Amalia
the shield of safrin
Amalia smells the blood before she sees it, tangy and acrid on the breeze and setting her predator's senses alight. Fangs flicker beneath her lips, her nostrils flaring as she takes in the scent, alarm bells ringing immediately as she changes in her course. Walking first, then swiftly running, panic making her heart pound. She thinks of the things she might find, and how she will deal with them.
None of it prepares her for the scene that actually unfolds.
The sand, a trail of dark and rusty red scorched through it like a wound. The body, or its feet rather, the rest of it obscured and hazy in the distance, obviously there and obviously dead. And the man, his back to her as he stumbles through the sand, his familiar shock of red hair pale next to the violent scarlet of blood that coats his hands and feet, condemning him without any need for jury or for judge.
Amalia finds that she is shaking like a leaf in a storm. Her hand is on her mouth; her eyes are wide; her voice is a high-pitched, strangled thing. "Sam," she croaks through the fog of uncertainty, through the prayers that this is all a nightmare from which she will soon wake, through her brain's inability to make sense of what is so painfully clear. "What have you done?"
None of it prepares her for the scene that actually unfolds.
The sand, a trail of dark and rusty red scorched through it like a wound. The body, or its feet rather, the rest of it obscured and hazy in the distance, obviously there and obviously dead. And the man, his back to her as he stumbles through the sand, his familiar shock of red hair pale next to the violent scarlet of blood that coats his hands and feet, condemning him without any need for jury or for judge.
Amalia finds that she is shaking like a leaf in a storm. Her hand is on her mouth; her eyes are wide; her voice is a high-pitched, strangled thing. "Sam," she croaks through the fog of uncertainty, through the prayers that this is all a nightmare from which she will soon wake, through her brain's inability to make sense of what is so painfully clear. "What have you done?"
she's just like the weather
can't hold her together
can't hold her together
