you can't get struck by lightning
if you're not dancing in the rain
The nauseating dread that fills her chest struggles in Hestoni as well. It is bitter cold and yet red-hot at the same time, sliding against his heart and into his blood vessels. He can feel the thick syrup of fear drip from his chest into the low of his stomach and down into the curves and bends of his ankles. It coats him in layers so heavy that not even the frozen bite of the snow can curb the perspiration that begins to dampen his rust-colored skin. His impatience meddles with the workings of his lungs, forcing him to heave gulps of winter air that taste of terror and windswept skies.
There is something wrong. He can feel it on the edge of his mind; it is a dangerous chesspiece walking the line between knowledge and mystery. Little does he know: there is more than just the passage of time that is so desperately incorrect.
For a brief moment, Hestoni catches a glimpse of her. It is the barest breath of sight, so quick that he decides that it was merely a working of his discontented paranoia. He isn’t sure how much time has passed, but the soldier knows of Beqanna’s tendencies to take someone’s content life and twist it into a paper airplane (shot off into the nighttime with a long, curving angle that proves difficult to return from). An audible choke forces him to pause in his erratic searching at the thought of enough time passing to age Scorch’s body and return her to the Beach’s shores.
As if Scorch heard his desperately-terrified thought, her grating voice screams from amidst the silence. The tension nestled in his bones and wound tightly in his muscles makes Hestoni shift rapidly to the right. He nearly trips over a granite rock hidden among the snow, hooves clipping the stone just enough to produce a noise that shrieks just as wildly as his wife’s own cry. Just as the chestnut is correcting his balance, she bursts into flames.
If he could marry her all over again, he would have.
The moment of her sudden appearance is both fleeting and eternal. Hestoni is caught in the essence of her, just as she had been in the Meadow (engulfed in the fire that identified how her emotions were so wild and painful and brash). Their decades of time together pass through his mind’s eye in a matter of seconds; memories of children and grandchildren and servitude for love and sobbing against the cold cheek of their daughter and heated whispers against the melody of a Jungle night.
He is frozen in the act of looking at her. His muscles are tense and defined, rippling just underneath the rusty hue of his skin. Dampness darkens the broad swell of his chest and the length of his feathered legs, though there is no distinguishing between the snowmelt and the anxiety-induced sweat. Thick, long tendrils of mane and forelock cling against his strong neck and cheekbones (cheekbones that used to be branded with fire, in that Jungle so long ago).
Hestoni struggles to swallow, to breathe, to move. And she appears to be caught in the same vice-like phenomena. Finally, a sigh so large it might be considered a wind sweeps out of his lungs. It is infested with paranoia and fear and anxiety; all the sob-inducing emotions held in the linings of his body exhale with the release of his breath. On his next inhale, his deep voice echoes the name he had just repeated with such impatient terror. “Scorch.”
Hestoni steps toward her; at first, he pays little mind to the fire that coats her body. Her Amazon tattoos had never hurt him (he had spent many nights tracing their shifting, living lines with the tenderness of his mouth) and his relieved mind unconsciously supposes these flames will do him no harm as well. Yet their sudden heat, just as intense as real fire, stings his skin as he draws closer. Snow is beginning to melt around her into unfortunate puddles and it makes Hestoni’s ears pull into the thickness of his mane. All he wants to do is feel the comfort of her touch, to know that she is alive under his muzzle.
“You’re on fire.” It’s a nonsensical statement, but it’s all he can get out amid the myriad of emotions that plague him so deeply he fears he will never be rid of them. Despite her sudden appearance, covered in red-hot flame, Hestoni begins to seek her advice (as husbands are wont to do with their wives). “I fell asleep when it was summer and now it’s winter.” His masculine head is tossed toward the sky, where the clouds are uncharacteristically absent. “How long have I been gone? What happened?”
Hestoni
@[Scorch] ):