[ What Do You Have To Say? | Ni'Srilan: The Desert ]
Posted by Isra on February 11, 2009, 8:07 pm
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I S R A ;
In all honesty, and Isra hated every moment that at the most basic level she was raw and uncompromisingly honest with herself, she was frightened. The mare who’d spent a lifetime running, every breath watching, afraid of every blink, nearly shied away as the stallion came up beside her. But she well-schooled, by herself at least, and her skin only twitched, and her eyes shuttered into their familiar guarded look. She turned her head towards him, dusty black neck making a stiff curve.
Isra did not know what she saw. On the surface, he looked a bruised and broken horse, a warrior almost certainly (or a spy or scholar with an odd penchant for violence). Her nostrils flared, fancying the metallic tint of blood upon the air, as her eyes flickered over the burns across his flesh. Her ribs ached to see the way he had labored walking across the sand, and the back of her throat felt raw and scoured from her visions of blood. Desperately, she tried to quell these feelings, aware that empathy was quite the opposite of the cool objectivity she had cultivated all these years.
“Hello,” she replied uncertainly, voice quiet. “No—no, I don’t mind. I’m Isra.”
Isra was tired too, and she felt it all of a sudden like a great weight, a sudden weariness. She was tired of trying so hard to fool the world and everything in it. Slowly, carefully, she let it go, slipping off her like the night from the day. She held it close, but for a moment allowed herself this one precious gift, as frightening as it might be. The stiffness in her neck was there, but with a softer quality; the tenseness was more fear than defense; and for some reason Isra could live with fear to have this moment.
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