All the kings horses

Torrents of birdsong invaded the brisk morning atmosphere, swimming through the woman’s mind as she drifted in and out of consciousness with each crash of waves upon the shore. Blinding rays of light punctured the thin blinds of skin shielding her weary eyes. She took a ragged breath, inhaling the salt infused air with a dry rasp of breath. It had been hours she had been stranded. Hours her calls had gone unheard against the unchanging drone of the rolling tides. Hours she had waited for the icy kiss of death to snatch her away. Lilah stretched and groaned, yelling a final string of desperate curses into the air before she had all together given up.

Heavy lids dropped over her eyes as she took a slow breath, almost accepting her pathetic fate until her ears swiveled on instinct. Rotating in the socket to capture the sounds of sand crunched under weight, then clattering against itself as it was whisked upwards. Her gaze rolled to the side, half-lidded as she despairingly surveyed the horizon.

A man had already come dangerously close to her. His muzzle was wrinkled in a rather daunting manner, but there was something else about him. Something she could not quite place in her incapacitated state. Something her mind had forced her to forget. “Tell me everything you know and maybe I'll help you get down," That voice cut through her like a knife. A searing hot knife that had been dipped in oil before it was plunged into her skin. Realization had befallen her. This was a guard, and she was in deep shit.

She snapped her jaws like a fervent hound after a hare, lapping at the saliva that cascaded off savage jaws. Her lips quivered with equal amounts of disbelief and rage. Swimming with a million pounds of pressure from the blood that had pooled into her skull. “You…” Her words were strained, the syllables staggered with the extra effort to speak against the burn lingering down her throat. “..Bastard..” The words were spat with indignation and defiance. Her body now imbued with a renewed vigor, her cold silver eyes snapped open wide. Flailing and twisting, she kicked wildly against her restraints to no avail. “You.. sick, …perverted—” She suddenly dropped like a sack full of bricks. Lilah landed against the sandy ground without warning, a choke and a gasp forced outwards from her chest as the wind was stolen from her lungs. She gasped and writhed for a moment, but at least now he had none of the presiding leverage.

Sobriety began to stroke her spine with its cool touch. Finally she had righted herself, her head resting above her shoulders where it belonged. Lilah stared at him, emotionless eyes cold and unblinking. She wore an expectant mask, her slender feminine features bearing nothing but pure impudence. Beneath her delicately thin surface however, panic lurched within her stomach. If she had returned to the olde kingdom, or rather had been forcibly dragged back kicking and screaming, she would undoubtedly be executed for her crimes against the king. She spared a glance across her shoulder, her gaze strolling laterally along the coastline. He was alone. No ship. No comrades. No way to bring her back.

There was an uncertainty in his eyes, some strange suggestion that he hadn’t entirely convinced himself of what he was doing. Lilah, being the woman that she was forced a sneer onto her face. She hadn’t known what was stopping him from tying her up again and hoisting her over his shoulder to her ultimate demise, but she had settled on two distinct possibilities. If he had been second guessing the kings rule, now that he had arrived in a strange land and there were no witnesses to his insubordination, he could reinvent himself. Or perhaps he was just entirely out of good ideas without supplies or allies and didn’t know how to get shit done now that he was on his own. She had never considered the possibility of amnesia due to concussion, and never thought to risk applying the tactics that would give her the upper hand. Not yet anyway. “Well? Do your job, Guard.” She growled the words. “What are you even being paid for?”