and i was thrashing on the line
The fire reaches her first.
Not the heat - that came later, like a slap that missed and hit on the backswing - but the movement of it. The way it crackles, hunts, devours. A hunger that claws its way up through her ribs, raw and unstopping.
Her eyes snap open.
Light, blinding and wrong. The world is too much. Everything feels peeled back — skin, nerves, memory. The stone around her doesn’t crack so much as give up, sloughing off her spine like it’s been trying to hold on too long. A slow, seeping throb rides up from her bones to her teeth. She tastes grit. Blood. Ash.
She gasps, a ragged sound - part snarl, part scream - dragged up from somewhere too deep to name.
She staggers forward and trips, body heavy, limbs uncertain; like she was poured into the shape of herself too fast. Her skin is slick with molten residue, glistening like wet clay pulled fresh from the kiln. The remnants of her prison cling to her in curling, ash-thin sheets - not clothes, not exactly, but enough to veil her with the modesty of a half-burned shroud. Hair hangs damp against her back, smoke-wreathed and clinging.
Something drags behind her - a weight, a pull - and she stumbles, disoriented, as a long, ridged tail slithers free from the last of the crumbling stone. It whips once, then coils low and tight, like it remembers more than she does. Horns throb against her temples, pressure blooming behind her skull like fresh bruises.
She blinks. Blinks again. Her mind feels like a whiteboard someone had scribbled on in ink, then tried to wipe clean. Smudged thoughts. Incomplete. Ugly.
There's a man.
Standing there like he’s been waiting in line for this moment. Calm as a priest. Shirt open like it's Sunday in summer. Something in his eyes, but what?
She stares at him.
A heartbeat.
Two.
She looks down at herself - at the tail, the bare skin, the strange weight of her own body - and lets out a sharp, ugly laugh.
“Oh great. Perfect. Just woke up naked in some asshole’s cave. Amazing.”
She points a trembling hand at him. “Tell me who the hell you are before I- I- I'll take your fucking head off!” She stands shakily, chest rising and falling hard, eyes sharp and wild. Not unlike a cornered animal trying to make itself bigger, louder, more dangerous than it felt inside.
Not the heat - that came later, like a slap that missed and hit on the backswing - but the movement of it. The way it crackles, hunts, devours. A hunger that claws its way up through her ribs, raw and unstopping.
Her eyes snap open.
Light, blinding and wrong. The world is too much. Everything feels peeled back — skin, nerves, memory. The stone around her doesn’t crack so much as give up, sloughing off her spine like it’s been trying to hold on too long. A slow, seeping throb rides up from her bones to her teeth. She tastes grit. Blood. Ash.
She gasps, a ragged sound - part snarl, part scream - dragged up from somewhere too deep to name.
She staggers forward and trips, body heavy, limbs uncertain; like she was poured into the shape of herself too fast. Her skin is slick with molten residue, glistening like wet clay pulled fresh from the kiln. The remnants of her prison cling to her in curling, ash-thin sheets - not clothes, not exactly, but enough to veil her with the modesty of a half-burned shroud. Hair hangs damp against her back, smoke-wreathed and clinging.
Something drags behind her - a weight, a pull - and she stumbles, disoriented, as a long, ridged tail slithers free from the last of the crumbling stone. It whips once, then coils low and tight, like it remembers more than she does. Horns throb against her temples, pressure blooming behind her skull like fresh bruises.
She blinks. Blinks again. Her mind feels like a whiteboard someone had scribbled on in ink, then tried to wipe clean. Smudged thoughts. Incomplete. Ugly.
There's a man.
Standing there like he’s been waiting in line for this moment. Calm as a priest. Shirt open like it's Sunday in summer. Something in his eyes, but what?
She stares at him.
A heartbeat.
Two.
She looks down at herself - at the tail, the bare skin, the strange weight of her own body - and lets out a sharp, ugly laugh.
“Oh great. Perfect. Just woke up naked in some asshole’s cave. Amazing.”
She points a trembling hand at him. “Tell me who the hell you are before I- I- I'll take your fucking head off!” She stands shakily, chest rising and falling hard, eyes sharp and wild. Not unlike a cornered animal trying to make itself bigger, louder, more dangerous than it felt inside.
somewhere between desperate and divine
Zairah
