Ultima or Alph, or the in-between thing tucked into the tall grass and the damp earth, this was the full extent of her power. (She didn’t want more of it. She only wanted love, and a home, and faces to call familiar, but not those at the Edge.) Before he could answer, she already knew that a warpath wasn’t one she could walk, or fly.
All she could do was change, charged by circumstance. (She wanted only to be a top, spinning swiftly, swiftly, on her own.)
Day by day she had felt some part of herself slipping, like leaves shaking loose of the trees. Autumn was coming. Winter was too, and afterwards the spring would return and the leaves would grow anew. But they would not be the same ones, and the idea rolled a heavy shiver down her spine, smashing through her flatland like an earthquake. Reflexively, Ultima huddled into the crook of her wide white wings, drawn smotheringly flush against her shoulders and flanks, and stared at the man’s hooves, caked with mud and debris. When at last she spoke, it was so softly that it was nearly lost in the pale feathers, so small and frightened that she could barely recognize her own voice.
“What were you like before?”
Her eyes stung, glassy and tremulous, but unbroken.
“Were you better?”
@Ryouta
please tag ultima in all posts! force/magic a-ok, shy of killing/maiming her! |