"I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps."
She did not make it to the lake the morning after she sailed along the sea inside her bones and inside Eik's bones.
The next morning rose, pinks and pastels, and it was the loveliest morning this part of Novus has ever seen. Every nocturnal horse in her court was happy to crawl from their beds, blink back the crust of their eyes, look at the sky and whisper, never has there been a morning that had more promise. That morning there was no denying that all the early hours felt like gold-dust on the skin. Some even whispered that time stumbled over his breaths that morning.
But Isra was not at the lake that morning either, and she saw nothing of the hopeful dawn and the way that her court of dreamers loved it so.
It's not until the third dawn that she manages to make her way towards the lake. She has no trail to leave this time and the one she left before has long since withered and died. Only her hoof prints lead the way and they drag though the dirt and muck until there are lines between each of them from the tips of her hooves. And even then there are hundreds of other marks in the spring mud and her own look no different than the rest.
Isra hopes that Eik will still find her. It's a wild, rabid sort of hope (the kind that burns and smolders and consumes).
By now there are tents flapping in the dawn wind and horses gathering at the pathway that splits the lake. Each of their steps rings like a metronome and pushes her onward to the dark sanctuary of a willow tree far from the water's edge. No one notices the queen slink like a shadow between them and no one notices the blood crusted on the fragile curve of her throat. Isra blinks, trembles, and thinks that it's better this way, better that they are all free to fearlessly enjoy the beauty of the second most lovely dawn.
For now they don't need to know that a monster walks among them and their own queen is is so very afraid (deep inside where she will never let them see).
When she walks between the branches and silken leaves of the willow each of them lingers on her flesh like a kiss. The hollow pit of her magic fills just a little, summoned up from the dark of her by the way the willow seems to want something. To dream, she thinks, it wants to dream as I do.
So she curls down into the soft, muddy dirt and listens to the metronome of horse hooves on wood and gold. Each step has her eyelids getting heavier, each bubble of laughter makes her lungs feel heavy and her heart weary. On and on it goes-- laughter, ringing hooves, laughter.
And it's not until Isra surrenders to her dreaming that her magic crawls out from her skin and travels like an army of caterpillars up the bark of the tree. Each satin, delicate leaf turns to glass and each leaf changes to a different color. Up, up, up the magic travels until it's not a willow tree that hides her from view but a church of light and glass, wood and color.
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