The Academy: creative, aren't we?

“They tried and failed, all of them?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “They tried and died.”

For a moment a twitch – almost as if he would turn to her and, effectively, look.

It never happens; no more than a jump in his jaw muscles.

To know others, she declares. If it pleases or displeases him it doesn’t show; his head inclines minutely – the first and only acknowledgement to her words – almost invisible but for the sway of his mane, long and sandy, in the dead air around them. to be your teacher, she says, and someone else might’ve smiled and accepted her offer kindly, or denied it for the sake of someone else, some young apprentice upstart who needs a student.

But he doesn’t. His eyes never once abandon their fixed stare, straight ahead, almost unblinking – dark eyes, catching every shard of light and reflecting them back, mirror-like and clear. Dead.

Absolutely, impossibly still. Trance-like.

“You are frustrated,” he says and it is not a question. It drips from his tongue as a fact – coils in his not-voice with the same expressionlessness. The long silence that follows is that of a grave. “Why?”

A colt, little more than that – two years, little more.

The earth sings around her – around them; it is not strong enough to rival his own fire, but strong enough to come alive, all summer warmth and animal musk. If he notices it, he doesn’t show; in fact, he doesn’t seem to show any awareness of his surroundings at all.

And if his fire flickers, and writhes, and dances, well.

leto
of sandworms and fire;