still.

“Sochi,” she answers, surprising herself with her readiness to share her name—a name given to her by a mother she has not seen in ages, a mother who knew her as something different entirely. Perhaps she should rename herself. Perhaps she should take up a new moniker—something with which to mark the changing of the tide in her life, the closing of a chapter and the opening of a new door.

But, unsentimental as she is, she does feel some pull to her name, and she holds it close, letting the syllables of it ring in her mind as a reminder of a youth so unencumbered by the weight of today.

As he explains his lack of home, she nods again, something almost maternal striking her, a confusing feeling that she assumes must be misfiring hormones from the recent birth of her daughter. “Sometimes a home is vastly overrated,” her voice is still clipped, the huskiness of it steely, but the words are a kindness that she offers in the only way that she knows how. “It can be a crutch, a shield, an identity when you lack your own.” She rolls her shoulders, uncomfortable with the sharing of her thoughts with him.

“Or perhaps you are simply too weak to survive in a place for long. Who am I to know?”

Her silver gaze slides to the side, a muscle jumping in her jaw before they come back to rest on him.

The bitterness of the last sentence doesn’t still well in her stomach and she rolls her shoulders.

“I don’t have a home either. I haven’t for a long time.”

now I'm broken and bleeding, I’ll never find my way

S

OCHI

stranger in this land