Isra who is still

"Seek out the signs that precipitate desires: Shooting stars, falling objects.”

It would not be wrong to say Isra is running through the dark again. She's always running now. Through the dark, through a meadow of dying light, through sand that shifts to pearl in the small half-moons she leaves in the shore-- she is running. Her nose is lifted towards the sky and she's running after the acidic tang of poison on the wind. Sometimes when she lifts her nose it's only to smile with her teeth (like fangs) at her dragon swooping overhead.

It would also not be wrong to say that she can feel the brush of Eik against her cheek like a ghost. In each step she takes, in each inhale of tainted air, the island is telling her that Eik is here--Eik is here. And still she keeps running because her teeth are aching and hungry like monsters between the dark gap of her lips.

She knows he would read it from her eyes, the way that she's wrapped in justice and her magic is roaring, roaring for blood. Isra isn't ready to let him touch her again and taste all the ways in which she's still a star imploding upon itself. Not yet. So she walks deeper into the jungle and further into the black, until the meadow of fireflies is crunching under her hooves and pulsing like her broken, aching heart.

Then she turns to him, and watches the way the light makes him holy. She stops running into the dark, into the places where she is a monsters, a hunter, and sometimes some terrible concoction of the two. Fable swoops low overhead and the fireflies move like a wave underneath the current his wings leave behind.

Isra walks through those places, where one crest of light curls over the last in a frothy glow. She walks in the only direction she ever really wants to go-- towards him.

Eik traces the shape of her in kisses. Isra worships all the worn gray of him skin in all the ways, with all the fire, that the light never could. He whispers to her belly, to their twin stars, and she only looks at him with all the ferocity trapped in her small, delicate body.

She glows. Of course she glows, there are dying fireflies all around them (and under them).

But she only calls the silver-light between them love. All the death in the world would not make her call it anything else.

“I wondered.” She says into the place where his mane meets his ears, where there is no sound for him to hear but way her voice moves over his skin. Fable roars overhead and all the fireflies take to the sky in a  meteor shower that has forgotten which way it is supposed to fall.

Isra smiles into the secret place of his poll even though she knows he will not be able to see it.



@Eik

Isra who is blinded

“Your eyes have the colour of the moon,”  

Isra does not know how wild she seems, or how strangely the moon (and the dying fireflies) make her eyes glow. She does not know how her scales glimmer like a hurricane sea in all this waving, fading light. Nor does she realize how reckless she might seem, hunting in the forest like a lioness instead of nesting like a sparrow. But in each touch between them there is still the sea, and wildness, and desperation. It makes her forget to be afraid of the things she does not know.

Each time she tugs at a bit of mane or brushes their bones together, she is rushing out to meet him with her thoughts. She always feels like a thing before history with him. Every time he touches her there is another bit of her to be discovered. First it's a pillar of bone she did not know could feel. After there is a plane of her hip she did not know could bloom. Then--

Then, there is the feel of eight legs tangling in a web that's already catching dreams, and hopes, and eternity. It is like nothing she has ever experienced and she wants to paint his skin in a thousand thank yous for it. Thank you for these two perfect souls. Her teeth are aching with the words, but she only lets those words leak out towards him over, and over, and over again like petals opening.

If there is still light around them, and between them, she has forgotten it. All she can see is the burst of moonlight caught in her skin and the way his whole body is slick with oily light. Because he's saying that he is coming home and that too is only another thing trapped between this massive ball of light exploding inside them.

It is always light-- bright, bright light.

When he touches her belly again, and their stars, Eik will find waves (and waves upon waves) of happiness rushing out to meet him. It is blooming inside Isra like a garden she never knew went to seed and root. It's a small sun worth of joy trapped in bones that ever only held between them cool silver moonlight. “I did not know I needed you to say the words.” Isra says against the curl of bone around his heart. And if the words start to taste a little bitter and sour like betrayal, she tells herself that it is only the tang of dead fireflies around them spoiling it.

She knows what it cost him to say the words and she knows it's a payment she wasn't prepared to make. Isra knows it makes her terrible. She knows that he can taste the thought in the sea they are always drowning together in. The knowing waters the sea between them a little more with fat drops of sorrow.

Will there ever not be a drop of sorrow between them?

“But if you ever need to go back,” Isra pulls away and the two bodies inside her lament at the loss of their father's touch. “I will understand.” She would have to cover up the ears of her heart to it, but she would understand even as it broke it to listen.

Isra hopes though, with a feverish hope, that she will never have to hear the words.



@Eik