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the darkness of the dawn; - Isra - 06-14-2018

Isra has not braved the sea since the day she tried drown herself with all the weight of her chains. Even the salt and brine couldn't replace her sorrow and those black, vicious memories that clung to every cell inside her body.

The last time she came to the sea her blood felt like oil and she thought she might kill every creature in the deep with the poison that leaked out from the open wounds that covered her in more numbers that there were stars in the sky above her. 

In her solitude it's not surprising that she again comes to the sea at night as the tide washes away from the shoreline. She wonders if even the waters avoid her, choosing the moon instead of the marked girl who is as forgotten by the world of Novus as a single daisy in a field of wild roses. 

Even the sand, soft with sea-water, wipes away her hoof prints as she continues down the shore. Isra could be a ghost, all sharp edges and scales that look like nothing more than a reflection of the waves on the soft moonlight that paints everything in silver dust and glow. Her bay skin looks black and her horn is almost invisible but for the glint of star-light on the tip of ir. 

Perhaps she's a ghost after all, a shadow seen only in glimpses and forgotten in less than a blink or a turn of the eye to something brighter and more lovely than a hollow specter. 

So Isra carries on, unaccounted by the lovers sneaking away under the moonlight and the devils hiding in the crevices of the rock-faces at her left. Any sound she makes is devoured by the waves crashing against the rocks revealed only at low-tide. Part of her hopes that when the tide comes crashing in it might take her away with it and deny that oil of her torment no longer. 

It's hours yet until the tide turns so she continues on, this ghost of a girl that even rattles like a dead-thing chained in a grave so that it might not rise and rise again. The cool autumn night feels like a blessing, a respite for the parts of her skin that still remember what it feels like to burn by dragon-hate.

Just before the tide retreats as far at the moon will take it Isra turns and walks into the waves. A sigh for the sting of the icy salt-water breaks the silence of her lips. Seaweed tangles about her legs and it feels like a hundred little caresses of things  that do not want to forgot the ghost girl of the sea. 

And just as the moon starts to sink and the night is as dark as it will ever be on this start of a new day she smiles. It feels like a private thing. The way her teeth flash like a comet, white and silver against all the blackness of her form (and her broken soul). 

Ahead the moon sinks even lower. As the sky starts to lighten and the silver begins to turn gold her smile fades. It was a gesture as fleeting as a comet too. Only her solitude and the sea go on and soon the waves crest just below her belly. 

Sill Isra does not leave the rising tide. 

* * * * *
so show me why you're strong




RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Thranduil - 07-13-2018

Thranduil

There was a reason, you must understand, why he sought out the Night Court. True he was a shady individual, and his actions lended themselves more palatable in the low lights. Yet that wasn’t why it pulled him. That wasn’t why he so often found, as he did tonight, the need to rise from his bed after only a few hours and slip into the moon light. The night called the gold on the deeper level, it spoke to something further down. It was a cluttered scary mess down there, but there was something akin to spirituality. Not devotion, nor religion, for he wasn’t about to be up at the church every Sunday any time soon, but it was as close as the gold could come to it.

For, to him, the dead of night felt at peace, the quiet and stillness of this world left him with time to think. Not the whirlwind in which he usually thought either, for his was a slow and deep, the kind of thoughts which engage you completely. And the cooler air, and gentle breeze on a more calm night, was like a lover’s gentle touch on the cheek, brushing, fleeting, but sending a chill down your spine as you meld further into their embrace.

It was this connection, this need to be about in the night’s cool moonlight which had caused the gold to rise in the first place. Coming from the tree’s he’d slipped down among the rocks and sands, keeping close to the shore and first dune. The ocean beyond hushed and cooed, but the gold did not answer, his feet, meandered on through the upper shore, as he let himself be lost to world. In the day, in the blazing light he was a show to watch. Every move calculated, all his energy pressed against his skin till it arched across his body. His coat of golden lies would gleam and shine and he’d happily spin and show the world. Yet here, in the dark of early dawn, its glittering threads were dull, and it did not seem to float and animate. He let it hang from his shoulder, wrap tight around his waist, as he stole into its depths of comfort. This is why he had chosen the court of the moon, not one of the sun.

Had the moonlight not been a silver carpet to her dark body as it sunk low, or the horizon not been lightning with each passing moment, he might not have even seen her. She stood so much like a statue, down in the water’s reach, seeming to be in her own world. Thranduil had stopped, watching, head tilted. There was no lustful devilry gleaming in his eyes, no malicious thoughts of a wicked black soul staining his mind, there was nothing but a curiosity and the last of his sleepiness.

A swinging walk carries him in a careless way down to the shore. He could not turn away, nor simply move on. Why was she out in the ocean? Why not asleep in crook of a hollow? Why tempt that fate of the tides by remaining in the cold waters? Who was she….and why had she been woken? She wasn’t, he had to admit, terrible to look at either… though it was a little early in the morning (even for him) for those thoughts. It was muffled into a desire to know her, and to spin a small harmless game. He loved those games, and thought himself fairly good at them.

Coming just beyond the reach of the waves he calls to her, soft and hushed, “You know it’s not safe to swim alone…” It tilts up, casting out a line and hoping to catch…something, but it is also light and harbors no threat. With slower steps, and keeping a distance, he wades into the water, though not as far. “…but perhaps that’s why you’ve done it.” It’s a tease, but lures an idea as well. Dark waters wash across his knees and it sends a wave of cold through him, waking him further. The gold stops, going no further, but letting the mare have her space for now while tilting his head to try and see what sort of fish he’d caught.

OOC :: I hope you like and thank you for letting me reply to this even though its old. I'm excited to thread with you <3
"Speech"
 
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Image credit.


@Isra

RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Isra - 07-16-2018



As always she has lost track of time in the sea. Her moments have been counted in kisses of ocean fauna, the sting of curious fish, the whisper soft crash of the waves against her skin and the sucking pull of the shore-sands at her hooves. The sea is a century of its own and it swallows, devours the tender, broken Isra in mighty crested white-water that rises and rises and steals away all her minutes.

There is a spell somewhere in the sea-- black magic, creation magic, resurrection. Isra has learned well what the mighty waves hold for secrets, what monsters linger in the deep to sweep bloody, dying girls out with the tides. Perhaps it's the secrets that he breaks when he speaks; the secret of the way the waves crash and retreat and hold her gaze, her body, her soul like a snare.

He breaks something when he comes and suddenly she remembers that the winter is coming and the water is cold, cold, cold. Her blood feels like icebergs in her veins, slow, sluggish and viscous. It stings and stabs when it slides back into the thrumming chambers of her heart. Isra feels like she just rose from the deep, risen like Aphrodite from the dark, dread sea. She feels as breathless as a drowning horse might, as a bird dragged deep down by a shark.  

It's his voice (like sunlight cresting over the horizon in dull, pale golds) and the way the waves sound strange when they break against his knees that finally draw her back from the sea. He's as pragmatic with his words as she is wistful. She wonders for a flicker of a second why she can never think to stay back on the shores, where the air is still warm.

There must be something wrong with me. Isra thinks and the words shift like bits of a storybook behind her eyelids when she turns to look at him and blinks slow enough for the gesture to seem strange.

She's startled to see that he's the color of her old slave-skin, sunlight turned to silk and draped across bones that protect a mortal soul. Oh, she still remembers what it's like to glow, to glitter in the noontime. She remembers what it's like to hate beauty, to feel like skin is nothing more than a cold curse, colder than any chain, lash or cage.

She remembers, remembers, remembers. It's on her lips in a bitter smile, a darkness that drips into the soft, hollow coo of her voice when she speaks. “I know. Better than most.” Isra could lament for this sadness. She could rage against the flashes of horror that dance like rainbows on the mist in the moments where another mare would laugh, touch and welcome the day that's just cresting with hope.

Isra could cry for the part of her that shatters each breath, despite the tender brushes of something that burns like fledgling freedom against the rotten edges of her soul.

“There is nothing the sea could do to me that I do not already know.” She's cold enough to be almost fearless as she turns from the tide and walks towards this man who wears a skin she remembers. The autumn air singes where is touches the icy skin of her belly, her knees, the dusting of scales that give her just a touch of color.

When she stops she's close enough to touch him. The parts of her soul that remember hope sigh for the fresh warmness of him that barely brushes against her where the spaces around them cross like orbits of forgotten planets. Perhaps it's a sigh that slips out from her slightly parted lips. Perhaps it's a word, a phrase, a collection of sounds that make up conversation that die formless on the edges of her falling, bitter smile.

She's not even sure she knows what it is that she wants to break the silence with. There is no story in her bones. Not tonight when the sea feels like ice, a resurrection made not of flames but suffering cold enough to burn.



* * * * *
we could be made of glass & ice & flame


@Thranduil


RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Thranduil - 07-18-2018

Thranduil

The deepest sleeps of children were always the most beautiful to rise them from. They waver and curl, caught still in the warmth and enveloping peace of their dreams. So slow to rejoin this world, and pull their thoughts back to a place and time. So it was with she, though given the workings of the world and her choice of bed, he did not believe it was a peaceful dream. Earth eyes watch her closely, seeing her body beginning to awaken, not noticing before how it slept and drooped.

Once he has spoken, the gold does not move or call out again. He watches and he waits, a patient fisherman. As he comes to see her not jump to his throat or send a threat his way (she was a damsel lost to the powers of the sea and his intentions), the gold relaxes. His high crowned head drops slightly to lean closer, and his shoulders do not brace. Ice crystals, jabbing and stabbing in his blood prevent him from moving closer though, besides, it was not the time.

The dead would move with less rolling fluidity and eerie slowness. One hark fall back as she looks at him, seemingly through him. This wasn’t at all to be expected. Surely happily bubbly girls, or flirtatious wicked girls don’t usually wade the tides at dawn, but he had not expected someone so deeply wrapped in themselves. The only one he’d met that did such in his travels, was himself.  So when she smiles, wrapping around her lips like a book pressed rose (lovely, beautiful, dead and unnatural) he does not feel the ease such a thing would usually bring.

For all his desire of secrets, the gold wished to step away. She was curious, strange, and troubled, qualities which usually called out some dark evil cackling shadow in his chest. But here, now, he can not. The game he usually played with such damsels was lost on her, sinking down like the sand they were in, like tar even, and he’d hate to ruin his pretty coat. And still, though he can not continue to jab and twist her, he also can not leave her. Something held him here, something not of sympathy, but empathy as he held the collar of his coat close.

“So I see, for that sad smile of yours lays too naturally on your lips.” He was going to go on, going to pull her up from the depths with another casting of his line, but she now brings to bear the weapon she didn’t know she carried. The dawn fish steps closer, and closer. Head rises back up and harks fall back, not threat and not in annoyance. It is an unease, usually kept silent, but showing in the strange smile she shows and the way the sea, still grey in the morning, reflect in the blue of her eyes.

Tasseled tail lifts from the water, curling at his hip. This was ridiculous, he was no virgin to touch and the closeness of another, but it as usually him doing it, on his terms… It would be so easy. So very easy. She was so close he could feel the little bit of remaining heat in her blood. All he’d have to do was move forward, make the connection, touch the right places, and he could bring her down on her knees in whatever gripped her. After all he’d done it before. So easy… Yet, impossible. He also can not step back, rooted as her distant stare and sigh makes him, caught in the line he cast. So he gives her, a small gift, a token which she would not understand even if there were words to explain it, he stood still.

Silence stretches on for a moment, as the gold shifts among his muddle thoughts, still pulling from each the cobwebs of his own tired, sleep tranced mind. Only when the golds in the sky begin to pierce the water does his low voice rumble to life again. Yet he still can not twist his dark soul into being, apparently it liked to sleep in. “Knowing the horrors of this world do not compel you to give it back your prison key unused.” (Oh the irony, would that he would take his own advice.)  It twisted in his mouth different than before, for it was real and bordered something of an attempt at comfort, whatever rough form he could give of it. Then he realizes he’s done it. Realizes he’s showing too much, given too much, and that awakens the gold even more than the ice water.

It pushes him, twisting intensions to try and pull it back together. He was the gold, a liar and a thief, hardened into steel and crowned in gold. Crowned head lowers and reaches, if she remained, to her neck, letting the long exhales of warm air bloom into steam and caress the bay coat. She smelled of salt. He doesn’t want to, it was wrong to push her and too early in the day for he, but he is no longer the stallion on the upper beach. He is the gold, for the sun on the horizon was rising and night falling. “Besides,” It whispers, the roughness still playing, but strong in a more fluid way, more alive and awake. “this is too lovely a spot to let the tides have their way with you lass.”

It wasn’t smooth as silk or gilded and fine, but he was still straining to awake and pull the gold threads of himself back together. Trying to force on the mask and play the part while the ice water lapped at his knees. He could not give her his coat against the cold, could not shelter her with holes in the roof, so he’ll promise her it’s lovely, and hope she like others jumps to conclusions of who he is.


OOC :: <3
"Speech"
 
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Image credit.


@Isra

RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Isra - 07-19-2018



“And what lies naturally on your lips?” Isra speaks as she walks close enough to touch and the words are ice rivers, winter marshes and ocean-brine that's frozen and falling like snowflakes. She speaks as if she hates the sound of her voice, the way it feels like fire when her breaths and the words upon them blaze against the frozen sadness of her smile. The autumn almost feels like winter when she's knee deep in the rising tides and the rattling of her slave-chain is muffled by waves crashing against the distant cliff-sides.

But the winter fades and it feels like summer wildfires singing at her skin when he touches his golden skin to the dark plainness of her neck. His lips feel like a lash, studded and sharp enough to let blood rise like dew drops in the places where the sea meets the sun. Isra quivers, shaking with salted ice-water and the fear that stings at her heart like poisons are rushing through her veins.

She smolders.

Yet the sea at her back reminds her that once she couldn't drown and the sea resurrected her, coated her in scales and grace. They are in the sea and while he burns like the sun there is no fire in the world that the sea will not drown out in the end.

Everything drowns in the end, even the stories in her soul that seem almost pointless and hollow when she gazes back out to the endlessness of the horizon. She wonders if he can feel the smallness of them, the way the tides are coming, coming, coming and they will be helpless to stop them.

“The tides have already taken what they will from me.” There's a story in the way the warning falls like shredding, burning pages from between her lips that still tremble from the heat of him. “And soon they will take back the shore.” Isra uses the way the waves are already back to brushing against the scales dusting her belly as an excuse to continue on past the golden stallion, the man who wears skin the same color as her old slave body.

Did he feel her tremble and smolder with the fire of his touch, the way he felt like the sun against her winter ocean-skin?

The sands at her feet feel like desert quicksand in the rain seasons, endless and deep. The sand sucks at her hooves until she can feel the grit touch her fetlocks as she finally leaves the sea. Her skin feels like less where it's no longer encased in clouds of brine and salt and molecules of water than sting when her pores drink of them.

Isra thinks in the wandering dark thoughts of a girl who knows how to bleed at the passions of men. She thinks that even he (this nameless stallion who looks gold, gold, gold) can feel the way the air feels thinner than the sea, brittle as dust to the ivory white-waves that rise, rise, rise both before and behind them. “Come.” She says and it sounds like a thought that has slipped through her pondering, a whisper of a  demand from a girl who  has never had to make one. Who never felt as if she could.

“Come away from the sea.” For he is the sun as much as she is the sea and the ocean waves love to swallow golden treasures and hide them down in the deep to rot where no one will ever remember them.



* * * * *
we rose up to the surface



@Thranduil


RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Thranduil - 07-28-2018

Thranduil

Skin touches, heat blooms on his face from her neck and needles down his spine. Whatever cold she felt in her own blood did not twisted into a searing freeze, burning in its cold. Nerves, muscles, and blood- all it touches want to lean back, lean away and keep in its mellow cool darkness. Ever wanting to remain unyielding to the sentivities in himself arising from her control of the moment. Perhaps he had reached out, but she had begun, and even this attempt to steal to control from her was lost in the heat of their touch. The gold coat held against hers though, (her reaction to it lost in his own struggle to remain outwardly unaffected), as his stubborn pride refused to let the reins of this encounter slack.

Gold harks lift from the nest of his mane to catch her words, letting the process of threading through them pull him from the drowning depths of his struggle. He was glad to give her hold of the conversation, glad to let it slip along. How much longer the gold could hold his own in this moment he could not have said. More dangerous for her, the only path he’d seen was to continue on down her spine…

Contact breaks, lifted like a receding wave, and he can breathe. Tasseled tail swings back into the water, and the sharp cold brings his mind more to the present. Earth eyes look, and harks truly hear, as the gold is released from focusing on maintaining his mask. The burning frustration of its effects on him remain deep within though (ashes and embers against the shame). Now, free, he could feel the weight of his names, his titles, and call them his again. But they were by no means finished.

Her words, without interfering his thoughts, rose into his mind. A story lingered there. It was practically a “Once upon a time.” So he waits. As she walks away. Now released he masters himself enough to gain some motive once more. If there was ever a story, he wanted to hear. A master of spies after all, was nothing more than a librarian of histories, rumors, and faces.

She leaves for shore, his ears, still following her, listen to the sound of hooves on shifting sand and the quieting of the waves as it said its last farewell. The gold was still waiting, cautious and curious, now beginning to collect his prior desires he wonders if she will tell all or leave. Had her story been stolen by the night and waves. Earth eyes look to the sun now piercing the sky (and underside flinches as the sea begins to brush and roll against it), before his head rises and turns back. There the dawn fish stands, her own coat, blue scalled, sparking in the morning light like ice as water drips from her coat. Perhaps it wasn’t so early in the morning…(but the prior attempts at such closeness, put the thoughts to rest).

Come. She calls. Horned head tilts, earth eyes darkening in deeper thoughts. A demand? From her? The curiosity rose like the sun, called by her tone. Did she know who what she was calling from the water? The thought soothes his still troubled pride. A corner of his lip curls, and for the first time in the day its tainted, not yet very noticeable, but twisted with barbs.

He comes. Now, do not be a fool. This is snake turned lap dog or beast made tame, or your risk being labeled a fool. No matter how her touch may have stirred unease, or what promises of satisfaction she could offer, he would never be tamed. This was something much darker, and dangerous. Yet he does come. From the water and the tide he rises, slow with earth eyes never leaving her where she stands. In calling forth a darker being she also calls forth a challenge, a dare, given out like a promise. The gold stops before her, square and solid, not leaning in, or touching, but close. Here on this sand she waits for him with something, some mystery. And he will have what she holds. From his lips comes nothing. She called him, and he has answered, that was enough said from him.



OOC :: <3
"Speech"
 
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Image credit.


@Isra

RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Isra - 07-28-2018



Isra watches him rise from the sea like the dawn rises above the horizon and the light shines through in that place between the end of the water and the start of dark, roiling storm clouds. There is something in watching him cut through those waves with his golden skin that both chills and burns her. It reminds her of darkness, of sunlight and the worlds in which the two meet over and over again in a gray fog that could devour up an entire world.

There is not enough dark depth to the sea to hide the sunlight of his skin, she thinks even while she fills the hollow of his spine with ink and swallows it in the depths of her. Her own long gone sun-kissed skin once hid the sins of a regime and the secrets of a dozen different lords who called themselves God. Once she glowed with gold and sun and blood that was dark enough to make a mockery of any light that could ever be imagined or made or prayed for. Once she touched things and they felt like gemstone when she smiled against them.

Once there was a time before all the golden light was bled out of her until it became as buried as the secrets that even gods cannot think to know. There was a time she was a horse and not a unicorn and she had no weapon upon her brow.

But now she is of the sea, of the dark and she knows all the secrets that linger in the black waters and the blacker inks. What gray fog might they make now that she's brought him away from the sea to towards the oceans and brine and weeds that make up her soul?

Perhaps it's that vein of thought running slow and slick, like oil in the chilled rivers of her body, that makes her voice sound as if it's made not of words but letters spoken in syllables instead of breaths. “You came.” It rings like the question it is. It rings not with a raised pitch of her sea-wave voice, but a wondering that forgets it was she that brought him from the hungry tides.

“Did you worry the tides would take something from you?” There is no story in her voice, no beginning that rises like smoke from the soft knowing smile that is just starting to curl the dark ends of her lips. But she can feel a glowing thing in her gut as she stares at him with that look that suggests she knows everything the tides might be able to leech from his golden skin.

That glowing things feels like a magic made of words and sea-monsters that once she drifted between like a corpse made of flotsam and chain. Her smile deepens, then flickers, and her teeth look like pearls in the soft dawn-light and she steps back, back, back towards the cliffs as if she's lost all her bravery without the waves lapping at the curl of her knees.



* * * * *
as long as we're going down



@Thranduil


RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Thranduil - 07-29-2018

Thranduil

Whispers, doubts, and disturbances try to needle their way into his thoughts as he stopped ever so close to her. It lingered like the icey cold in his blood, blanched from his actions all manner of forwardness. More so, it weighed upon him. Perhaps he’d held, and her notice was blind to his internal struggle (it was his hope), but he had not been. He had not been blind to how her action stole from him control, stole from him the meaning and course of their conversation and situation. And now he could not be blind to the consequences and the strange humming intimacy which vibrated between them.

But oh the sun was rising. Slowly and in its own time it brushed the few wild hairs of her mane, and the sharp angle of her jaw in yellowed orange, and on his hips he felt the sun’s warm breath. He was, remember, the moon’s follower, but his coat was made of gold for a reason.

You came. It questioned. It asked. Bidding a confirmation of his existence. She gained only an exhale and tilt of the head. The question tossed back to her. Earth eyes ever try to pierce into hers, to wade through the fog and water and find the threads of something solid. Saddness. Guilt. Insanity. Anything really, but she was lost to him. Yet she wasn’t the sea water below, or the sand slipping under him. She could not slip from him so easily. And it was her shifting shapeless nature that pulled his curiosity ever closer, regardless of the moment in the water. What were her shackles made from? What burden held her in the water? Yes he had come, for she had yet to give him what was promised in her calling. A reason. Her question of his response, was not satisfactory.

Something from you. Crowned head tilts back the other way, ever still tossing back her question tone, her wondering looks. But he was patient, he could wait. And he could read between the lines of her unknowns. Had they taken something from her? The ice of the water had been sharp, but he was certain it was colder up here on the sand.

Crowned head turns back to look at the waves, at last giving her some answer. “The waves can not take what you will not give, or what you leave on shore.” It has returned to the prior lows, a muttering of knowing and lacing of empathy. He turns back, inhaling to speak again, but finds her back away. Harks fold back, a tension shudders through his shoulders, but who could call it concern or frustration?

Yet it pulls from him, stronger than even her call could, a strength and power. She was yielding, if in some small way. And he now felt a grin, rise to his lips, and the gold follows her.

Lengthened strides carry him quickly to her, and at her, if she’d remained on course. “And if it does steal away from me, I’m ever so quick to catch it.” Now it was his turn to promise, his to demand. Deeper than before it was built on the strength she’d just lended. The night was gone, and now the sun was rising, and his coat glittered gold lies and sparkled in dazzling manipulations.


OOC :: <3
"Speech"
 
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Image credit.


@Isra

RE: the darkness of the dawn; - Isra - 07-31-2018

Isra of the sea

“The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.” 


“You are a fool then, to think the sea cannot take the entire shore out from beneath you.” The warning is bleating, more stuttering shiver of her lungs than insult when she rises her gaze to meet his. There could be ice in her bones, hoarfrost instead of skin covering all her insides when she traces with her eyes the tips of his horn to the place where the sun glitters of the spires of him. He could be a church, a golden altar covered in cloths of silk and she imagines that their horns would peel out over the ocean like bells that ring on and on and on.

For every step he takes she tells herself a story to keep her hooves still in the sucking sand beneath her. The first steps has her wondering if his rib-cage is as golden as his skin, if sunflowers brush against the curve of them where his lungs should be. His next step is the sigh of a golden blade as it's drawn from blood-stained leather.

The last step brings him close enough to touch and her heat feels as if it bleeds ink when she reaches out her nose to him and her breath curls upwards into the morning chill like plumes of dandelion wishes to float above their heads. Lazily she watches the mist of her meek heat rise and thinks that the dazzling gold of him makes a lovely backdrop for wishes and hopes and things that the sun devours up like the dawn devours dreams.

Isra thinks in wonders, in words that spark like lightning bugs behind that ever-slow blink, blink of her eyes. Is he quick enough to catch his dreams when the sun rises, to trap them in all the glitz of his form? Oh how she wonders, wonders, wonders while she waits for that fire of his touch against her lips that feel too frozen to smile.

A memory of the festival flashes, of another stallion with tines of horn rising like oaks from the top of his head. She thinks she must seem so plain to all of them with her single horn and coat the color of spring mud when all the snows melt and run down in rivers from the mountains. How cold she must feel to the fire of his sunshine skin, a frozen sea in which nothing lovely dares to live.

She's still enough to be a glacier before him, still but for the hummingbird gasping of her heart and the shallow rasp of her lungs. And when she speaks the words feel like stalagmites of ice hanging from her lips, dripping slow enough to grow longer and longer and never quite melt. “I do not think you could have caught me.” Sadness flickers in her eyes and it blazes softly like the moon blazes behind storm-clouds.

“But, would you have tried?” Still that sadness blazes and she wonders when her  ice-eyes melt into his summer-eyes if he knows that she's really asking if he is some hero by the sea or a spider that weaves a web of gold to trap butterflies with broken wings.

In the end though the stallion has no words for her, so she makes her way from their sea. But she can't help how her heart feels like it's missing something when she goes.