Posted on September 4, 2021 at 08:17:55 AM by Nzingha
hapo ambao asaa  Sand and sun and bright blue sky. And nothing else for as far as the eye could see. Nothing. Wind sculpted the desert into waves that rose and fell and rose again, some so tall that they threatened to swallow her. (She’d seen such waves before, she’d seen them; those hungry walls of water called up by the storm.) The slender woman hesitated at the ocean’s edge, her dark eyes wide and wild with fear. From the graveyard of stone, the shaman had given her body over to the tides, clinging to the hope that she’d be returned home— wherever it was that her home might be. Instead, the Marwari was spat unceremoniously onto the first chunk of land she encountered; a place as barren and inhospitable as the bones she’d left behind. No, worse. Because here— here, there was no one to guide her. Here, there was no (Agora, the Agora. It was gone, gone) life at all save that of the wind’s warm, fetid breath. And the sea, the sea. Behind her it murmured, a gentle croon that tugged at her ears back until they resembled two curved black horns. What is lost can be found, Skiamakhia. Feeling the ghost of a muzzle nudging at her flanks (look, the sky, she weeps for you), Nzingha stepped free of the water. There was nothing here, but she would search regardless; it was abluvion’s will. Perhaps there was some purpose hidden and buried by the sand. The call of a spirit, or (a darkness veiled in light, a darkness come to claim the bright golden boy) a sliver of memory borne here from some other place. A whisper, a scent, the echo of a touch. The skull-marked mare sought any and all of these amidst the endlessness of the desert, skimming along the crest of its tallest ridge. (And remember, dimly, following the stone spine of her world while tangled coils of jungle unraveled far below.) Hours ticked past, marked by the sun’s steady climb. And she found nothing. (Emptiness; a hole where her Queen had once stood. Questions left circling in place of the answers she’d held. Circling like— like—) A shadow swooped over the faltering Marwari, and then a second spiraled along in its wake. Death lingered overhead, ready to snatch the shaman from the life her kind clung to precariously, fragile by design. (Fragile as the porcelain child she’d tried to save, oh spirits she’d tried.) She was thirsty, so thirsty. But there was no water to be won from the unforgiving earth, and no salvation offered by the skies. There was nothing, just as she’d known from the beginning. If bringing her here had been the will of abluvion, then it sought only to reclaim the life that had been snatched from its gaping jaws (commit de blood... wash ‘im all away). Swaying drunkenly beneath the sun’s relentless gaze, the white-masked woman finally lost her balance, tipping abruptly to one side. Too weak to recover, Nzingha tumbled down the sand-wave’s crest and into the yawning void that stretched beneath, the breath pushing from her lungs in one last desperate cry. The dunes were a sea of their own, and she would drown in them. NzinghA mare . nine . black sabino overo . marwari . 16.0hh  |
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- what a wicked game to play - By Fiero September 5, 2021 at 07:51:11 PM
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