'beautiful and full of monsters'
The day rises around them, time and smoke and dreams flitting by them like seeds of dandelions with each time Moira speaks a word and turns it to wind. Parts of Isra sink with the arc of the light as the pillows and the story tuck her into the darkness of some half-awareness. She tucks her nose to Moira and lets all the parts of her that are not trapped between the bones of a unicorn just float away.
Her bones are clouds, her eyes bits of star-light above an endless and the dark canopy of a forest that looks as plush as a pillow. She is a mountain watching a war spark and smolder while her lips of stone sob rivers of snow and ice. Isra with her eyes closed sighs for the way her bones feel like wind and her flesh like feathers as she floats away a little further.
Before them the fire sputters as if a great breeze reached between the walls and whispered to the flames, grow, grow, grow.
Isra is there in the hallway, dancing between the mirrors while her hair floats like vines of ivy in a storm around her. You are more beautiful than them all, she wants to say, paint out the words with her dreams upon the soft down of Moira's feathers. Part of her though, wants to say the words to convince herself that she's not jealous of a world of mirrors painted with beauty instead of blood. But the story continues and she presses her eyes tight enough to see white and feel pain and lets her mind run wild once more.
When Moira pauses and her breath flutters like petals in her throat Isra touches her nose to the other mare's throat and hums. She hums a song of the slaves, soft and sad. The way her lips vibrate make it seems that if she let it the song would grow and swallow a world. Isra swallows it though, devours the song when the story continues.
This is not a story of slaves, but starlight and a world not devoured by the sea.
Her lips seem sweet when she smiles and thinks of pastries and her teeth sting when she thinks of wine. But her belly feels nothing for it remembers only plain grain and mash. To her eating is only for surviving, never for enjoyment. And part of her remembers stealing an apple just so that she didn't dissolve down into cobwebs and grave-dirt.
Moira's words fade away as they tuck each other close. Isra swallows her next breath and begs her heat to slow and restart so that even her insides are a reflection of this moment, this tangle of them and pillow and words. “Perhaps someday you will paint your world for me.” Her voice flutters against Moira and it feels like a kiss of a stardust on her lips when she presses them back to the other mare's throat.
This is all Isra says, for a story-teller can always tell when a tale hasn't taken everything yet.
And stories always take everything.
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