familiarity, wrapped in bones Posted on June 12, 2022 at 02:52:10 PM by charybdis
scare away the wolves, scare away the wolves The sea did not claim him, and the Darkness rose from the brine, wild and lashing, unchanged. He tore away from her, and she bellowed her displeasure (her confusion), her mouth red with blood. Charybdis didn’t understand. What did the Islands want from her. All this time, she had tried to be true, but to… What, exactly? Had it been some grand game all along?
It was the boy, that thing which haunted her. It was because of him.
One act of cowardice on her part, one misstep from the path she believed had been laid out for her, one she hadn’t strayed from. Three times, she’d lost Skylla, and this time, the silver-brown mare would never be coming back. It mattered little, in the eye of the mountain. It mattered not at all, how she suffered, and she had nearly paid for her defiance with her life.
(Even now, as she stood in the water which had swallowed up the tumbling earth, Charybdis could swear she heard that was not her own, and her wretched heart trembled in the empty vessel she had become at the thought of having lost something most precious, without even knowing for certain.)
And then that keening cry faded, and the blood-shouldered mare heard a voice, saying her name, cutting clear through the chaos. Chary. She turned, the chalcedony blue of her blind eye roving with purpose, the madness in her seeing eye receding as it found and focused upon that white-gold face. Her brutal, bloodied lips parted, a name forming on her tongue, soft and steady.
But then the ground beneath her heaved and she fell, sprawled winded in the sand.
The shadow stallion loomed close, blocking out the sun, and Charybdis raged in silence, her throat too white-hot and raw to make a sound. She threw her forelegs out - not to strike, but to send her surging up to meet him again with gaping jaw. The white mare would have forced him back a few paces to the water, to try again, and see if this time she could wash the both of them clean, but her body betrayed her, just as the Ridge itself had.
She sank to the sand, choking on a strangled cry of pain as the muscles in her left shoulder seized, and the leg buckled beneath her. Still, Charybdis threw herself between her nemesis and Aoife. Beneath the sand clinging to her salty wet skin, there were patches scraped raw, and bruises blossoming across the swelling of her ribs. Injuries from the Fall.
Feeling suddenly vulnerable, especially as the black stallion was more-so on her blind side, Charybdis curled her legs beneath her in preparation for a desperate last rising, and focused what little strength she had left into snapping savagely at the air. True it may be that she was more or less down for the count, but Charybdis would fight to the bitter end to protect that which was hers to protect. She’d sink her teeth into him again if he dared come any closer. The sharp tang of his blood still lingered on her tongue, and salt from the sea.
A harsh nicker, punctuated with a shrill squeal. Charybdis felt her chest heave for breath, and her face contorted with pain as she tried to twist around and set him in her half-sight. But she did not relent, nor did she back down. Look at me. Come to me! The demand, if not met - the warning, if not heeded, would drive her, limping and lame, to her full height, and she would crash down upon him with all the reckless force and none of the impartiality that had sent the water-logged slope of the Ridge tumbling into the sea.
Quivering ears slanted flat to her sodden tangle of mane as the skin around her nostrils wrinkled. Jaw relaxed, teeth bared.