“Nekharat,” he purrs in satisfaction, and he reaches for her, stopping just short of touching, for though they had come to blows not so long ago, eagerly crashing into one another with a graceful fury to their dance that only those of their blood could hope to match, this… This was different. All was quiet, around them, and yet within, there was such noise.
His pale muzzle lingers just above the curve of her shoulder (if she chose not to withdraw), seeking to drink in the scent of her, his breath exhaled gently upon her ember skin. “I know you, and I have already come to know this of you…” The name she gave as her own seemed settled into her very bones, as if she were assured by who she was always. In a sense, Kahraman didn’t live and breathe his name, given that it was only half of who he was, or at the very least, who his parents had wished him to be.
(‘Kahraman,’ came the smug crowing of his father. And, much softer, in the solitude between mother and son, a whisper hoping for every good thing, ‘Tarkan, Tarkan my love, sleep without fear, for I am with you.’ And she had been, until she was taken from him, cruelly and coldly.)
“Böyle,” he affirms, with a slow inclination of his narrow muzzle, eyes of ice fixed upon her and disinclined to stray. How could anyone bear to look away from such a creature, who was as mesmerising (and as dangerous) as licking tongues of flame? “For a time, perhaps,” he says, and does not elaborate, choosing to sink for a moment into the enigma of his past. For a time he had yielded to the whims of his father, had allowed himself to be shaped for a purpose by one with naught but cruelty and greed within him.
And despite the savage emancipation Kahraman had wrestled from his father, some small part of him still felt scarred, and always would. “But then I became wise to my own existence, and realised… çok daha fazlası olabilirdim.” The words began as a trembling in his lungs as he remembered the day this insight had dawned upon him – about how the rebellion of a mare born and raised for the sole purpose of satiating a king and solidifying an alliance had opened his eyes and set him free.
“And I am,” Kahraman breathes the words like a whisper, a secret meant for Nekharat’s ears alone. It was no boast, there was no puffing up of his chest and strutting with head held high. That is not to say he is without pride at the statement – it glitters there in the depths of his icy eyes. It is the truth, only where Kahraman was concerned, it certainly wasn’t plain, and it was never simple. And just as he hadn’t been completely surprised by the revelation of the fire-mare’s name, neither does he expect her to be surprised by this.
They were no strangers to one another, no more, and never again. |