Nymeria & Lilómiel

You had Jesus on your breath / And I caught him in mine / Sweating our confessions / The undone and the divine / This is his body / This is his blood

There was a taste of winter, crisp and bitter, on the autumn wind, a binding, souring flavor to the air. It bothered her—it was a growing and unholy thing, an omen of death to haunt the rapidly-chilling days and breathe on the nape of her neck. Winter. She feared it; feared it as she well should, considering her wanderer status and barren nature. Who would warm her when the nights grew cold? Where would she shelter from the bite of the winter wind? How would she survive without mother and brother? I am alone but for my companion. And Lilómiel, even made of flame, could not stop the coming freeze.

Divine nostrils flare, cusped to draw in the corroded summer scents buried beneath the moulting leaves and the dying grasses. Summer was her birthright, the ocean waves lapping up against the shore and the sand tangled in her hair—not water enscapulated beneath a thick skin of ice, not her power buried away beneath the soil, inaccessible, unwanting.

Eyes, roaming regularly over the familiar landscape, catch and snag on movement, churning muscles beneath a rippling silver coat. At perpendicular angles another boy comes running, a familiar figure—seen before at a gathering, a competition for possessions and prizes. Colored in ashes, clasped in embers—he was the very opposite of her, all flame and flickering fire when she was the embodiment of water and the bender of the waves. A strange paradox—she wore death, and he the flame of rebirth, but they were both same in color. Her head, low-slung and casual, raises to get a better look at the stranger. As she does so, ears pricking forward, the grass crunching and crackling beneath his hooves thunders louder, a rapid tattoo which once would've jump-started her heart into overtime.

Her lips part, a soft and silky spread (about to say something aloud to her companion)—and then Lilómiel snarls, leaping from the prow of her withers into the sky. Images flash rapidly through their bond, knowledge acquired from their frequent exploration of the Meadow... well-worn images of a fall, memories of smooth banks slowly turning to churned and slippery mud beneath the feet of predators and prey alike.

Fuck. A fitting word—carefully selected for impact. The grullo steps out, unhesitating and unrelenting—she had been waiting for a chance like this. Her stride quickens in a matter of moments, and she falls into the steady movement of a gallop, stretching out into a pounding run fixed onto a collision course, Lilómiel's shadow falling over her. The small black dragon, shaped for speed, wings ahead, his elected path of flight hard and arrowing straight towards the problem.

There isn't much time—heart rate accelerates, eyes narrow in concentration—but Nym is determined. When his step stutters, she is close enough to hear his gasp; close enough to see the whites of his eyes; and then her left shoulder flexes forwards, aiming to smash into the shelf of his right shoulder and knock him down. Simultaneously, Lilómiel flashes down from above, an arrowhead spearing towards Cathun's head—hoping that reflexes will kick in, and the grullo will bend his head away to the left, thus easing Nymeria's path and the likelihood of halting him.