A familiar scent unraveled in the aperture, and curled and coiled and clawed around his heart. He lifted his skull to the wind, narrowing his gaze to a sharp, predatory stare, pondered over the trickery, the devilry, surrounding his core. Surely the manifestation of her wake, of her presence, was a mirage, bumbling and unwinding before his senses in order to deprive him of something, to forge weakness, to ensure incapacity, and he almost didn’t believe its existence, stepping back into the cave and shirking the sedition. But it continued wafting, chiming with the summer breeze, with the soft munitions of his Siberian realm, like a call, like a demand, and he maneuvered one stride out of the entrance, staring down at the world before him – the Lord, the King, the beast, surveying his kingdom, quietly begging, yearning, longing, and trying not to tether himself into those beguiling notions (they’d happened before, and she hadn’t been there, another dream leaving him bereft). But there, along the lake, drinking in the shoal, the shore, the embankment, appeared a figure, lithe, small, delicate (but never in anything but foundation), and something in his chest burst.
Like a fiendish whisper, like a minstrel, a master, of death and all of its desecration, he flew from the catacomb, striking flint, stone, and rubble, a rapid stretch of demise and devastation, a ruin seeking the only essence of absolution he’d ever craved, galloping headlong down merciless paths and recoiling trails. Deimos had to know if she was real, if she was definite, distinct, or if he’d truly lost his presence of mind, leaping and bounding, unaware if he was making sound or if he was a silent, stealthy predator cast and harpooning into the wind. It didn’t matter, because he longed for her just as much as the first time he’d set his eyes on her, saw past the innocent veneer and the pious certainties, drenched himself in the enduring tides and unraveling, cascading regimes. He reigned closer, fed on the fractious, feverish elements, swept past dangerous, treacherous pitfalls and only discerned blue; it haunted the back of his eyes when he slept, it drifted through his skull when he stared at his citizens, it remained supreme, regarded, and revered, even when she’d maneuvered away. The cretin ceased all movement, stood on the opposite side of the lake, afraid of what he might do if he drew too close, frightened to find she was only one more mirage, only one more ghost, only one more specter to starve him of his desolation, to lure him into ruin. He stared, eyes wide, not the narrowed slivers of penetrating, piercing ire, not the exasperated, resigned slits of vexation, but a familiar craving, wanton feature, chiseled and sculpted only for her; devilish devotion, vicious orisons. Then, like a prayer, like a hallelujah, he drew her name across his lips. “Huyana?”
@[Huyana]