The culture on these isles is vastly different from her mother’s place of birth. Here, masculinity is valued. Shararat has had a singular example of stallions on the Lost Isles, and that experience exclusive to her youth. Ak Burun has proven to be more influential than either that male or her mother’s blind assertions, and lucky for Bahadir that is the case. The heat within Shararat is the soporific bliss of sun-soaked skin on a long afternoon, not at all the all-consuming conflagration that threatens to lay waste. Hers is an ash-buried ember, slow to stoke, a controlled burn— a spark waiting to be struck.
Her smile grows to see pride flash through the stallion’s dark eyes. She steps even closer to bring them nearly chest to chest before reaching up to breathe lightly against the pale freckling on his cheek. "I know no Bast," Shararat says, her voice warm and carrying the echo of her smile. "But I should like to know you, and your gods." She presses her lips briefly against the broad curve of his jaw, then withdraws to regard him again from under her lashes.
She remembers these Isles, knows the territories are scattered about the edge of this main land, but she has only ever been on Atlantis. It is not a land she desires to return to, but she does not know the way to any other. "Show me," she says simply. She is poised to follow him: ears tuliped forward, weight shifting back to her hindquarters, prepared to step into a stately walk or spring into a swift run at his shoulder, nostrils flaring to draw in a deep breath. She can almost taste the surf awaiting them. "I would see these sands anointed by your blood." |