Posted by: August - 10-24-2020, 11:25 PM - Forum: Archives
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august
—
« that boy went stone-cold crazy »
I
t is spring and the jasmine is in full bloom, tangled up the walls, thick along the sides of the streets. Its scent mixes with the salt tang of the sea and the faint woodsmoke in Denocte’s own proprietary perfume. And as August climbs the steps to the castle, he wonders just how close he’s come, in the last year, to never smelling it again.
All of those instances are his own doing, of course. And had he not had them - well, he might be nearer yet the grave. And so he can’t be sorry, can’t be shameful, as he reaches the wide double doors, relieved to not be limping.
Once he’d known the corridors and servants’ quarters of the castle as well as he later knew the Scarab. But he hasn’t been here since he was a boy and his mother a maid. And anyway, there is only one place he needs to go - straight forward, to the throne room, where Denocte’s sovereign is expecting him.
When he stands before her, guards flanking the room and midday sunlight illuminating dust motes before the high windows, he feels a different kind of calm than the one before a battle. “My queen,” he says, and blows out a breath. “Thank you for agreeing to this audience.” His silver eyes flick up, and when they find her, it is to remember the last time he saw her - not a queen on a throne, but a regent in the marketplace, amid the memorial candles, a hundred little flames for souls known and unknown. His gaze drops again, to the polished floor, embossed with symbols of moons and stars.
“I have spent most of my life in service to others - though the last year of it has only been in service to myself.” His mouth twists, a dozen memories surfacing like dead wood in the current - himself on a ship, in the middle of a fighting-pit, in the middle of Solterra’s royal gardens, in the mountains surrounded by snow and blood. Always with the taste of copper in his mouth, always ready to fight, always feeling a single slip away from dying. He blinks and inhales - jasmine, woodsmoke, the sea. “I find that I am happiest when I serve something greater. And I have always loved Denocte, as my parents did, and theirs before them.”
At last he lifts his gaze again to hers, and holds it steadily, the way he would test a new blade. He swallows, draws himself up, and banishes Aghavni’s judgmental expression from his mind. “Queen Antiope, it would be my honor to serve as a Champion for you and Denocte. Or as her Warden. I think that you will find my swordsmanship up to the task.”
—
« “Then he is a monster!" the Prince crowed, "and I must slay him at once. The Formula works!" »
A
ugust has never been so far from home.
It took him the better part of a week to reach Delumine, traveling in a caravan with others from the Night Court. After spending the better part of the winter recuperating in a cellar (really more of a cavern, but August still held too much of a grudge to think of it with even that much generosity), it felt good to be in the fresh air, out of the city. Though he’d been at thing of buildings and comforts all his life, there was something about bedding down in the new spring grass beneath the clear stars, something about walking and grazing through dew-silver meadows, that made him think during the trip that they’d gotten it wrong, coming indoors.
But then he reached the outskirts of Delumine, and bought an ale in an old stone pub, and chalked those thoughts up to open-air fancy.
Tonight, the first of the festival, he’s spent mostly observing. Near the towering pines he let some children paint his coat in dark green and rust-colored whorls, patterns he can’t quite decipher. He’d overheard someone explain that the festival was for fertility, but he pretended not to have heard. He had, however, allowed a pretty sorrel mare to place a crown of forsythia blooms around his head, like a halo, though the vivid yellow clashed with his more subdued gold.
So he feels quite festive, as he wanders over to the fires. The horses tending them are just beginning to add the colored powers, and the familiar oranges flare blue and green and purple; for a moment he watches, mesmerized, before walking on.
When he sees Morrighan, unmistakable despite the wash of unnatural green light over her from the bewitched fire, August considers turning around. Slipping away into the jovial crowd, the crackle of wood and filter of smoke. But he has been a glutton for punishment for a while, now, and mentally steeling himself he strolls over to her, casting a quick glance around the Regent to be sure she didn’t already have her own particular brand of flame lit.
“You must feel at home here, Regent,” he says lightly, and indicates the bonfires all around them.
I think I might be scared of the world and the way it makes you feel afraid and how it gets in the way
There are bodies everywhere, brushing up against me, rushing past me. I have lost mom somewhere, in the crowd, and though Diana is here somewhere I have no idea where. We came to look for her and, now, it seems as though I am the lost one. I pick my way across the meadow, in-between the huge bonfires, my oversized double-pair of wings all but locked to my sides.
If Diana were here, she would probably be dancing, and running, like the other kids. Like the adults who are leaping over the fires. I wonder if she would be feeling my uncertainty or my fear, which I’m pretty sure is plain in my golden eyes—though they are reflecting the mesmerizing, multi-colored flames. I begin to recite the chemicals and compounds I know are making the colors as I walk.
Phosphorus makes blue-green, calcium makes orange, sodium makes yellow, potassium makes purple...
It calms me. I don’t realize that I’m whispering the words repeatedly under my breath like a mantra, my heart is so loud in my ears; my apprehension is so loud in my ears. The meadow is huge; it seems to stretch on forever, bonfires as far as the eye can see. I realize that I am never going to find my sister, let alone mom again. I should have stayed home.
The desert I know. The desert I understand.
The things I do not know, these places that are unfamiliar, are dangerous. So I creep, I tiptoe. I am cautious around every body, every flame. My tail practically drags across the ground, like an uncertain dog. Diana would liken me to Casper, probably. She often says he is too afraid of everything. I am braver with her next to me.
My pulse is racing. My ears are ringing with the sounds of laughter and conversations I can’t make out. My chest is too-tight and I hitch in a hard to take breath. I don’t stop whispering, because if I stop whispering I might get lost completely. “Phosphorus makes blue-green, calcium makes orange, sodium…”
my lovely Dusk citizens, welcome to Terrastella's spring event, organized by the ever-wonderful Sam (& Elena IC)! as always, everyone from every court is welcome to attend. this tulip festival is a celebration of all spring's gifts--beautifully bright flowers, longer days of sunshine, and the "rebirth" of a new year. please feel free to DM me with any questions <3
flower picking - susurro fields
"the earth laughs in flowers."
One day there is nothing but eternal snow, and the next day the land erupts with flowers. They sway and flow in the new spring breeze. You know you are close because you can smell them, the sweet scent that calls to you. You pick them for your mother, your father, your lover, your child, your friend. Maybe even for your enemy.
You grab a basket. The weaving is recognizably Terrastellan, carefully done with branches of wysteria. You pick, you smell, you arrange, and you laze in the new spring sun. You try to put a flower in your companion’s hair and they gently push away your efforts, so you tuck it behind your own ear instead. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” you ask, but you know there is no answer to give that is not already known.
sightseeing - dusk court
"never judge a tulip for not being a rose."
“Let’s go to the tower! I bet the view is amazing from up there.”
You race up the stairs as if they were going to carry you to heaven. You reach the top, breathless, and peer out across the grassy lands of Terrastella, and there, like a blanket of beauty, you see the flowers sprawled out before you. Rows and rows and rows of flowers stretch out to the see. They have been planted in enchanted patterns, in rows, swirls, and carefully designed constellations that have bloomed in different colors. It truly is the best viewpoint in all the Court to behold the enchanting vision that is spring.
mint ‘tulip’ cocktails sunset cocial - praistigia cliffs
"to me, flowers are happiness."
You choose the glass with purple petals decorating it; not because purple is your favorite color, but because it matches the spring sunset as you stand on the cliff side. You huddle close to your companion. The air has grown a chill as compared to the weather this afternoon, it is your reminder that it is not yet summer and the battle against winter is not so easily won. The drink is smooth and sweet, a sugary syrup sticking the petals to its rim, mint leaves muddled against the ice in the bottom. Your companion has a drink rimmed with yellow petals. “Let me try yours,” you request; they oblige. You think you will probably choose that one next. After all, there was still a long way until dusk ends and the night begins.
in the garden tulips grow / straight and golden in a row / each one holds its empty cup / drinking rain and sunshine up.
Symbolic cleansing with fire and smoke, a type of communal ritual seen in many cultures around the world. It's one made popular by dramatic visuals and typically some sort of trial, either real or contrived, the completion of which brings a sense of worth and belonging, feelings often sorely missed after months trapped in winter's frigid isolation.
This one has the added gimmick of being labeled a race, though Willfur can see that the track is winding and often obscured by smog or clever nuances of light and color. He knows a riddle when he sees one, but far from discouraging the heavy mule (as an unadorned test of speed might), he's all the more intrigued for it and so, steps forward, though far off to one side of the main lineup.
Judging from the look of grim determination and deeply flexed joints of the tallest and lithest contestants, he imagines the majority will leap forward at breakneck speed as soon as the call is made and since he has no intention of slowing them down, politely leaves room for the stampede to pass. In contrast, he stands quiet, long ears tipping forward and back as he both listens for the start and peers into the haze of unknown ahead.
Spectators have gathered around the fringes, faces stretched tight with excitement, and the din of voices slowly quiets until he can hear a faint melody playing, inviting and disarming. He lets his mind wander with the gentle music, enjoying the pleasant warmth of the fires against his skin, seeping into muscle and bone, and the smoke bringing sweet scents of jasmine and honeysuckle and the dry, bright taste of wood burning to his nose and mouth, all of it made even sweeter by the acrid tang of anticipation building among the crowd.
Unperturbed, Willfur lets himself be lulled and if he's not left behind because of the lapse, he's at least left farther behind because of it. The sign is given, whatever it might have been, he misses it in his inattention, and the line of competitors surges forward, startling the mule and sending him off in a rushed trot, embarrassment and laughter grinning across his lips.
LIFE IS SHORT, though I keep this from my children. / Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine / in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, / a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways / I’ll keep from my children. / The world is at least / fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative / estimate, though I keep this from my children. / For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. / For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, / sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world / is at least half terrible, and for every kind / stranger, there is one who would break you, / though I keep this from my children. I am trying / to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, / walking you through a real shithole, chirps on / about good bones: This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.
☼
When her children are born, Seraphina is alone – even Ereshkigal is gone. She has no company but her own sobs and the sun and the walls of the Elatus and the midday heat. When her children are born, Seraphina finds herself crying for the first time in recent memory, in months or maybe years – she sobs and she sobs and she sobs, and she isn’t sure if it is because it hurts or if it is because she’s overwhelmed, because she doesn’t know what to do. Seraphina is alone, and then Seraphina is not alone in any way that matters; there are two of them, just as Ereshkigal had said there would be, and they are terrifyingly real. The girl is born first, and, at first, she is horrified – she might have screamed. She doesn’t remember. It wasn’t a scream of fright, but it was closer to a scream of agony, or a scream of grief, because the child looked like a statue, and she was so sure that she was dead before she saw the gentle rise and fall of her chest, before she opened the soft curve of her mouth and let out a mewling whine.
At least the boy is normal. At least the boy is normal.
She snaps at scavengers, ushers the two children in at her sides. That is how she makes it through the night. She barely remembers it. (She should probably remember every moment of it, but the image blurs in her mind, instead, unsteady with panic.) She only remembers that, at some point, she stared up at the awful, taunting, bone-white specter of the moon, gritted her jaw through the itching mass of tears that she’d shed for the entire evening (enough to make her mouth dry and her eyes hurt), and- she forced herself back together. Or back into a box. Back into those tight-woven white braids, back into some emulation of the collar that carved scars around her throat, back into the quiet confines of herself. She swallowed her own screams and her own sobs whole, and she swiped her tears from her eyes with the golden fabric of her scarf. It did not matter if she wanted to or not. It did not matter if it hurt; it did not matter if she wanted to wail that it wasn’t fair, or if she wanted help, or if she wanted a comforting word, or a touch, or anything, anything at all that would tell her that she was not all alone.
Here is the ugly truth of the matter: she was alone. She is alone. And it didn’t matter how she begged for some sort of salvation, like something out of a song - it would not come. She already knew that. When had her life ever worked out like a song, or a poem, or like any of those Solterran stories that she had memorized as a child-?
(When she tells them to her children by the fireside, she does not believe a word. She hopes that they do, though. She wants to believe that they can be different, even when she looks at her daughter’s marble-hewn skin and gilded veins, and she thinks that she has almost certainly been blessed with a terrible burden.)
She was alone. She was alone, and the two figures asleep at her side only had her to rely on - so she devoured her every ache and her every longing, every salt-water tear and taste of blood, and she told herself that she would not let them out again. She did not have that luxury. Not anymore - likely never again. There were other things to live for, and she had her back pressed to the wall.
She gritted her jaw, and she stared at the moon that had watched her lie bleeding out, and, when the scars on her cheek felt like they were burning, she thrust them aside and told them to stop begging for attention.
She had been saying the same thing to every itching ache and gaping longing since; and she had learned to turn them away at her door, like stray dogs wailing for food.
--
Ereshkigal is at the entryway of the cavern, which tells her that her wayward children have come home.
First there is the intrusion of a slender, black-and-white snout, which protrudes out of the dark cautiously, as though she thinks that this will be the time that she has snuck out unnoticed. This is followed by a long face with two eyes too big for her face, two ears like butterfly wings – and long, half-braided hair, mostly fallen from the careful constraints that she’d pulled it into this morning. (The girl had complained the entire time; she didn’t like the brush and insisted that it hurt. She told her that it would hurt less if she brushed her hair more often, especially while it was wet, and Diana simply stuck out her tongue.)
She steps in lightly, tossing a triumphant look over her shoulder at who Seraphina can only assume is Ambrose; it is quickly wiped off her face when, with a murmur of Alshamtueur, the cavern lights up, and she reveals herself, eyeing them from the opposite side of the makeshift room with displeasure written across her face. She lights one of the torches on the wall with the broad edge of the sword, then another, then another, never breaking eye contact with Diana – and then Ambrose, when he appears sheepishly from behind his sister.
She narrows her eyes at Diana’s forelegs – they’re skinned. (Almost absentmindedly, bandages begin to unravel from the shelf behind her, then unlabeled salves.) “What have I told you two,” she says, in a voice that isn’t quite cold and isn’t quite neutral, “about sneaking off?” Diana blinks at her, wide-eyed and doelike, and she lets a pitiful grin settle across her lips, looking over her shoulder at her twin. “Uhm,” the girl chirps out. “Not to do it? But Mamma-“ (She always calls her that, when she wants to get her way, because it’s more childlike than Mother.) “-it was a nice day, and the flowers are starting to bloom at the Oasis. We only went out to play.” A look of perfect innocence settles on her statuesque features. It doesn’t suit her face at all, and she can’t help but think that it is quietly heartbreaking.
She sighs, still unwinding the bandages, and gestures them both forward with a nod of her head, laying down in the back edge of the room, among blankets and cushions. Diana skips over to her side as though she is walking on air, grinning broadly, and promptly collapses at her side, laying her chin on Seraphina’s hip. “You should tell us a story,” she informs her, in a tone that tells her that she is insisting upon it, or else she’ll have to hunt her down in the middle of the night again. “A new one. I’m tired of Solterran history.” She makes a face, her nose scrunching up unhappily, and snuggles pointedly into her coat. (One wing protrudes at her side, stretching up and out in something like a suggested embrace – an implication, Seraphina supposes, that Ambrose should join her. She has always been a bit too good at getting her twin on her side, and she hasn’t, so far, been much good at being properly stern with both of them at once.)
She presses ointment onto the girl’s scraped skin, ignoring the way that she grimaces and whines and twitches against her legs, and she glances over at her son, checking his slender, smaller frame for any matching wounds. “What sort of story would you like to hear, Ambrose?”
He worries her sometimes. They both do – in different ways. He has always been quieter, and softer, and liable to be eaten alive by the likes of his twin. So she watches her younger child, giving a tilt of her muzzle to suggest that he should come closer and lay at her side with his sister, still wrapping bandages around her – small, superficial (but she’d prefer that she never had any at all) – wounds.
@Ambrose @Diana|| <3 || the entirety of "good bones" by maggie smith; title is from "polar bear express," keith ekiss Speech || Ereshkigal
SPINDLY FLOWERS AND WAIST-HIGH GRASS AND THE SHADOW OF CLOUDS ACROSS THAT BRIGHTNESS, SHIFTING, LIKE SO MANY SHIPS IN THE SKY- ☙❧
The night has grown late when I move towards the edges of the crowd, the taste of smoke and ash on my lips and a faint but persistent warmth lingering in my bones.
The one tragedy, I think, of the fires is that they block out the stars. Even if they weren’t so bright, the smoke – which is so colorful and lovely near the ground – left to trail up into the night sky has the effect of blocking out most any sign of what lies above, like cloud cover. The little, bright embers have to take the place of stars, orange-gold sparks drifting on the wind like sprites until they disappear or go out forever.
I wonder, as I drift through the smoky, dreamlike landscape, what it might be like to be one of those sparks.
The night has grown late when I move towards the edges of the crowd, but it has not begun to thin. I am in no real rush to reach the treeline, though it does beckon towards me with skeleton-touches, half-bare branches extended out as though they, in their slow, creeping way, would like to swallow all the rest of the landscape. I’ve never been a tree, so I don’t much know what it would feel like to be one, but I do know what trees have always felt like to me. Ancient, and persistent, and towering, quiet and slow conquerors.
We had our festivals around the trees, back home, because there was nothing else. There were trees upon trees upon trees, and they composed our sky; they composed our entire world, swept over it like the upper atmosphere, kept us tethered down like gravity. This festival is out in the field, mostly, which is probably wise. The trees here burn. At home, save for in moments of war and tragedy, our sovereigns would never allow such a thing to come to pass.
(It would be irresponsible to admit to it, but I am only half-searching for the heir in this crowd. Of course I thought that they might be here, drawn by the crowd and the festive allure just like me, but that was never really my ambition in coming here, and, besides, my sleepy eyes have long grown too tired to be much use in searching.)
The night has grown late when I move towards the edges of the crowd, but there are still those colorful paints and bright jewels, turned to reflect the firelight; and those are what I approach, a tired smile tugging at the edge of my lips, as I wonder if I can find someone to paint me again (if my encounter with the so-called prince at the other party was mere luck, or if there are really many eager artists in Novus), or if I can, this time, try at it myself.
AND THE TEN THOUSAND TRAVELERS / EATING BREAKFAST / GUARDING THE WORD INVISIBLE ☙❧
I missed the brunt of the festival in Terrastella, when I arrived in Novus. I only saw the tail end of it – a collection of bright, hazy lights, visible even from the shoreline. Still, that was enough to make me wonder, and my wonder had only grown with all of the things I’d seen that had followed. Cities, stained glass, landscapes I once thought unimaginable. There had been the party, of course, in Solterra, and that was nearly too glamorous for me to bear; but it was a party, and not a festival, and I’m still not entirely sure how I’d managed to creep into it. Festivals are different. They’re bigger, more open, and, perhaps more importantly, outdoors.
I think that’s half of what excites me so much. I’ve never seen a spring before, and, only a few months prior, I’d never seen a night – and now, as I make my way through the crowds, marveling at the colorful, sweet smoke (caught halfway between cedar and something else entirely) from the bonfires and the sparks that match my coat much as the men and woman who claim to cleanse your soul with eggs. It isn’t anything that I believe in – the priestesses would say that souls don’t work that way, that there is no such thing as one that is clean or dirty -, but I find it delightful regardless. I don’t know if it’s the novelty of it, or if it’s that I’ve learned something of this land and its customs. At any rate, it makes me grin.
(What I think that I love even more than the festival itself is the trees. The ones in my homeland were trapped in perpetual autumn – their leaves were always golden, or red, or orange, or mottled brown, like fire among their branches. The trees aren’t properly green yet, not like I’ve been told that they’ll be in time, but the pale green kiss of newborn buds occupies most of their branches, and some leaves have already unfurled in the beginning of proper green. For now, to my good-as-newborn eyes, that is more than enough, and I watch them like I watch the grass beginning to sprout from the dark caress of the earth, with a wonder that is, I imagine, more than appropriately childlike for my face.)
I’ve strayed close to the bonfires when I catch sight of the boy, a wisp of white and rocky blue-grey among the bright and colorful mass of the crowd. “Caspian?” I call out, half-greeting and half-question, slipping and shoving through the crowds as best I can to approach him, wide, friendly smile starting to stretch across my lips.
I wondered if I’d see him again, after he showed me so much of the sea – and I find myself more glad than I expected to see him here, a mottled sea-stone creature amidst the growth and the haze of smoke.
AS THOUGH SHE WERE SURPRISED, NOT THAT SHE HAD BEEN STRUCK BY AN ARROW, / BUT THAT IT WOULD HURT ☙❧
In my homeland, all things have a soul.
I don’t know if I believed it, before I died for the first time. Now, with the feather-light memory of dead bone carved into me permanently, I don’t think that I can forget it. Perhaps that is why it affects me so profoundly to step hoof onto the bridge. The moment that I do, I know, somewhere in my chest, that I am standing on bone, though I did not realize that the bridge was the curve of a ribcage the moment before – and, the moment that I know, I am suddenly unable to forget what it meant to be shaved down until I was nothing but bone, and, when bone, what it meant to be forgotten and to rot. The realization makes the air heavy. Heavy like the press of moss and soil, like the slither of a passing earthworm, like decay. I am only going down, and there is some great distance between myself and the roof of the cave.
I am not claustrophobic, but I feel – strange. Less like myself than like a sword, but not at all like the sharp edge. Only the carved hilt, maybe, or the blunt.
I press on, regardless.
What brought me here was mostly a whim. I think that I was looking for the mirrors – or, rather, what might be reflected in those mirrors, my faded half-memories made flesh and blood on the blurry canvas of their surface. The girl I’d met in the labyrinth of mirrors said that place was a graveyard, so I’d come back looking for graves, the engraving on tombstones I no longer remember how to find.
I didn’t find it. Instead, there was only the gaping mouth of the cave, which beckoned me down, down, down - and, although I knew it was foolish, I found myself doing just as it asked.
I might have turned back, when I felt bone, rather than polished gemstone, beneath my hooves. That would have been the more sensible thing to do. But when I found myself standing on the bridge, my eyes trained on the glimmering allure of the castle – and it was that glistening façade that suggested to me most of all that it was unspeakably dangerous or unspeakably awful, and that I should almost certainly turn back –, I found that I could not turn away. No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to pull back, I could only move forward.
I traced the curve of that gem-encrusted ribcage with the gentle reverence of the once-dead, and I dared not look down or think too deeply about what sort of creature might leave such a skeleton behind.
The city folds out in front of me, maze upon maze; from a distance, it reminds me incomprehensibly of what it is like to look at a rosebud unfurling.
I descend – ascend – into that labyrinth for some time.
--
I am staring at something that is nearly a work of art, nearly a statue, a ribcage unfurling to bone-bloom after wretched bone-bloom. It is at the centerpiece of a fountain run dry in the middle of an empty city square; it seems that it used to run, because there are the tell-tale marks of running water pale and blotched on the edges of the openings in the bone, but, for now, it is completely silent. I wonder how long it has been dry. (I wonder how long it has been here at all.) It looks – ancient, somehow. Long-abandoned, well-preserved, and ancient.
With no other obvious landmarks in sight, I edge closer to the fountain, my brows furrowing. As I draw closer and closer, something sticky-sweet, like fresh pollen, tickles my nose; and I eye those bone-flowers, not entirely sure what to make of them. They aren’t real. They’re carved. But they smell like flowers, not like rot and decay, not like the familiar must of bone- and I find myself wondering if they are carved at the core, if this isn’t some expression of a soul trapped beneath their white, time-pocked surface.
At any rate, I step back from them, nearly stumbling over the edge of the fountain in my hurry to draw away from the fountain, and the flowers.
I cannot say for sure if this place is all death – or if nothing within it is dead at all.
NOW, SMITTEN WITH THE CRISIS of a love who hates her own reflection, / my obsession won't rest.
In my dreams, my mother is braiding my hair and singing me a story about a girl who is cursed.
Mirrors are too scared to show her reflection. They always crack when she passes, a spiderweb of impact-wound arching away from the imprint of her face. When she drinks from a well, it goes dry in a week, and, when she plucks dates and sweet pears, the crops all fall fallow and worm-ridden in her wake. She travels from town to town with her family, trailed by swarms of locusts and sudden flash floods, and it’s a wonder that all of them survive her. It’s a wonder, probably, that anyone does.
Her father, who always loved her the least of any of his daughters because she was so troublesome, engages her to a desert rattlesnake, in spite of her protests, and it tries to devour her on their wedding night; but the girl peels off skin after skin after skin, scale after scale after scale, and, when she has pulled off every single one of the snake’s false skins, she reveals that the creature in snakeskin is no snake at all. He thrashes in her grasp, wild-eyed and miserable, desert wind in a cage, god of many faces – she holds him still as a hawk, and a gust of wind, and a thousand-eyed dragon, and a half-formed teryr, and a cactus mid-flower, and one of the waterfalls that feed into the Oasis. He bites her and bleeds her and nearly sneaks out of her grasp time and time again, but she holds him fast, and, for the briefest moment, when the two of them are almost the same – or as close as they can be to it -, she leans forward and kisses him. (Mother doesn’t say it, but, in my mind, she bites his lips when she does; what kind of cursed girl could do otherwise?) After that, he settles, tamed as much as any shape-shifting serpent can be, and she settles a bit, too, because a cursed creature like that would never much hate her for being cursed, too.
They’re still out there, somewhere. Mother says that he made her like him, when she died, and now they skip across the dunes as gusts of wind at night, that you can see them in every little thing lost to the sands; that every time a peach goes rotten before it’s due or you find the shards of a mirror half-buried in the dunes and the rains come a few weeks earlier than expected, it’s because they’re passing through.
(If it’s true, I might know it, but I’m not telling.)
I know my mother too well to think that she believes in things like a true love’s kiss or happy endings, or – if she does, she only believes in them for Ambrose and I, and, even then, only halfway, half-hearted. What I think that she is trying to impress is technically persistence.
(What I think that she is trying to impress is that even strange girls, half-cursed or god-touched, can find their way in the world, their own little enclave where they will no longer be strange or cursed at all.)
--
This place wants to hurt me.
If I stray too close to the fire, I know that it will bite my heels like a hungry jackal. If I stray too close to the trees, I know that their roots will find every way that they can to trip me, short of reaching up out of the ground to wrap my ankles and pull me down themselves. The air smells sweet, and I don’t know what to do with the crowds. All I know is that the pulse of the landscape, the multi-colored smoke, even the soft blades of grass pressed gentle and green to my heels – all of them want to make a skeleton of me.
I’ve strayed too far from home again. Mother won’t be happy, when she catches me.
There are more people here than I have ever seen before in my life. Veritable swarms of them, swaying in the field like a vast carpet of multicolored waves. I linger near their edges, cagey, my heart throbbing against the edges of my ribcage. I do not know what it means to feel like you are being stalked by anything; most desert-born girls know the familiar prickle on the back of their neck that tells them they have crept too close to a sandwyrm, or that a teryr is watching them from above, or they know that, when they hear the mourn-whisper sound of jackals in the distance at night, they are in an intimate danger. I’ve never felt anything quite like that. Still. If I had to compare it to anything, the feeling that creeps my spine as I skirt the edges of the crowd is something like that.
I don’t know what to make of anything here. Fire-races and newborn seeds, shed-stars with broken eggshells, paints and jewels of colors that are nearly impossible in a desert, ones I only learned by watching passing merchants from a distance, crouched like a ghost in the shade of rocky outcroppings. I want to look at everything, and I want to run from it. The sweet-smoke air – colder than I am accustomed to by measures - is catching in my lungs whenever I breathe it in.
I settle by the paints, finally, half-entranced by their bright coloration and all the people painting designs on each other – friends and lovers, perhaps even strangers. But I am not like them. I look painted already, or carved, a thing made of stone-
And if I were to settle my eyes closed, if I were to hold my breath and stay silent in the growing shadows of the treeline, if I were to be perfectly silent, I am sure that I could make myself an unfitting part of the landscape, rather than anything like a girl at all.
(But a statue wouldn’t keep looking hesitantly towards those forbidden jars of paint; a statue wouldn’t tilt her lips just so, and a statue’s eyes wouldn’t gleam with something that is half-longing and half-fear and very nearly envy.)
for anyone || <3 || atwood, "fox/fire song" "Speech!"
