Desreal: marshall;

I will leave in the hills a bit of myself--
The heat of my eyes which saw them bloom;
And cicadas, nesting on thorny branches,
Will sing out the shrill cry of my desire.
- Anna de Noailles

Air engulfs her in hot tongues of dust that lovingly abrade her flesh in subtle - yet constant - reminders of what she is; changed. She can feel this change with every slow, whirling (courtesy of the simoom-wind that flutters against her pale throat like a second pulse and flows too, from her pale heels lost amidst the grass of the green sward) step that spins her against the endless hours and the subtleties of light shifting from dawn to dusk.

Part of her knows that he will recognize the change in her and that part of her that knows, tries to quell the uprisings of fear and memory that batter and bruise what is already battered and bruised. Blissfully, the simoom-breath is upon her and burns through the haze of remembering to leave her smiling and traipsing freely with a freedom that was never entirely forgotten but had been forsaken, though she cannot remember the reason why…

The hot tongues of air cool as she pauses in her aimless travels; she has caught wind of him, but if there is a familiarity to the scent of the sea about the stallion, then she shies from it and the hot winds spring to action, circling round her with the cyclonic fury of whirlwinds still in their infancy. She calms it - herself - enough to brush her nose against his; “Fine,” dry, dusty murmurs leaving her lips as her eyes meet his then slide away.

It isn’t a lie that she tells, but it is not a truth either because she cannot remember or does not know and supposes that in the end, for this moment, she is as fine as the sunshine that warms the blood in their bodies. “And yourself?” she counters in that same arid rasp of a voice, a faint smile coming to her lips before it fades or is lost in the constant swirl of simoom-wind about her that casts a fine pall of dust over her.

Acacia;
perambulating dust