Isra and the raging flame


If there is a right way to burn, to rage, to devour the world, I have not discovered it yet. No matter how hard I try, and try, and try, to find the end of all this fury devouring me like a snake I cannot. Always it's  there, an endlessness bigger than the blackness beyond the moon, devouring me from the inside out.

Soon there will be nothing left. That I've known since the end of time.

I watch Morrighan rage, and burn and bellow her fury to the heavens like a lion. And I understand, more than I, the mother of twins and a queen (almost god), care to admit. Part of me wants to open up my mouth, bare my teeth at the moon and bellow the bones of a god down from the heaven. Another part wants to walk between her flames to press our shoulders together like shield sisters before an approaching horde. Someday they will tell stories about her, the mortal girl with a fire in her heart and loyalty enough to hold together a kingdom.

Perhaps I should pause to wonder why I feel so detached lately, why I feel like more, and more, and more each night. But I already know the why, the sea whispered it to me once as it pulled itself like mold between my teeth and into my lungs. I try not to think of it as I move towards her with a furious sea calling back to her furious flames.

“It doesn't feel any better does it?” Her fire is warm against my face and it reminds me of the way the desert railed beneath my magic and the way its walls turns to diamonds when I demanded it. All this heat reminds me of war as much as the snow reminds me of sinking into the deep, black sea like I was full of stones instead of desperation. I don't wait for her to answer me, I already know that all the screaming in the world doesn't help (nothing does).

Char turns to grass again at my feet and the black soot turns to glittering gold. I press my nose to a flame and do not pull back as it licks hungry at me even though it hurts. And maybe I'm talking more to the fire than to Morrighan when I ask, “Would you like me to burn the world down with you? Would it help?” My eyes are heavy when they land on her and the smoke is bringing tears to my eyes that have nothing to do with rage, or fury, or heartbreak. I wonder if she will even seem them through the smoke, and embers, death.

And I know I should worry about whatever answer she might give me. I know I should. But I do not.

I do not.




“every loss, every mistake, was seared into her soul,” 

Isra and the war


A part of me, one that is so close to the surface of my skin, laments when she pulls back her fire. My magic, my immortality, had been calling to it with its own siren song. And deep in my soul, between all the pieces that are still being put back together in this endless cycle of suffering, I know the words it had been singing.

Let go. Over and over again, let go, like a mantra of destruction and recreation.

There is only one part of me, that soft part that refuses to turn to stone, that is glad she didn't listen. It's that part that steps closer when she pulls back her flame. And it's that part that rises above my magic when I hear the why her voice stutters instead of roars. It reminds me of Katniss, and I find myself, ready to change the world again. And so I do, because it's easy, easy, easy. All the grass changes around us to timber, and glass, and metal begging to be molten. I look at  her and I wonder if she'll understand that between the two of us, she is not the one that needs to burn.

“You only have to ask.” I smile like the wild, feral god I'm becoming. I know it must look strange on my face, between the soft delicate lines of it. But I also know it matches the war in my eyes, the purpose, the holiness. No, she is not the one that needs to burn, not in this space  growing smaller and smaller between friends. And I hope that if I don't come back, if I die on the other side of the sea, that she will remember me like this-- alive, wild, free, reckless-- a unicorn.

I do not need to look down at the lines she's drawing in the ash between us. How many times had I done the same thing, made patterns out of nothing, just to tell myself that there was a reason for all this hurt in the world? How many times had I lied to myself each night, telling myself that I did not have to become the beast to save the world?

How many times have I lied?

Her eyes are softer now when she looks back at me, soft as sorrow always is. If there is a crack there, a new fissure in the fury of her soul, I can almost see it in the tightness between her lips. The sight of it almost breaks me, almost lets that thing in me that's turned all beast loose. I want to destroy anything that has made her feel like this. “Yes.”  My words are a little cold, a little full of heartbreak, a little like smoke and death bells. I touch the curl of her cheek, where I imagine her pulse is racing, racing, racing like the wind though the mountains. Fire always races. I learned that a long time ago.

“I felt like I would die if I didn't destroy it.” I don't tell her that I still feel like that. I don't tell her that I feel like I might die if I don't destroy each black part of my soul and the thing that turned it to ore.

I don't tell her that I feel like I'm going to die if I don't go to war. But I'm sure the look of it, the ice and blood, is in the spiral of my horn and the blaze in my eyes.




“ a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” 

Isra and the dying star

Being beside her makes me feel less alone, like I am not the only one left who doesn't know how to reform her bones into the shape of peace. My lips have forgotten how to make the sound of it. My heart has forgotten the beat of it, like hummingbirds instead of hornets. Together we are all sharp shards and flames reaching towards the sky trying to see how hot a star might burn. I want to brush our blades together just to hear the sound.

“No.” It comes out like the sound of a blade, our blades, our shards. And I want to tell her yes. I want to tell her that tearing the maze down to sharp weapons more gold than Acton's skin helped. But it did nothing to soothe the edges of me that want to learn the poetry in peace.

I don't know if anything will.

The entire meadow ripples into grass made of pearl-strings. The winter wind sings through them, and I wonder how I have the ability to still make something beautiful. It feels like my soul it rotten and stained with all the flavors of violence, sorrow, and longing. My magic wants to drown the world in blood. And I...

And I....

Want to save it as much as I want to drown it.

My own hoof drags a pattern in the sand. It's an arrow running straight through the ash, and my shoulder aches without the weight of a quiver. Like a phantom limb it aches. I do not look at my arrow as I search her eyes for something, for some hint at what beast I must become to save her from the fire eating her alive. “I used to run from everything.” I had run from fire, from the tide, from the sorrow nipping at my heels, from the boy who caught me stealing an apple. I had run and run until my entire body was sleek as a cheetah, and my lungs strong enough to hold in them the entire north-wind.

I wish I remembered how to run.

“Now I look at everything and beg it to come closer.” There is a purr in my chest, all lion and magic I haven't found the bottom of. It's sharpening its teeth and claws, preparing to conquer and devour. I smile at her, because I can already feel the things that I must say breaking my heart. “And soon I'm going to take back the world from all the things that made me run.” My heart trembles beneath my skin like a dying thing dashing itself to death in the places where our sharp pieces rub together.

I blink and I feel like I'm dying too when my eyes whisper the good-bye I cannot make my lips form, just like they cannot form the shape of peace. I want to cry. I want to hug her. I want to do anything but stand here with all my sharp edges and my fury.

But I cannot, and so I do not.

All I can do is burn.




“and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand;” 

Isra who is the ending
“I am going to war.” This is the first time it's ever sounded so simple, those words, that purpose, this fury. I. Am. Going. To. War. There is no story in telling it this way, no beauty, no wonder, no love. Each word tastes different on my tongue, not like fermented fruit. It tastes like iron and gore, wrath and rage, victory and conquest.

This might be the first time I have ended a story before I had begun it. I like it. I like the way that I am more an end than the horizon, than the darkness, than death. I love it as much as I know that there is a man across the sea who will hate it.

And I will etch his hate in arrow blades across his throat. I will carve his end into him like I've carved a million stories into the streets of Denocte. I will tell my end over and over again until a hundred evil men turn to ash.

“Maybe I've always been going to war. Maybe it's way of fate to make weapons out of every hopeful thing in the world.” I laugh and I know it doesn't sound as bitter as it should. It vibrates on my tongue like freedom, like wine, like every kiss I've ever shared with Eik. I am vibrating, and humming, and exploding into my own universe. I wonder if this is how worlds are made, by girls cut over and over again until the start to bleed moonlight and magic instead of blood. Maybe this how is everything is made by way of violence and sorrow.

“Before I came to Novus I was a slave in a world far from our shores. I had a different form there. I was as golden as the dawn until a general tried to cut it from me. There I was one out of thousands of slaves that bled, and suffered, and cried for salvation every day.” Of course there are a hundred more parts to the story, a million more drops of blood, an eternity of tears. I don't tell her the rest.

The rest of the story does not matter now. Only the end matters.

Only me.

“I'm going to start with that world because there is no one else to save them but me.” My smile is a god's smile, a star's smile, a smile as sharp and wicked as the tips of Fable's wings. Maybe she can see the ache of leaving in my eyes. Maybe she can only see the flicker of flames and the rumble of thunder falling upon a shrine. Maybe she can see a good-bye twisted with the promise that I'll be back.

He already killed me once.

I will not die again. I cannot die, I am a promise.

Her fire, her perfect circle of fire, dies where I walk through it, because where I walk there is only a stone tunnel leading through the flames and nothing for her magic to consume. I hardly pause to look back at her and her fury that begs mine to stay and devour this world first. “If you follow me I can show you my ship.” And when I continue onward the earth around me turns to brick and blade, lash and chain.

Beneath our hooves is everything I am the end of.






“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”