Shenzi.
Shenzi.
‘Don’t!’ Shenzi wanted to snarl and spit and seethe. Don’t say my name like that. But she merely clenched her and focused intently on pushing back, snarling as she felt Nyimara’s teeth scarping across her withers. For some reason she couldn’t explain, this here and now - the meeting of their fiery spirits, the tussle to learn where they stood with each other now, the battle of wills for dominance - it was so important. It would shape the future for them both.
Where were you?
The whisper, muffled against her skin, is almost soft enough to trick Shenzi into backing down. Though Nyimara gives very little away, unless it is for a purpose, the scarred barb mare can almost taste the sorrow and despair that Nyimara must feel. After what she’d done for Shenzi… But no. No. Shenzi refuses to yield this time. With one final shove, haunted by the way Nyimara’s velvet nose skimmed across her skin, Shenzi breaks away with a growl rumbling deep in her cavernous chest. She thinks of Geçersiz and their somber conversation in the Meadow. Would Nyimara understand why Shenzi had turned back at the fringe of the Dunes, unable to venture any deeper into the desolate terrain of Salem than the borderline she had carefully followed between the Desert and the Badlands.
Would it even matter, if she did?
Shenzi withholds part of her truth for now, and, chest heaving from the exertion of rushing upon the silver bay queen as she had, she gives an answer, breathy and blunt, wild eyes fixed upon Nyimara’s face. “In the Peak.” And before giving Nyimara a chance to say anything, the barb mare tucks her chin to her chest, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly, and her voice sharpens to a cutting edge. “Learning of the damage you have wrought.” Thoughts of Róisín, and her tearful tenderness. I would not ask you to forsake your friends… But Nyimara had never been a friend, had she? A companion, certainly, an equal, who on some level could empathise with what Shenzi had been through. A queen, someone who Shenzi had wanted to follow.
And once upon a time, maybe something more.
“Is that why you won’t let go of me?” The words slip out, quiet and condemning, before Shenzi can stop them. And they hang in the air between them, loaded, like sparks against dry tinder, and as much as she wanted to, Shenzi could not take them back. So, she continues on, digging the proverbial thorn even deeper into Nyimara’s side, and the accusation that her words imply are like a dagger to her own heart. “You want me as a pawn, to wield my own hurt and turn it into a weapon to accomplish your will.”
And the world seems to come to a halt around them as she waits in terrible trepidation for the wrath or ruin that her words would incite.