yesterday's war

Theme warning for implied substance abuse, domestic violence and abortion.

~

The war was over. 

Blood gushed from her body, streaming down the cobblestone cracks like slender crimson rivers. Her knees had been ripped open when they shoved her down, her back reduced to ribbons from the whips, her hands burnt and bound behind her back. 

The smell of ash and soot littered the air, charred bodies, decaying corpses, flyaway sparks choking her airways. Men grunted as they worked to shift dragon and human limbs alike. Feet, legs, heads with maws wrenched open. Wings sliced open to tear out bones to be sold and bartered off like sheep's wool. 

“You had this coming.” 

She lifted her head, blinking away the tears that blurred her vision as he crouched before her. Even now, he was taller, bigger, better than her. His blue eyes searching her face made her heart race, as he lifted a hand to wipe away the blood, doing nothing beyond smearing it. 

“I told you not to do it.” 

She flinched as bones clattered to the ground somewhere in the distance, men yelling. She was trembling from fear, rage, withdrawal, the cold that leached from every surface, seeped into every sense in her body. 

The whole courtyard was stone, grey and lifeless, smudged by dark piles of ash, charred corpses. 

The fire that normally warmed her, wrapped itself around her heart, her hands, stoked her rage and passion. It’s red, beating core was gone, leaving only cinders that she’d long coughed up with her last meal. 

When had that been? 

She shouldn’t be this cold.

“You knew it was a trap… your ego…” 

His voice was fading, someone was laughing. Laughing as they tore apart her soldiers, brutalising their bodies till even the gods, their own mothers wouldn’t know them. 

Her friends. 

Her family. 

Her elders and brothers and sisters and cousins and lovers. 

She had done this hadn’t she? 

A dark shadow snagged in the corner of her eye and she whipped her head around and she whipped her head around, whole body nearly giving out at the movement, all for the barest glimpse of cerulean blue. A man had wrenched the smallest tailfins from the rest of the body, holding it out at his sides, mocking them, trying to be them. 

She let out a hollow scream, but it was just that, silent. 

Could she still speak? What would it matter if she could? She’d been shouting, but couldn’t remember stopping. Maybe they’d tired of her shouts and wrenched her ability to speak from her. They’d done so much worse, what was this? 

“It's like you wanted this to happen,” he said, his voice full of pity, regret. 

No she hadn't. She’d wanted an end to all of this, avoid it all, and grant them peace. 

She’d wanted the young ones to learn to fly in a place other than a thin canyon that cramped their wings, crippling many. She’d wanted to taste the skies, the wind whistling through her wings, the trees bowing as she lorded above them. 

They could have buried their dead properly, on rolling hillsides, trenches dug by claws in moonlight, not this desecrating, humiliating, humanisation.

Maybe she ought to have seen it for the inevitable fate it was. 

Men won. They might have been creatures of myth, their hearts mined from the sun, bodies formed in lost caves of pirate treasure, gleaming jewel tones in dull shadows, sparkling in sparse moonlight.

But these were men. History bowed to them as eternal conquerors, victors to the bitter end, Death’s last surviving servant.

“The last dragon sentinel.” He huffed a laugh. “I didn’t know what I was thinking - you were never going to be happy scraping to the whims of others. You couldn’t be chained, or told what to do. You were never going to give me what I wanted.” He paused, wiping away the tears that had begun to fall again on her face, and she could have sworn silver lined his brilliant blue eyes. His face was so perfect, wrong. If she’d been born in the place between light and dark, he’d been sculpted by the gods of the earth. His beautiful dark skin was unmarred, a mirror in the twin dimples that flashed in his cheeks when he laughed, but there was an angry scar down his jaw. 

When had he gotten that? Why hadn’t she been there? Had she been there? Had she done it? 

He swallowed, his throat bobbing. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper, a plea. A prayer, he’d once told her. 

She had been the gods answers to his prayers, his dearest, most desperate quest. His equal, his heart, his soul. “Where did I fit into that dream?” 

She didn’t know. All she knew was that she’d needed him. His humanity had been grounding, her anchor against her high. 

“Do you remember how we met?” 

She couldn’t forget. She’d flown too low, too lost in her thoughts, scraping her belly, a child's mistake. 

She’d half crashed into a narrow clearing, shifting with a roar of agonizing pain, her body taking in the depth of her wounds, so much worse in her tender, fragile, human body. And there, a young boy soldier, pressed into the crook of a tree, hiding from the inevitable wrath of a roaring, vulnerable dragon. Yet, he’d thrown his prejudice aside, slowly creeping to her, murmuring pretty words, soothing her, carried her to a cabin, feeding and healing her tenderly. 

They’d been no more than a pair of children - wary but curious. As the days had bled past, the tone had begun to shift to something darker. Sultry and rich. His words dripped with ichor, of crumpled bedsheets, dark alcoves in ballrooms and heady summer wines. 

He’d laughed the first time they’d kissed, nervously, a boyish quirk she’d wanted to horde. 

She’d bit her lip and laughed too. 

It had been infectious, a poison known too late. 

He’d told her of his dreams of knighthood, chivalric deeds and gilded armour and kings applause under thatched roofs. 

She’d braided his hair as they’d sat by the lake, recounting her childhood of ever-burning campfires, skies that stretched to a thousand tomorrows, washed in pinks, blues, oranges and greys.

They’d made love under star speckled skies and wrapped in blankets they could get tangled in. 

She’d tucked her legs under her, her dresses wet from the damp grass as the seasons changed ad she’d sat there, kneeling to the sky. 

She’d tucked away her wings, her hopes, became the pretty human lover, the perfect maiden that the men in taverns talked about. She’d swallowed his every desire and drowned in her own, silently fighting wars in her head he’d never hear or see, but unable to walk away. 

Nights and days passed with ivory yesterdays of legends alive. Dragonfire and beating wings and childish freedoms. 

An ebony tomorrow of love and stories. Ceremonial drums and dances by flickering candlelight and a piggish-looking king who wore a blunt crown and barked demands. 

He’d won his glory, his victor and valour from a king with a sneer.

He'd been loud and rough, tasting of opiates, reeking of smoke, and trailing blood in the sheets.

A month trickled past, and her side of the bed was white.

The powders had been rotten in her mouth, dry on her tongue, but she’d ingested the tea the way he’d drunk his ale, until she’d bled too much, too painfully, until it was right. Until she was lost.

He’d held her, rocked her body against his, soothing her as he might have done their not-child, until she could have sworn he was crying, praying again. 

“What changed?”

Nothing. Everything. 

He’d been away. 

And they’d found her, wrapping her in embraces, laughing and crying, time fading away. 

They’d begged her to come back, and she’d agreed, yearning to chase the wind one last time as he did, chasing glory and praise for his king with the clammy skin and slimy smile. 

Her home was ghosts and ashes, mourning a dark future they were teetering too close to. 

The men on the other side of the mountain had been crawling closer, traders that had once gotten through the pass peacefully were now flanked by soldiers, their actions provoked by nothing but the fear that she felt in the taverns from the people, entrapped by stories. 

She’d let herself be lost in a haze of other’s emotions, damned by withdrawal, and pining for relief. 

She’d craved something of her own, would don her claws one last time, for however long it would matter, something she could say was hers beyond the ring on her finger. 

It should have changed something. 

It had, she supposed, unable to tear her eyes away from the workers building a throne of gleaming bones as she knelt.

“I thought you loved me. But you didn’t, did you?” 

She had. 

“You never did. You loved the ideas I gave you, the passion you didn’t have enough courage to have yourself.” 

She wasn’t sure. It had been so addicting, his voice, his body, that golden tomorrow that she’d ripped from beneath both of them. 

Somewhere, in the dark recess of her mind, she knew the feeling was mutual. 

He’d been pulled just as far beneath her lure. He’d murmured as much into her hair in those lazy hours of blurred visions and sweaty skin, when faeries took away man's ability to lie. It had been love. 

~

She was kneeling beneath him, molten gold eyes swimming in silver as she looked up at him. Her face was swollen, and blood was still pouring from her various wounds. Her dark hair that he’d knotted with his fingers was unbound, her face unmasked. 

He’d been chasing an addiction he didn’t know he’d developed from the moment he’d met her, drowning in her gaze, getting drunk on her laugh and high on her mouth, body. It had felt so good. 

But now the war was over and no one wanted to see a knight drunk on dreams. 

He’d be haunted to his dying day in every crackle of flame, laughter etched from shadows would ring of her ghost. 

Fumbling for his flask, he knocked back the dregs, wishing for something stronger but out of the corner of his eye, the King shook his head slightly. Slowly, he put the flask back, stepped away. 

He was a soldier and tonight, he was sober.