cold in the violence after the war
hope is a fire to keep us warm
She is as lost in thought as the girl even now racing, unbeknownst to either, towards her, though her thoughts are likely much less dark. For all that the world had seen fit to bestow them both with uncomfortable abilities, Brazen much prefers to ignore her discomfort than to dwell on it. In a way, it’s so much easier to push her body to the limits, to remind it over and over that her pain is strength, until it became almost easy to bear. Until her body had grown so familiar with its limits that they no longer feel like limits.
She doesn’t hear the sound of hooves thundering through the trees until it’s too late. Until the girl abruptly rounds the corner and is all but crashing into her. She flinches reflexively, her body straightening as she braces for an inevitable impact that never comes. Truthfully, she wouldn’t have minded so much. She had been such a rough and tumble child that these kinds of crashes had been rather commonplace for her at one point.
Of course, when she feels the heat radiating from the woman as she skids to avoid contact, she knows this would have been different than any other tumble she has taken. Almost without thought, her skin hardens, the red and white stiffening until it becomes as unforgiving and unmalleable as stone. Her bones ache as her skin squeezes at the jagged edges rupturing through, bone warring with stone for supremacy. Neither win, of course, instead pressing into an aching draw along the edges where they meet.
Sucking in a startled breath, Brazen skitters sideways, her bright blue gaze jumping to the angry features of the woman who had so nearly collided with her. Beneath the anger, she can so clearly see the pain that fuels it. Something she has seen too many times not to recognize it now.
“Are you okay?” she asks almost immediately, brows furrowing behind the bone mask shielding her face as she steps unconsciously forward. Closing the distance rather than retreating, as anyone else might. “Is someone chasing you?”
Abruptly, her demeanor changes, eyes jumping in the direction the woman had come from as a certain ferocity suffuses her entire body in preparation of an unknown foe.
Brazen
