Her arms burn as she swings her swords, blades cutting through the crowd like butter. There are people here she knew in another life, faces she has smiled at in the morning markets of Polis, hands lashing out where before they reached for her in worship. She will not think of the past now, not when Clarke’s life hangs in the balance and her own is already forfeit. Her battle is over and her duty to these people is done. Now, her duty is to the girl who holds her heart, the girl who eased her passing into this life with a soft kiss and tears she should have never had to shed. Her sword meets another victim, has crimson spraying from the wound to coat her face. Yu gonplei ste odon -- the words she repeats in her mind as each body meets the ground. God, let this buy her enough time. Let this be enough.
When she wakes, it’s to a room that’s too quiet, too still, too clean, too bright. The rush of battle seems like a distant dream that has her head thrumming slightly with the effort to connect it to reality. This is reality, is it not? This life, simple yet painless ; this bed she rests upon, the tidy, spacious apartment she calls her own, the cat resting by her feet and the living she makes to prove her worth, seeking justice for the people ; her people. She sits up in the bed and shakes herself from the dream, haunted by golden hair and ocean eyes and a desperate I love you that makes her heart lurch with both pain and elation somehow. But it was a dream. It means nothing. If the memory alone awakens some echo of longing in her chest, she’ll try to pay it no mind.
It’s later when she’s out in the city that her dream seems to haunt her the most. She catches gazes that feel so familiar yet so strange, feels her pulse throb in anticipation and panic when gold flashes in the corner of her eye. There’s a girl that has her steps faltering when they pass in the street, a girl with eyes like the sky and hair that glows in the sun, just like the girl in her dream -- and she flees.
@potentas / city of light au.