like a heartbeat drives you mad, in the stillness of remembering what you had, and what you lost
The scrutiny of his gaze is scathing, burning the very sordid edges of her like a flickering flame pressed against the worn, dried edges of an old piece of paper, singeing her core. A swell of discomfort drapes itself over her, setting her frayed nerves on edge and leaving the thick ribbons of muscle taut beneath her golden skin. The golden rim of her own hazel eyes meet with his own, her own gaze steely and resolute – the faintest sneer tugging at the corner of her pale, whiskered mouth. Should either think such a brief, fleeting interaction is an all-encompassing representation of her, or her capabilities, each would be grievously incorrect.
Along her shoulders and up along the length of her withers, her skin gives way to an aching, splitting of sinewy muscle as the rigid bones beneath emerge from the skin in several rows of hard, sharpened bone. Each spike is larger than the next, with the smallest breeching two inches in length – the length of each row ending near the base of her broad, feathered appendages. The muscle along her jawline tenses and her chin raises, her heart pounding steadily against the hollow ridges of her chest.
Her eyes bore into the two-toned female (oh, how she strives to appear as the mindless, obedient broodmare – but Ellyse is not fooled; Pollock does not seem the kind to entertain such company), recognizing the brief glint of amusement that reaches her glowering eye. Her own teeth are soon bared in as a warning, silently challenging her to say a word.
The pleasantries are nauseating, tedious and dull - and there is a longing within the pit of her belly, a yearning to dismiss the mendacious, deceitful pair that stand before them, weaving a tangled web of words devoid of emotion and meaning. It is a pointless and hollow cause – claimed diplomacy; but in the end it is nothing more than a poorly disguised attempt to see how far they can push, how deep the knife can be pressed into the proverbial skin, and how close to the marrow of the bone they could get. It is difficult to swallow the bile building up within her throat, to ignore the biting words that crave a voice.
”You are a poor liar, Pollock,” she says finally after a moment of deliberation, her calculating stare never wavering from the blank, dead stare of his own. ”your thinly veiled pretense is obvious and not welcome within our borders. You should go. I am certain you will find nothing of value to you here.”
.
