H U Y A N A
the world is drowning

Death is wary today; he is tense, he stands alone, and the rainchild watches him with mixed humility and intrigue, delicate nostrils ceasing their eternal quiver - she holds her breath. He does not want her here, she can feel it in the way his head is held stiffly away, how his breath curls almost improbably in the air. Can statues live, can they kill? She gives a curious twitch of her lions' tail, a flick of a dark ear. Would he take her now, will he end the sorrow that taints her, that threatens to devour her, like the arms of a hurricane? A strange sort of smile pulls at the corners of black lips, ironic and a little forlorn. Where is the girl who wanted to start a revolution of peace, who saw a light in the eyes of others - she wanted to change the world, but not with flailing hooves and bleeding bodies; but with the push and pull of the tides, the ceaseless wind eroding stone.

Blue eyes, dim with fatigue, stay on this man of rock and stone - will he crumble, will he erode? With a minute movement, she pushes her nose toward him, seeking his gaze. Words seep into the air; it is the voice of one damned she listens to, and they burrow tenuously into his ears, crawl across her mind like insects. Her jaw locks, but her eyes stay on him, almost obstinately. The sea is not swayed by the storm, and Huyana will not be frightened away like a common beach crab.

Deimos, she tastes the name, savours its malevolence, its foreboding appeal. A dirge, the rainchild notes, resting her weight on her haunches, tail flicking back and forth with contemplation. Huyana lets something akin to a smile grace her tired face, lightening those tired eyes. Look at me, they ask, and still waters run deep, and nothing swims beneath their depths but the darkest of fish. "Did you fight?", she asks, suddenly serious; her expression becomes shadowed, and the girlish grin becomes a resolute line - it does not suit her. The roan remembers when they had taken her home, the clash of flesh and horn and hoof, the blood, and what was she to do but run? What was anyone to do but submit - especially such a war-weary creature; she is a girl who has seen the world and its wonders and its sorrows, and why would she want to live through another wave of violence. Where is your king? she wonders silently - she remembers him too; mighty and strong, a glacier in a land of downy snow. Has he simply melted away, reabsorbed into the spring like the carcass of his home and all he believed in?