there's a wildfire with your name on it, sochi

[sochi]

sochi

He is young, but he is not weak, she comes to learn.

He is stubborn and hungry and will split himself apart before he will yield. These are things that she learns as they clash and then they fall apart. These are the things that she tucks away as her feline eyes continue to study him, watching as he draws quick breaths, as he opens his mouth and breathes fire.

It is so much like the fire that Castile breathes that she almost smiles.

Or, rather, she would if she was not leaping away from the brunt of it.

She still feels the heat of it across her back, the fur scorched and the skin stinging. She drops to the ground and rolls to extinguish it, and when she rises, her eyes are wary. There is pleasure to be had in seeing the way that he himself hurts from the fire, and she can feel her burnt skin begin to heal, but it is not an immediate thing—and it is not without pain. She feels the ache of it as she grits her teeth.

But she does not have long to stand apart from him because he is rushing forward and she lunges to meet him. Her skin comes apart again and she pays it no mind, her mouth opening wide and clamping down on whatever she can reach, tearing at it with fervor. She aims for the sensitive pieces—the thin skin around the nostrils, the mouth—and she wonders what it will look like in ribbons, caught between her teeth.

He is not without skill though, or sheer brute strength, and she rolls underneath his talons, feeling herself pinned for a moment. Her heart hammers in her chest—from adrenaline instead of fear—and she stares up at him as he glances down. “I will shatter before I bend to the likes of you,” she hisses between the blood that stains her mouth. “I will tear myself apart before I give you the pleasure of doing the same.”

Sochi has seen worse than Ghaul. She has experienced worse. She remembers what it was like when the dark god called her down to the depths of the ocean. When she consumed the heart of the mare, when she tore her own chest to let it fall out into Pangea’s twisted core. She remembers the plague and the feel of her jaws snapping down around Rhonen’s throat. She remembers the way it felt when Sinner—

Her thoughts fracture suddenly and she spits the blood out toward him, snarling.

And then, she laughs, an echo of smoke in her chest.

She reaches up to nip at him, almost tender, before she whispers,

“Then burn it.”

And her jaws snap at whatever she can reach.

well, I can try to get you closer but I know you’d break your neck just to see the stars
and if we don’t dare to hold it then this reckless wandering love was never ours