Sky Mesa muscle & water

khusobek had been prepared to deal the killing blow, to bludgeon until — but zaahira was a khamsin that stole first its breath in sprays of blood, but all his anger; it was torn from him in such fervency that he all but saw its ruby anger crawling into her lungs, her nostrils.

and when she breathed out it was in such a conflagration that he knew Ra as he had never before, and fought a flinch — and she delivered into him a shrieking tale of woe in the voice of a wounded demigod, transformed by redgold wrath and the remembered blood of a dead lover.

and by the end, khusobek still quaked with his own rage but he knew it was only for hatshepsuun, and that awakened it would destroy him. and he saw the error in himself and the opportunity to right things, and how his cowardice had no mirror in zaahira.

how he understood at last the recognizable fire of a deep and long held hurt, and how she saw now fit to give him a way into his own salvation. even if it meant she would no longer have commiseration in pain.

it hurt to swallow.

khusobek squinted against the sun and probed the inside of his bleeding gumline with a rough tongue. 

he spat amber into the sand and felt salt falling against his lip. khusobek huffed out in the hoarse sound a man makes when he has been moved and looked away.

when the slanting ears lifted again and their panting had eased, he buried his hatred inside himself and rolled his shoulders. "well, jodai. i am going to drink you under the desert at my wedding."