If I were an individual more inclined to humor, then the stallion’s reaction to my foreign words would have made me laugh. Indeed, it is entertaining how his eyes grow wide, and his tongue is seemingly tied by something like shock or astonishment. Flabbergasted. As it is, I feel a hollow tug upward on my lips, but little more than that. Honestly, more than anything, I’m grateful for the moment of relief, when I can seize his bewilderment and gather the pieces of myself, trying to mold something that is at least close to composed. I can only hope that the unfamiliarity between us will blind his eyes to the emptiness in my expression.

When the winged stranger manages to speak again, I preoccupy my gaze with the pile of bones at my feet, though an ear twitches at his word of endearment (love, beauty, darling, angel—I have been called all those and more. I have long-since learned there is no meaning in a title; they’re just words thrown like a lacy curtain over the ugliness and greed of reality). I assure myself that he didn’t notice my reaction—how my features wilted, how the corners of my eyes hardened—because it had been spoken so off-handedly, so casually.

I can’t help but wonder if this man has, at one time, indulged in the pleasures of the desert oasis. No man—even a gentleman—is immune to the lure of flesh and vacant promises. I do not recognize him myself (and I could never forget a face, try as I might) but I had only been a single, blemished jewel in a whole inventory of riches.

“There is a large patchwork of cultures where I come from. Individuals, of many lands, come and go,” I hear my voice drifting off towards the end, and I close my lips, glancing to the stallion briefly. I purposefully skirt around the core of his question, far from comfortable with the specifics and subsequent judgement that follows. It is only a matter of time, surely, but I cling to my secrets (black and putrefied as they are). “Yours is not a people excluded in this,” I cannot control the inkling of pointedness that slips into my tone, making verdicts of my own.

At this point, I’m aware that he has crept closer to me, and I can feel his gaze burning through the curtain of hair that has fallen across my face. Tilting my head, I allow my forelock to slide far enough to fall over my cheek instead, making brief eye contact with his startlingly blue gaze before looking away modestly. “Thank you,” I murmur in response to his offer, avoiding my own introduction as I lift the splintered skull with my teeth. I walk to him with stiff steps, reminded of my recently wounded knees, and place the skull on top of the pile on his back. “Looks like you’ve been working hard already,” I muse out loud, only partly to Sunjata.

Returning to my safe spot close to the crumbled old log, I lower my head to snatch another bone, but pause. “I’m—” I take a deep breath, not really understanding why it’s so hard, “I’m Mihtal.” I wait silently for a moment, avoiding his eye and wondering if he knows my native language, before I complete my initial action of collecting another bone. Placing it next to the skull, I shuffle back a few steps, not entirely comfortable with close proximity. “Do you happen to know why we’re doing this? Who was that creature that tasked us with this?” I look to the stallion out of the corner of my eye, reaching for another bone.


“Speech.”