have you met the devil's new right hand | islas

[Firen]

i don't eat i just devour,
every one in every hour

As her thoughts flow the outline of her story falls into his consciousness. He missed the first hints of it, only because he had never thought such a thing could exist. He had never thoughtfully observed the stars, never thought to name them, or track their journies during the long nights he spent alone. The brindle stallion never stopped to think about their origins or the sources of their light. But now he is being forced to, and he finds there is something about it that intrigues him. At least for now, something about it he likes more than picking clean the bones from his last hunt for the third time.

"You're not... from here," he says with something close to reverence. The emphasis on the word falls in such a way as to insinuate he means more than just the river or the common-lands, farther than any coastal kingdom or even a country beyond the sea. She wasn't of this earth.

That a star could be a girl is something he would have never thought of, not if he passed one thousand years in solitude. But it is an intriguing idea, now that it has found him, and it keeps him rooted where he stands. If he had not been able to read her memories, he would have thought she was delusional. But he can see these thoughts, and the idea that maybe she has fooled even herself doesn't cross his mind.

His head tilts in a way distinctly canine, as he looks into her upturned face. He should ask if she misses it, something to keep her here passing the time with him, but he already knows she does. He already knows that the thought of returning to the sky is a need in her as potent as his need to hunt.

"How," he begins, halting as he tries to string together words that hardly make sense to say. "How did you fall?" He settles on, because some long lost story of falling stars comes to mind from his weanling years, and she didn't choose to come here so there must be a story there.

Firen