The market is strange to her, too loud and full of life, too bright with colors. She's too used to the darkness, to the silence broken up by nothing more than the ebb and flow of her cold, frozen breaths. Everything here to too alive for her, Isra of the sea-- the girl who did not want to live her life at all. 

Deep in her memories, locked away in a chest a certain blackness rattles and shakes. It wants her to recall, that something, to remember what life it was exactly that she didn't want to live. But she only remembers that brine sting of the sea in dreams and what came before that in flashes that are too quick to grasp. They flutter past her eyelids quick as dragonfly wings, shining in the way that blood shines under the moonlight. 

A horse yells to another, shrill and demanding, and she forgets what forgotten thing she was trying to remember in the first place. 

She digests the smell of this place, rank with sweat despite the coolness of the night. It's a heavy enough smell in her nose that she grinds her teeth together so that she might swallow the soft hint of jasmine and apples that hang like thin, fragile webs of mist in the air. It burns, this place and her eyes are white and wide with fright as she strays back, back, back to the shadows of the stone walls. There she tosses her horn into the blackness before her, tucked away behind the tents and lively horses, to see what monsters she might flesh out. 

Already she wants to run back to her corners of heavy dust and the thick silence that soothes her like a hot, summer sea. But her stomach rumbles again and her skin stings where it's pulled too taunt against her ribs and the jut of her hip bones. So on she goes, the past chasing her like a miasma nipping at her heels, on and on and on until there is a barrels of apples that has been left forgotten at the corner of a table. 

Quick as a snake she darts for the food, her stomach rumbling like a dragon underwater.  But as she moves from the shadows the moon glints on her horn until she sparkles like obsidian and the scales of her belly glitter like a starlight sea. 

Isra knows that too much of her is in the light now, it stings. 

And she can feel for the first time, like something that hasn't been forgotten. For the eyes on her (from where she cannot tell in the inferno of her fear) are white hot and her skin shivers like a million spiders are crawling all over her. She would rather be that tidal wave of memories locked away deep in the dark of her mind-- something left to fade away and die alone. 

She's too afraid too look, to seek out those burning, predator eyes. So she tries to grab an apple anyway (her hunger is too ravenous to be soothed with fear) before sinking back into the blessed and black shadows of the wall.  


* * * * *

down, down i'm still drowning

She's startled when the apple jerks away and to her the night seems suddenly old and thick. Her heart flutters and her blood rushes like wild water through her veins.  Run, her instincts shrill at her. Run, run, run. Quickly she steps back into the darkness and the eyes on her now feel like twin suns, burning into her flesh, scouring her skin with little marks of char and ash.

But then he talks and she focuses. The eyes are predator after all, male and fiery hot and her breath clogs in her lungs and her blood rushes violently. Deep down the blackness rattles in her mind, screaming a warning that she is too afraid to hear. His words are nothing, mere jumbles of sound paired with the gestures of his face. It's been so long since she's heard a voice so close, so different than that quiet muffled echoes of the sea.

“Don't” She panics when he moves closer and his flesh seems a little brighter the the sun in the moonlight. He's a snare, vibrant against the night and she thinks she might be nothing more than a plain, mouse ripe and weak for the hunt. Only when he doesn't move closer does she relax enough to breath and her lungs are frantic from panic and the night air burns and stings her throat like smoke.

Isra's gaze is intense and winter cold as she judges him. When he offers her the apple she's quick to take it , barely tasting the sweet pulp of it as she devours the first food she's had in days. Still she feels like a cornered beast, frantic and broken and unsure if she wants to just surrender to the danger of him. The sea had taken away her salvation and she's desperate to feel anything at all but anxious.

Perhaps that's why she follows him and forgets for a moment to step light enough to hush the jangle of rusted chain on her leg. It's loud in the quiet of the shadows and she looks at him to see the sound has given her away. She knows it's important, that chain about her leg, knows that no one should learn it's meaning. But she's forgotten the meaning herself and that makes her more afraid of her own skin that anything else.

“I am...” She pauses, gazing out into the nothing of the darkness. Who am I? She thinks she might have know at once point. She might have know what  purpose the words churning like squalls in her mind might have served. All she knows is that she is here, in this place and made of flesh and bone (although she wonders if he might see nothing more than some ghost of a horse, a reflection in a wave blurry and white with sea-foam).

The pauses draws out too long, brittle and broken up with the steady way she breathes in and out to focus herself. She looks down at her skin, watching the chain catch the moonlight. She follows the curve of her ribs to the dusting of scales on her belly, sea green and somehow terrifying to her. “I am Isra.” Her voice is uncertain, as if there is a silent wondering to her answer, as if she doesn't even know who she is.

What does he see, she queries to her self silently, when he looks at him. Am I flesh and bone, am I broken and bloody or am I nothing more than a mare given shape and form by the selfishness of a sea-god? The words jangle in the abyss of her, forming a story that she has forgotten how to form sounds with.

“Who are you and where am I to follow you?” Isra tries to make the question sound like a demand and fill her voice with a confidence she doesn't know if she ever knew. But her voice is nothing more than a whisper of surf in the night, dusted with the melancholy of falling stars that turn to dust and wishes as they enter the atmosphere.

Still, she follows him this night, giving up her fate once more to a man.


* * * * *

I have forgotten what I am to see

He is suddenly a ship in the harbor of her anxiety, a sun to guide her through the sea of flesh and voices that ring like death bells in her ears. The night market presses in at her and she skitters into him like a child, pressing closer to him as other bump and sway against the hollow girl. She thinks they must see only a shadow, a flash of darkness that blends into the bold outline of the shadow.

Let them forget me, she thinks, let their eyes wash over me like surf to the sand.

Isra is too frantic to notice the way that his shadow blends into her, to notice that she even leaves a shadow at all. All she can see is the brightness of him and everything else is a kaleidoscope of color and sound  that is too blinding for her to look at. And so she presses her nose to him, tastes the sting of something dangerous in the scent of his skin and continues onward to whatever place he has chosen to lead her.

“Acton.” She repeats his name idly, wondering why the way her lips fold around his name feels so strange and wonderful and terrifying all at once. Has she ever known a name, she wonders, like his. Has she known any names at all or have there ever been only the ghosts of memories to keep her company?

In the end she decides that it doesn't matter and she wanders off her in own mind to some strange world of beasts that have always known exactly what they are. Deep down, some part of her that remembers something other than fear trills in excitement that this is nothing more than some grand adventure she will tell for years and years to come.

It's too deep, that part of her that once resided inside golden, youthful skin and she can't dredge up more than a soft flutter of her heart.

When he stops it's sudden and she lurches into him, too light and fragile to make it feel like more than a nudge. Isra dances away, avoiding the way his eyes seem too heavy, too knowing when she braves a questioning, shy glance at him. Her chain rattles with the movement and flecks of rust fall like blood-diamond dust in the dull night light.

She doesn't let him know how hungry she is, how much she feels like she is dying, wasting away to become the ghost that she feels like. Something in her warns her about seeming so graceless and weak, as if he is some beast that will devour her if he knows that she's begging to finally reach some end. Instead she only whispers and leans a black leg back into the shadows, back to the place where his gaze won't seem so alive on her skin. “I don't know if there is anyone to look for me. If there is I have forgotten them.” Isra tumbles over the admission, glancing up at him in apology, thinking that it must be a strange thing for her not to know.  

“Should someone ask for me and perhaps find me you should forget me too. I would not endanger another.” She doesn't admit it, but there is a heaviness to gaze that says it must be a dangerous person to look for a mare who doesn't know her own skin. No kind horse would look for a ghost with the sea on her skin and an ocean of black where memories should be. Isra leans another leg into the blackness at her back, giving him a chance to change his mind and melt back into the currents of bodies all around him.

She's half gone, half leaning towards the heat of his skin when she finally gathers enough courage to ask him the question she knows that she should have asked sooner. “Why would you keep me safe?” There is a flicker of hope in her eyes, a whisper of calm surf in the storm of her fear. Isra though isn't aware that the churning of her soul is anything more that the gnaw of her hunger and all the words she has forgotten how to say.

Hope too, is a thing she no longer can remember if she ever knew it at all.  


* * * * *

flowers are up in the air
crashing against the dark

Perhaps it's the way his eyes darken to storm clouds and explosions with no warning at all that makes her tremble. Perhaps it's the way this his breath feels like dragon fire against the winter cold of her skin. Perhaps it's nothing more than being too close too soon to something other than dust and cobwebs and darkness.

But tremble she does, her skin feels like paper thin leaves over the bark of her bones. She wavers in the night wind that caresses him so. It's not kind to her this night and it whistles through the hollows of her with a bitter, broken sound. Isra is more terrified of the way he is too close than anything else. All she would have to do is sway a little and they would be cheek to cheek, sunlight to gauntness.

It remembers, that chest of her memories, the feel of a hot breath on her skin and the touch of lips too close to her ears. Blurry images flash across her gaze and Acton shifts into something else, someone larger. She's nauseous at the vertigo of the flickering image, but the moon shines brighter as a cloud blows away and she forgets why she feels so very sick.

Part of her likes the way he smells, smoke and fire and starlight. She wonders, which sensation contributes more to the rolling waves of her stomach, the fear or the anticipation of him.

She's spent too long in the confines of her mind again, forgetting that others make words with their lips to share their though. She has forgotten there is a language other than her own and she watches him walk away belatedly. “That is no answer at all.” He's too far away to hear but she bleats the words into the darkness anyway, needing some release from that shiver of her flesh and the thrill of danger that screams.

Run, run, run.

Her mind tell her to run even now and the chain on her leg jingles like wind-chimes with the fine trembling of her muscles. She's leaning into the shadows at her back, hunger forgotten and eager to flee, when he returns.

All she can hear when he smiles are her is the faint echo of how his voice sounded over the word, blood, how easy to was for him to speak of vengeance.

The world tilts, and she presses her eyelids tight and tucks her nose to her chest. The gesture points her horn in that wide space between his eyes but she's too lost to the way she can see flashes of blood running down her body to know that she silently threatens him.

It's the smell of mash and honey that brings her from the reverie and her eyes are wet and wide with terror and appreciation for the kindness he offers. She's still slow to step towards him, to leave the embrace of those shadows and their silence. “Thank you.” Carefully she reaches out her nose to him, offering a touch not too unlike a wild beast trapped in a snare who knows it is not a hunter who has found them.

But her soul is slower to trust. Her soul, broken and shrouded in darkness, knows that kindness is a trick and that it might not survive another fall.


* * * * *

it's like the sun came out

There is small part, buried deep inside the cracks of her soul and in the thump of her heart that goes on, that chants over and over again. Survive, it says. Sometimes it overlays the sound of run, run, run as it whispers in and out of her bones like the wind through valleys. Other times that word, survive, is on it's own. It's quieter in those moments, as if it is only the part of her soul that longs, that whispers.

Those are the times she longs for something and the gnawing in her belly feels like it needs more than food and  water. That's when the hunger feels like it could devour the moon, the stars and drink the sea until it's dry. Even then, she thinks, that rabid hunger might not be satisfied.

Isra is never quite sure what it wants with her, that soul that even the sea-god could not touch. Perhaps she knew once, perhaps her soul like her body was long ago familiar to her. Now she is little more than a machine, flesh that eats and moves and talks when the world requires it of her.

She looks at Acton, forgetting already what it was that kept her from the shadows, kept her next to him when silence was so soothing to her. Her eyes skip over him again, remembering all the things she's already noticed about him. Already they've slipped away, away with the memories she cannot recall (doesn't want to recall).

He pushes her too much and she's not sure how she knows this. But push her he does and when that box rattles and creaks and the lid starts to open she forgets how she came to be. How did she get here? Who is he? Why does he terrify and soothe her all at once?

There is nothing for her to say when he promises that there will be no other free meals. That survive word is too loud, clamoring around as it does behind her sea-blue eyes. Instead she can only offer, a whisper that tastes like honey on her lips, a false sweetness that has little to do with her. “I have no direction in mind.” To the sea, she thinks but she doesn't say the words.

The sea calls to her, distant and deep, and she wants to go. But part of her knows that to go is to vanish forever and she doesn't want to leave this golden boy, not yet. Isra thinks no more on it, she just takes it for what it is. She will not leave Acton, not tonight, not by her own choice.

“There is no one here that I know. Only you, however shallow that knowing is.” There is more that she wants to say, just on the edge of her teeth. But it's heavy and slick like oil and she can't hold it long enough to know the words before it slides back down into her belly, back down into that needy hollow soul she doesn't know what to do with.

“If you could go anywhere where would you go?” She asks even as she decides that it is the direction she will go in. His dreams would have to be big enough to hold her. Isra has none of her own, none that she wants to recall dreaming at all.

As long as it's not towards the sea she will go as terror free as she could ever be.


* * * * *
come tomorrow i'll be in the sea