he drank my past, like the finest of wines // Aodhan

[Warlight]

Warlight

Soul as sweet as blood red jam

Her stumbling step gets a reaction out of him, and when he shouts, she halts. Awkwardly balanced in a wide splay-stance, she waits, fully aware she is in no shape to resist him. Her eyelids are heavy, and the side of her body that she had slid down the mountain on feels like it's on fire. But she finally takes a real look at him, and his golden spots remind her of someone...

We're going to fly. Hold on. Stay there.

When he speaks those word she begins to doubt her perception of reality, but it's not like she really can go anywhere on her own. She had only hallucinated - to her knowledge - once or twice when she had the plague the first time. But Raul had been there to be her anchor her, and soothe the sickness with his magic.

She feels lost without him.

Her feeling of disorientation only intensifies as the stallion's metamorphosis takes place. It is one thing to know that powerful shifters exist in the world, and another to see such a shift take place so close. On any other day, it would have prompted a barrage of questions from the leopard-skin woman, but today it only makes her blink harder. Without any other options, she trustingly takes a step, then another. Her hooves ring on the stone staircase as she climbs, her blur-black eyes focused at the top as the world swims around her. It takes a painstakingly long time, but when she puts the last stair behind her, she collapses. With a sigh of relief she falls into a neat bundle, all four lugs tucked below her and her head resting beside them on his golden back.

He smells like summer and sea-salt, and she remembers him then, the stallion who offered her a tour when she had stumbled across Aquaria's first kingdom meeting. A sense of calm settles over her as the great, golden wings rise around her and the warmth from his broad back chases away the chill she hadn't realized was causing her to tremble.  It was a feeling she had rarely submitted to, of being cared for and being so small. Of taking help, and being grateful for it.

"Aodhan, right?" Her head lifts as she looks forward, and she realizes this will be the first time she has ever been airborne. "Thanks for the ride."