| The girls are blessed with a short wait outside the walls, a brief interlude in which they grapple with similar thoughts and heated emotion, coming to terms with a world that has changed as they have grown. Fire Dancer shuffles and flutters and moves, anxiety playing puppeteer to a girl with two many strings. She is warmed by the sound of her cousin's voice, grateful to Amaris for proclaiming their presence- grateful for Amaris for simply existing. Alone she may have turned and run. Together she knows she can stand and wait.
The girl draws herself up when Kaj falls from the sky; her long neck arches, her black eyes flash, and authority traces each line of her form, another shadow of her mother upon the copper hide. Despite her lacking confidence she knows she has come here on business, and when the behemoth of a stallion approaches she holds in the swelling tide which threatens to break the dams of her heart, swallowing the cry of joyous recognition, the frightening desire to run to his side, to press his form beneath his wing and become a filly once more.
It is her first taste of artfulness, delicacy, discretion, and it tastes heavy and ashen in her mouth.
She cannot hold her regality against the revelation he presents. The copper form softens, crumples, and she gasps with the weight of what she's been told, dark eyes growing wide in surprised disbelief. Abruptly she turns to face her cousin, sparks racing wildly down her back- I didn't know, her expression promises, followed quickly by an anguished thought of Why didn't I know? If her cousin was back, why hadn't she come to find the Fire Dancer? Why had she been left alone in the dark, without sign or song of the silver dragoness? Had Amaris known, and not told her? Her brother huddles against her hooves, wrapping around them in reassurance, licking at fetlocks and browling a purr. Fire Dancer swallows, hard, and shuts her onyx eyes.
When she finally turns her face back to Kaj it is not quite composed, but marked with something approaching resolve, a burning conversion of anger and pain into something vaguely productive, cold and withdrawn. She regrets having come at all back to the Edge, but now that she's here she must finish her mission, get the glass trinket and then get out. Lips part for speech, dark voice spilling into the forest air- "We need an item from the glass of the Edge to complete a quest given to the Throat." She thinks to say more, to offer something in return as Sacre had, though she isn't sure what. She has an amulet, a nightlight, two flowers, a stone... trinkets, all of which she thinks would have no value to the King, though they carry powerful sentimentalist value for the girl.
Conveniently, a glazier chooses then to enter the scene.
Fire Dancer does not reiterate their purpose; she leave it to Kaj to convey to his crafter whether they will fulfill the request or not. Braided tail lashes at a tense right hind; Her gaze darts between the assembled parties, settling on Kaj as she awaits his judgment, his easy confirmation or the need for argument and persuasion of their demand. It is her first diplomatic mission and it is failing miserably, felled at the start by a sordid history and an unexpected gut-wrench of unexplained news.
THE FIRE DANCER
for it was I who walked among the falling stars, and did not burn | |
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