“Ooh,” -
rolls over the tops of the gentle waves and catches in his ears. The sound is amplified by both the water and his predator hearing. Both have aided him in his kills before, though the memories are hazy things that slide so easily from his thoughts. What he remembers is the water made red, veins made hot, a belly made full. He never sees the faces (even when he wakes up a horse again, with entrails slipping between his slack lips). He never sees his victims fully (even as he skirts around their felled bodies, what is left of them scattered over the dirt). He won’t look at their faces – none of them are equine, for now, and that is enough.
So when she calls softly into the stark quiet of night, it is the dragon who answers. He sees the patchwork flash of white and lavender wavering on the sands and reacts, advances. Sabrael splashes through the shallows. He does not know himself in that moment, caught off guard in his other skin, and the rational part of him falls below the surface of consciousness. This is where the beast bests him. This is where he loses control. In the breath between instinct and analysis, he will never be quick enough. He rushes the beach and the watching girl, wings flared and ready to lock her in a deadly embrace if she tries to run (they never run far, anyway). She unknowingly draws him in. The pale parts of her coat shimmer in the broad moonlight that seems to stretch for an eternity from east to west. She is alone, so terribly, regretfully alone; there are no others to pull his focus away or confuse him, as herds are supposed to do.
When the dragon analyzes, finally, he concludes that she will be an easy take.
Little to no risk. High reward.
Sabrael explodes out of the sea, mouth already open to expose his eager canines. The yearling is so close, he can feel the heat radiating off her young body. So close, he can see the lines of her face, the color of her eyes. Her face. It is enough to snap him back to himself, the impossible truth he is not meant to see (that sometimes, oftentimes, he is not leading his own life). The dragon barrels past her, possibly scraping her sides with his metallic scales. He closes his eyes and brings himself back slowly, piece by piece. Sabrael sheds the cold reptile and feels warmth flood him again. He waits a long time to turn around, gives the girl an opportunity to run if she is smart or stay if she is a fool.
“I am sorry,” he says, either way. To himself or to a fool.
Sabrael