THE CUSP OF INSANITY . Ninazu

[ninazu]

BURN
BRIGHT

Upon the peak, Ninazu steadied herself. She breathed and allowed the thoughts to twist and tangle as they pleased. Always, she came back to the breath, steadying her mind with the common denomination for life. No matter how many bodies Ninazu used and discarded, they all breathed. She breathed. When the emotions unreeled, the breath remained.

The fire, born of breath, remained. The mane fluxed on the exhale and expanded on the inhale. The warmth danced across her fur. Her eyes were closed, but Ninazu never felt so in tune with her flames as when she meditated. It had been the first power she truly mastered, and her preferred element in a fight. Lightning and earth would never guard her neck like fire.

The lioness opened her golden eyes, glancing over her shoulder. She was not surprised to see Argus; the dragon’s footsteps gave them away.

“I took your advice, sort of. I figured Caesar and the rest would be too lazy to come all the way up here,” Ninazu said, with a small chuckle. She flicked her wrist and gestured to the green below, jungle trees swaying in the wind split from a jagged blue wound in the earth. “But the view alone is worth the walk.”

Ninazu turned to face Argus fully, her head tilted to the right. Then to the left. For a time, Ninazu said nothing further. She glanced between many of the eyes lost in shadow under Argus’s mask. Ninazu rarely dealt with dragons, less so with dragons wearing facial coverings, but she sensed an offness. Perhaps those years honing her empathy as a survival tool caught the truth. Perhaps not.

“Forgive me for prying.” She grinned. The sentence’s tone lacked sincerity, sincerity the diction otherwise implied. “There’s this saying. Not all who wander are lost. But… do you know what you’re looking for?”

© MADI