She did not find the throat of her king beneath her jaws, nor did she find her own demise laid bare before her hooves; no, what she found beneath the surface of her elephant monarch was a vicious spark that combusted with such ferocity, she was sure that somewhere in the universe's grand scheme, they were one in the same. The blood stained woman didn't register the blood that exploded in a glorious spectrum of flavor and nausea onto her tongue, didn't register how the beautiful sky-blue of Tembovu's eyes darkened with an unknown instinct.

Only the scream of desperation and blood soaked need echoed in her mind; the self same noise that had burst from her lips on the night of her liberation on those waves of sand. Memories rushed at her the same way she had rushed toward her king's throat...

It was her first inspection and the leggy almost-yearling was shaking with fear as the massive stallion that had called himself her father assessed her physique. His muzzle poked and prodded at her softest, most private areas and wide eyes flooded with tears. From the corner of the dimly lit room, Taht, the child's beloved nursemaid, shook her head, the old mare's panicked expression matching that of the cherub...

Here she was again, in the same musty room with the stallion she knew as Father staring at her with that coldly calculating gaze. This time, there were no tears and there was no Taht; the kind old woman had said her goodbyes the night before. She had not wanted to see the child she had cared for on the day she came of age, on the day the babe would be broken...

The desert rose hovered above her past self, made to watch the last of countless patrons grunt and sweat and find their release at the cost of a young girl's soul. Tears painted rivulets down her cheeks as she swore she would never again be a casualty of the war they had sparked in her chest. Pastel lips both present and past parted in a silent cry of agony; for the loss of innocence and for the gain of something far more sinister...

Blood soaked her heaving sides and crusted at her hooves, layering sand and gore over her frame as she fled from the doomed city of her birth. For each tally engraved at her bedside, she had collected the debt owed to her, seizing from them with hooves and teeth what had been stolen in jewels and gasps of selfish pleasure...

And there she was yet again, rested and clean with wilted flowers adorning her hair and a gathering of kindly faces staring at her with something she couldn't quite place. They nodded, smiled, greeted her with a gentleness that betrayed her upbringing. They left her to her own machinations when needed; they didn't understand her past, but they understood she couldn't always be there with them in the present, that she sometimes was forced to fly from herself in order to escape again and again what she couldn't forget. Many did not know her, yet they trusted her with their safety, relied on her for protection and care. They trusted this wild creature with their lives and the lives of their children, and at the center of it all stood a painted Elephant King with a twisted scythe for a horn and eyes like the sky. At the center of it all stood something she didn't need to run from...

There was a scream that made it halfway from her lips as she shattered.

There was a scream that was cut short as Tembovu's hooves connected with her skull and the world as she knew it was blotted out.