| LYING THIEVES, SCORNFUL HONEY, WON'T YOU WATCH THE GLAZED-EYED GODS? |
A lie-swathed god dripping with her nectar letters, a traitor king with magic sewed into the pores of his skin.
❝ Bow. Bow to the gods of fate, to the defiant, to the rulers -
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ALREADY THE BUTTERED SKY told its story, tugging the silvered moons with invisible puppet strings as the crescent tips itself into the dreary twilight.
The black creature senses it too, the dusty dunes engulfed in utter darkness. It's ravenous eyes preys on the underbrush below; before tucking its ebony wings against the fragile bones and soaring through the night. A flash of razor-sharp talons, a blur of feathers and scales — and the bird is victorious.
Again another limp body drapes across her gore-stained beak.
Again. Again. Again.
And yet, this is survival.
She drags her precious catch to a hiding spot and attacks it with a hungry fervour, beating her wings furiously in an attempt to match her swiftness. It tilts its head after the short meal — pink tongue ducking in and over her beak — leaving the remains cleaned to the bone. She never leaves anything but ivory white for the flies to savour.
Eliana pities the small animal. It is, after all, a feast for the tigers. So why must they all try so hard to live?
She steps towards the tiny thing. Eliana squats, her foreign hands reaching out. "Come," she says, "let me grant you a wish."
The raven pauses. It wasn't pecking at its dark feathers, neither was it polishing its sterling silver claws. She had it entranced now; those beady eyes raking over the taints on her calloused skin, feeding on every inch of her palms.
Slowing, it willed.
Slowly.
"Come on," she sang, her voice layered with a thick arabic accent. "Come on. "
It creeps onto her palm, the tiny talons dragging across her moon-shaped hands. Her fingers clawed on its back, stroking the black feathered creature. One by one, they whisper against its spear-shaped body. One by one, they struggled against its raven wings. She was not kind; why would she be? It flailed by her rough touch, clawing and cawing it's way out. Eliana smiles weakly, then it drops.
She presses her palms together.
The bird, the bird, the bird. Crushed under the weight of regret.
By Eliana's regret.
It thrashed and screamed, failed and failed. Eliana's breath catches — and that sense of fear — of dread comes back. She deems it odd, the questions she asks herself. It seemed like a swarm of bees, stinging the lies she calls truths. Why, why why. Too many questions, too little answers. But of course, she knows it. Everything. So she failed to let go. She failed because she was selfish.
Her eyes shut. It's the last, the last, the last.
Her ears go deaf. Last, last, last.
But when she does release her death grip, there was nothing more than flecks of ash black feathers. Eliana lets out a staggered breath and rests her heavy head on her red fingers. The screeching was no more, no more, no more. She will suffer no more.
No more. Lies, lies, lies.
It was all utter lies.
Can they feel her regret? Have they come, now? Flocking against those inky skies, skies that burned like her soul.
Yes. Up above. How could she forget? Panic washes through her as she raises her head and stares up at the taunting sky. Empty. Deserted. Eliana's fingers steeled against her palms. She is so lucky, so so lucky this time. The sands below her cling to her paper-like veins, yet as the relief and dread slither into her lungs and pore into her heart, she refuses to feel.
What has she done? No, she whispers back, the words hissing like bile on her throat, she had to.
Then the arabian girl repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats those sinned words over and over and over again, but she knows she will never repent. She knows this, yet sorrow does not run in her veins.
She knows this even as she walks past the desert festooned with blood, she knows this even before her fingers lick the dusty sands. She knows this as she is the one they are scarring lands to find.
So she whispers it again, her slender fingers riding across the glittering sands as she smeared the gold red. Eliana savours the silky feeling as her sinned hands scrape and dance against hundreds of tiny ochre, for she may never know when would be her last.
Then she rides, like stars shooting across the black night.
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A/N This chapter is bad and unedited af, and I'm reallly really sorry if I haven't been that active lately, but after tons and tons and tons of planning I finally got the plot right XD all I have to do now is just write it out BWAHAHAH
