Sky Mesa muscle & water

<333

womanhood.
such a complicated thing, womanhood; to fall apart beneath the heel of man while he may chew the fat in silence and make you look as if you are unhinged.
to watch the undeserving, incompetent, inferior find a beautiful face to lay beside at night. to have gone through a world of pain that could only exist in his nightmares. to try again, to melt into liquid gold vulnerability before a pair of firestone eyes, and have it be spat back in your face — to climb to the top of the chain and realize that you are so, so very alone up there.
zaahira felt as if her very core had been ripped from her. the ember in her eyes was quelled, stomped to nothing but a glazed bitterness, and she watches as khusobek's revelation tumbles down upon him like a sack of bricks.
inji would be a radiant bride, she thought.
help me carry this back, please.

for the rest of the way to muat-riya, she would say nothing until she could drown herself in sour fruit and unfurl in the silent respite of a guest chamber.