Serpent Lake Eye, tooth, claw, death

For days Safiya had fought with Osiris God of death to release her. To not weigh her heart yet. For she knew the dark way it held itself she would not pass. Teeth and claws flashing in the dark. Pain and suffering body sundered. But she fought. Hells teeth and wrath were what she was made up of at the moment.

And then she had fought to strengthen her legs. But every moment she spent here. Was one less moment she was looking for Machiavelli. She would not let him out there all alone. Her revenge could become second as long as his life was first. 

She snuck away from her handlers as moonlight splashed along the Redstone. Pure adrenaline keeping her going. Until she found herself at the lake and her body gave out. The medicine no longer in her system. The pain crippling. The ghost of an eye haunting her. She had tripped and fell her body covered in new scratch marks, new scrapes as she moved through the world with only one eye.

It was this singular eye she fixed back on the palace as she collapsed in the dirt by the shores of the lake. Beautiful with the stars above it. 

Just a minute. She needed just a minute to rally and return. Despite that it made her ill.

 She wanted to save him. Machi needed her.

his muscles ache as he pushes out of the shale. it’s juárez; he’s worried something has gotten the jaguar by its tail. besides, he needs the exercise. he’s lost condition these recent weeks, playing conservative with the injuries khusobek felt fit to give him. 

a shape collapsing in the brush ahead informs him he’s not alone. he moves carefully, his one good eye narrowed in a squint. 

saff-iya, he gasps, tensing then. waiting for her retinue. but they are alone, just the two of them and their shadows cast by the moon. 

why is she out here?

A sound and her ears stand straight up. Of all the rotten luck. She didn't think they'd come near Akashingo. And yet the scent that met her struck her in red hot rage. But she knew now was not the time to fight.

She dug as deeply as she could for all the will she could muster and stood on shaking limbs. Exhausted, Wounded. But she stood and curled her mouth in a snarl. One sea green eye fixed on Soto. The other empty and sundered. Herbs and fur still pressed to it.

Soto.

what did he expect? to be greeted like an old friend?

stupid. her one remaining eye was burning with hate. soto’s heart sank, and he recoiled like a snake struck by a spade. 

he had no words for what had been done to her. by niño, his brother in arms. and now he’s guilty for the singular crime he’d never dream of committing, by pure association. 

all because at the end of the day a girl is just a girl. and a man is just a man. but the cartel is the all seeing all consuming machine, that grinds each of their bodies to gristle for its own ends. man, girl, willing or not — it did not matter to the great machine that stockpiled bodies like gunpowder. 

and the cartel will always stand. he knows this in his blood. he knows that betrayal is only skin deep; that this girl and other girls deserved better. 

his gaze rests pointedly on the hole in safiya’s face, but he says nothing.

There was a war going on deep with in her. A want to hate him, but he had nothing to do with this. We'll he did, but it had not been his paw and claw that had ripped the orb of sea green from her head. He had not abused her while the hateful man brought her to her father. He had never raised a paw in violence against her.

So despite it all. Despite the hateful fury that raged like hot fire in her chest. Her eye softened. Her body loosened and the snarl fell.

 But if she had known of the atrocities this man committed. And she knew he was not a kind man now. If he held sway with the man Nino he was not good. And he was lost, but he had been her friend once at least. 

She motioned to her eye with a sardonic smile. No Bonita now.

Then her legs gave out. And she fell forward with a yelp. And lay for a second unable to make her limbs work. And she hated it.

he struggles to make sense of the many emotions comprising the fabric of her face; but it’s the slumped shoulders, the softening of that beautiful remaining eye. 

a smile buds across his features as her little joke breaks the tension between them. he’s relieved. by impulse he traces his own ruined eye to show they were a matching pair. muy bonita. comes his soft correction, broken then by safiya’s sudden movement forward. 

safiya? he reaches for her, hauling her upright and setting her there gently as if she were his own daughter. ¿qué te pasa?

Safiya knew she should run the other way as fast as she could possibly do it. B3cause this story here. It only ended one way. Bloody and broken. Whether he took her father or she took his precious Nino or both. 

But.

1. She couldn't have moved if she tried all range of motion down for the count. 2. She still could not reconcile the gentle beast with her and the cold blooded one with her family. 3. It hurt.

She whimpered at his touch. A small pant. No. Broken.

 She motioned towards her throat the cracked scabbed wound. Her chest bruised beneath the fur. All the other pieces that were sore and busted. She had fought hard. As hard as she could and it showed even healing.

Hurting. She fought to find the words. There had been very few she had picked up but she knew bastards name. Nino. Lucho

it broke soto to see his warrior-pearl reduced to this; he blamed her father more than niño, who had only acted to save his country.

the irony they both paid an eye for it was not lost on soto.

he dusts the dirt from her pelt and winces to see her flinch. mi perla, he starts, brow furrowing as she points to her throat and says a jumble of words he only partly understands.

she must go home. it is not safe here. she is not safe — and he is not her safety. his heart stings to know this, to breathe life into such an ugly truth — but he is the black rot to sully her flower, and the ultimate reason one glossy, sea-green eye lies withering in the dirt.

vete a casa ahora. soto urges, placing a paw upon her shoulder to gently guide her. he motions to the red keep in the distance, where her monster father surely must now be noticing his daughter’s absence. vamos. his voice nearly breaks, but he disguises the thorning of his throat by looking coldly towards the red sands that call safiya home.

Safiya would get better and she'd be coming for Nino. She wondered if Soto knew that. If he would turn his teeth against her when she came for his comrade in arms.

 Would he choose the life had always known, would he choose her or would he stand between and let them fight until one lay dead. It was a horrifying thought and one she knew could be a reality. And she wondered if he was ready for it.

Mi Perla, she still had no idea what that meant. But she knew she would lose that name someday. This was probably a hard lesson. But she had hoped she could change em. But wasn't that the downfall of all women. They thought they could change them. And she was as of yet a girl but had learned a woman's lesson.

Safiya had never touched this wolf. But she did this time. Without an ounce of fear she pressed her head into his chest. A wolfish hug. Because she knew. Gods she knew. They'd be on separate sides next time. So for now.

soto knows the answer to safiya's somber question, and he keeps such matters close to his darkly gurgling heart.

he expects her to fight back, or say no - at least show some spitfire in those sea-glass eyes.

instead she lowers her head to him and the embrace is so tender it nearly breaks his composure.

his eyes close, jaws clench. a shudder rends down his spine as he feels the heat of her forehead, the shared space hot with the pounding of both their blood.

the moment is bitterly short and he knows when they separate they will be permanently different. two incompatible atoms divided by a warring faction they cannot overcome.

adios. a crack in his voice like a fissure through sandstone. the whole construct is in danger of falling down.

and to think all of this because of the selfish stupidity of a single man. soto had many reasons to put a man under, but never one so profound as this.

and now his desert pearl -- his sweet summer rain -- is disfigured and hurting. he could fucking kill khusobek.

Safiya didn't know what to say or do. She was in the middle of a war as old as time. A father thinking he knew best and sometimes he did. In this case probably. But again every dark man has an angel he sullies. Perhaps she was one.

Safiya would have said no, she would have fought. But the pain currently laying torment to her eye was killing her softly.

The world was full of what if questions and here was one now. What if. 

She turned singular sea eye to his face and traced over it. Memorizing. Maybe someday she'd see him again in the forest where it was quiet and no one could question their, whatever this was. Maybe. 

Or maybe she'd go in the ground because if war was called. Safiya was a Mazoi and she went where King and country bid.

A small smile. Impish. A small inkling of an ember in that single eye. The fearlessness with which she carried herself. A small toss of her head. It hurt like hell, but so worth it. 

Adios por ahora.

She didn't know a lot of the language he spoke, but she had begun to learn.

A lean forward a lick to the side of his face where the empty eye lay. Muy bonita

once again safiya surprises him.

back home they’d call girls of her stock acalorada; but there is an older word, older than living memory, that defines her better: bría.

so young to be so passionate.

her expression shifts. soto’s gaze lifts in surprise first, then indulgent satisfaction; he knows that impish look well.

it looks good on her. he likes it and her tongue-in-cheek banter.

safiya speaks his language. he finds it both exotic and reassuring.

him, pretty? he might have blushed years ago; now he only dons a rueful smile. vaya con dios, mi perla. soto murmurs reluctantly, his skin burning where her tongue pressed to his cheek long after he mournfully watched her solitary march home.