ryatah
hell is empty and all the devils are here
There were so few from her past in this new rendition of Beqanna, and at first, it had left her feeling hollow. She has known death, she has known immeasurable heartache, but she had never known what it meant to be a living ghost until recently. She had not needed her to eyes to know they were looking past her. She had not needed her eyes to know that all of these faces were strangers, to know that the very lands had shifted and changed. The land was broken and remade, seemingly overnight, and while it paved the way for new blood, it seemed to drain away the old. The names of old kingdoms were forgotten, and along with them the old kings and queens that had fought for them.
She lingered anyway.
Those few sparks from her past, though they came few and far between, were enough to keep her here. But they weren’t enough to keep her content. She had been so sure that if she could just break apart, if someone could just push her off the edge she balanced so precariously on, that that would be the end of it. Instead, she had emerged from the lair with dark new eyes and the mark burnt into her hip, and his smell all over her. His threat – his promise – that he held control over her sight should have been enough to subdue her, it should have kept her at least quiet. She knew firsthand the power that he wielded, and just the notion that it wasn't so long ago that she had been at his mercy, should have made her think twice about what could happen when she turns to respond to a familiar growl.
It should have, but it doesn’t.
”Atrox,” she says his name with almost a laugh carried in the syllables of it, her pale lips lifting in an amused smile when her sable eyes lock with the panther’s own. With a knowing tilt of her delicate head, and a faint lift of her brow, she chastises him lightly, teasingly, “You should know better than to comment on a woman’s age.” But the laughter that glittered in her eyes slowly faded, as a faint look of melancholy found its way into the ageless lines of her face when looking at the once-King of the Chamber. “I didn’t think you would still be here,” she says in a softened voice, almost tentative to bring up the fact that the land that had harbored his heart – and she remembers the way the ground had pulsed with its beat every time she had entered – was gone forever. She wavers for a moment, as the humid Tephran breeze lifts and tangles the lengthy locks of her mane, briefly obscuring her almost-black eyes before she shakes the strands away and says, “I’m glad you’re here, though. It’s always nice to see a familiar face.”
She lingered anyway.
Those few sparks from her past, though they came few and far between, were enough to keep her here. But they weren’t enough to keep her content. She had been so sure that if she could just break apart, if someone could just push her off the edge she balanced so precariously on, that that would be the end of it. Instead, she had emerged from the lair with dark new eyes and the mark burnt into her hip, and his smell all over her. His threat – his promise – that he held control over her sight should have been enough to subdue her, it should have kept her at least quiet. She knew firsthand the power that he wielded, and just the notion that it wasn't so long ago that she had been at his mercy, should have made her think twice about what could happen when she turns to respond to a familiar growl.
It should have, but it doesn’t.
”Atrox,” she says his name with almost a laugh carried in the syllables of it, her pale lips lifting in an amused smile when her sable eyes lock with the panther’s own. With a knowing tilt of her delicate head, and a faint lift of her brow, she chastises him lightly, teasingly, “You should know better than to comment on a woman’s age.” But the laughter that glittered in her eyes slowly faded, as a faint look of melancholy found its way into the ageless lines of her face when looking at the once-King of the Chamber. “I didn’t think you would still be here,” she says in a softened voice, almost tentative to bring up the fact that the land that had harbored his heart – and she remembers the way the ground had pulsed with its beat every time she had entered – was gone forever. She wavers for a moment, as the humid Tephran breeze lifts and tangles the lengthy locks of her mane, briefly obscuring her almost-black eyes before she shakes the strands away and says, “I’m glad you’re here, though. It’s always nice to see a familiar face.”
@[atrox]