i've aged a year this week

In her chest, Adhara's heart throbbed. It was fast, too fast. All she could hear was the rushing of blood in her hears, blotting out the still silence that had surrounded them both. There was so much of it, and yet, all she could do was stay calm. Deadly, deathly calm. Already she's on the defensive. Already she has to be, a stranger in a foreign world. A world that is far, far beyond her own. The world that had tried to chew her up and spit her out, and the one that she'd come out atop. This was something else.

While the man before her moves, so too, does Adhara. Her steps across the ground come with a catlike grace. Though he's a predator, she too, is a well balanced killing machine. Near instinct as she moves to circle in the opposite direction, never coming nearer or going farther. From somewhere far anbove, Adhara hears Huriya's cry. She's not on her own here, and for that, she's grateful. At least one ally in this world. From above, the vulture circles.

"The empire," Adhara lets go a sharp, humorless laugh. "The empire crumbled, returned to the sand years ago." Even still, it left a bad taste in her mouth. He speaks of his father... the markings of his father. His father... her father... Adhara's teeth glimmered in the fading sunlight with the subtle lift of her lip. "My father was a slave, wouldn't know him from a hole in the wall." Her mother, too, was a slave. She'd been disappointed of the girl, all teeth and elbows and fire. She'd still be disappointed. Adhara figured, with some amusement, that the woman would be rolling in her grave right about now.

"Your midst?" Her eyebrows rise. "What's to say that you're the main character of this story?" She doesn't give her name, she doesn't tell him who she is. In her line of work, it's dangerous to give your name to strangers... unless, of course, you're not going to leave any witnesses. Adhara is still too tired for that degree of gore, and likely too fatigued to show up well in a fight. Still, she continues on in time with the strange man before her, mirroring his movements, keeping enough space between them.

"Adhara"