I love the way that your heart breaks
with every injustice and deadly fate.
Time is meaningless to him. An endless march that holds no sway over his gruesome mind. For all he knows, the last time he had set foot in this place had been a month ago, a year ago, only yesterday. It all feels the same to him. Endless and fleeting all at once.
Since Pangea had been lost to the wicked seas, he’d had no need for time. Nor had it any need of him. The aches of age are lost on him. Perhaps he had grown older, but one could never tell by looking at him. He is still the same as he ever was. Still a blank expression over a charcoal body cracked and burned beyond recognition. He is hardly recognizable as equine, but that has been true for ages. True since his distant master had flayed him with fire. Had remade him into a monster of his own creation.
To this day, he is nothing more than the monster. The husk of an equine replaced by a creature as unholy as the night. He had always been broken. A thing not entirely right, since the day of his birth. Perhaps he had been meant to be this wretched, or perhaps he had simply cracked his neck wrong, causing shudders of exquisite pain to be his first experience upon birthing.
To this day, it is the only thing that holds any meaning to him. His only religion. His only purpose.
He barely recognizes Beqanna when he returns. What does it matter anyway? He can find what he needs anywhere. And He (his master) had long since fled her pitiful shores. But somehow he makes his way back to the land of his misbegotten birth. Whether through instinct or luck though, it is hard to say.
The river rushes alongside him, it’s song stinging his ears with it’s terrible rage. It reaches and stretches, it’s wet fingers hissing against the flame of his skin. He pays it little mind. Pain is his mistress and death holds no fear for him. The giant beside him can certainly hold no candle.
But then there is a girl. There, by the river, her pain a beacon on this dreary day. Calling to him like little else can. He doesn’t know her. Doesn’t try to know her. She runs from her pain, a coward in the face of life. Only those worthy of his gift would ever receive it, and death is so terribly unworthy. But she calls to him, an irresistible siren song. Where there is pain, there is Raelynx.
The flames lick his skin, a burning reminder. Perhaps it could remind her too. His slow, purposeful steps bring him to her side until burning flesh presses against disgustingly unbroken skin. He scrapes his rough lips along the mottled black and white of her flesh, flames trailing in its wake until he reaches her regrettably unmarred neck.
“Do it,” he rasps through vocal cords long ago destroyed by smoke. “You’re not worthy.”
Raelynx