The dark would soon close us in as the line of words escaped my lips. My eyes ran for the weak sun, watching it gurgle on a lack of air as the dark suffocated it. It went out like fire, and the stars emerged. They were the dead, and they watched us with keen eyes, probably controlling us from up there. I mentally chuckled, rolling my eyes downward to little Sumä anticipating a weak yawn. But luckily the dark must have covered all fire from her dreaming like a blanket. She was out cold.
I rolled my wings back to let them stretch in the socket, relaxing the joint awkwardly against the tendons that held it together. It was probably the sun’s death and the lingering chill that created a lilt to my mood. I always felt lighter in the darkness. I watched my shadow disappear and the spotted stallion speak, lifting my eyes to remember the smoking wound. Thinking about it made my own thigh skin twitch in a twisted form of thought.
My expression hardened at the odd response. The cold stallion left me to wonder at what he meant by "If I knew that, I probably wouldn't have done it." He seemed harmless to me. Though enormous and odd he seemed to be rather dull at first glance, but I felt something eerie about the way he seemed to forget the pain sizzling in his open thigh. The way his icy eyes tore through the night to glimmer over my figure and hold a starlit glow. His eccentric appearance seemed to have a character about it. As did mine. I took interest in him because I could use a dull mind and tolerance to pain to Sargent the Throat, throw off the weak Levi and Aryel to replace with a much more exotic role. My eyes glittered as the moon slid out from behind a cloud.
He dropped another trail of words, brief but telling. ‘Perhaps he was clever,’ I thought, smirking into the thickening dark. But oddly enough, I opened my nostrils to any drifting scent and I only smelt traces of lands like I would smell off an outcast. He was much too thick to be an outcast, but I wasn’t able to get a second glance as the blackness around proved too thick to see his exact proportions. I could tell he’d been traveling a while when I saw his eyes, strong but tired. There were veins mapping out his injured thigh, though they could have sprung from the wound itself, drawing immediate blood and adrenaline. I didn’t understand the vagueness of our situation and I wanted an answer to the quick fall of night and the oddity to his remark. So I spoke out to him, voice floating over the grasses:
“I have no guess, traveler. I think it wise to drop the riddles. I am Sumati the Sinbird, hailing the Dragon’s Throat as Chancellor,” it was too natural to drop my identity. Here I felt as though I’d spoken perhaps too much about my hierarchy in the closeness of the sands. A creeping pang of red angst flooded my head, and it swirled as my composure, rarely, slipped out of my grasp in that one instant. I was shockingly terrified. I bit my tongue and hoped the stallion would respond at the unlikely chance, as if not fazed by my identity. I hoped he would generously offer up his own without suspicion. I felt stranded in that moment, mind whirring enough to crack the beak of my resting eagle. She lifted her head, gently crying out; quiet enough so that perhaps the taller stallion wouldn’t find the hidden vulnerability about me. Dusk cloaked my dark face, and I thought in hope that the dark was dark enough.
Sumä, again had my attention, and I coddled her in my thoughts, spreading a warm honey taste in her mouth to sooth the child’s brought-on nightmare. I kept my eyes up at Mauja, resting them on where his cut was placed on his body, though I couldn’t see a thing. She whimpered mentally and returned to the dreams as soon as she’d been startled. My heart rose a little bit, thankful for the recovery in my composure.
I only wished he wouldn't notice.
Sumati the Sinbird
there's no thunder to warn you that I'll bring you to your knees |
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[P] I died a long time ago, in that worn out war
