amaris

dragonborn

Amaris was hunting.

It was not often that she hunted, for the majority of the time, her prey was grass and greenery, bark and leaves, like the rest of the equine population.

But Amaris was no regular equine.

So she hunted, for the meat, the blood and the flesh. It was not often - less than annually, in fact - that her tongue yearned to feel the sensation of another creature's heartbeat ending upon it, that her stomach growled, truly growled for something that required her to end a life, in the name of prolonging her own.

It was almost too easy - she had the ability to cover ground at the speed of a fit horse, wings that allowed her to fly, a tail with a built-in weapon, and a whip on top of that. It was simple, too simple, for her to capture the rabbit, to devour it - and catch its mate as well.

Amaris was not the innocent child who danced and frolicked across the lands this morning. She was the queen who usually resided deep within, the beast who rose only occasionally, the dragon who roared victorious as she bit into the flesh and wiped her bloodstained maw on a foreleg.

It was a sort of blind state, one that she awoke from with a hazy mist blotting out most of the memory, though she knew from the warmth in her veins that she had feasted on flesh and blood mere hours before. A strange shame filled her - Amaris was well aware of the cycle of life, she knew that simply because of what she was, it was unavoidable that she would be responsible for the death of something, eventually, (regularly).

For so long she had battled with her identity, for so long she had wanted to deny it, to change it, to be normal - and then she would wake from another of these events, and know that it was impossible, futile to deny. Tears flooded her eyes, the saline drops rolled down her chiselled face and blended with the blood that shaded it crimson red, as once again she tried to wipe it away, to deny it - but there was no denying what she was, when she chose the biggest mirror on Helovia to try and wash her face.

The dawn shifted into morning, the mists moved, the whispers began. Still in a state of denial, she wanted to ignore them, to hide from them - but she couldn't, because the whispers belonged to her cousin, her friend, her sister more than her true sister ever was. So she couldn't deny them - but she would splash herself in the low waters and try once more to wipe the evidence from her face and legs - though she missed a small fleck of dried blood just below her left nostril, she was mostly clean, gleaming and golden, again.

She hunted again, but not for death this time - she prayed that it would never happen again, but she knew that was futile too.

"Tandavi," she murmured, greeting the golden and crimson form softly as she approached, head bowed as she listened to the words her cousin spoke, smiling as she heard mention of Natraj, the wonderful, adorable little black brother she loved as much as her sister. As she came to stand shoulder to shoulder with her cousin, and viewed properly the scene before her, she nodded in silent agreeance - she recognised the Oracle of her former home from herd gatherings, though she didn't know anything more of her than that.

"To be bonded -" she began, summoning with ease, the red soul-light of a dragon who once lived in these lands, a dragon whose spirit bonded with her own in order to exist again in this realm. "-is a great privilege and responsibility." With as much ease as she summoned the red, she severed the magic, and felt its sharp twang inside her as her soul bent back into its original shape. "It is not something to be entered into lightly."

sky above me — earth below me

and fire within me