[P] carry the world on a string

[Danaë]

widows, ghosts and lovers sit and sing
in the dark, arched marrow of me

T

here is no surprise in a born thing, even a born thing carving the touch of the dead, running far and fast from death. In the end, the child who thought she belonged in the winter forest even when a unicorn told her no, realized the truth of the brutal trees (brutal to everyone but her and Isolt). And had she not been watching Isolt so closely to see if they were going to give chase, she might have opened her mouth to let a songbird laugh pour out.

That dark piece of her heart leaps after the girl, and runs her through the forest until her delicate sides are slick with forth and her lungs deflated. That part waits until the girl has felt hope, and hope, and hope, again of freedom far beyond the reach of the winter forest. That part thrills and howls at Isolt like a coyote begging entrance to the lion pride and knows that tonight, with all their hunger roused, even a lion would not turn a curr away.

Despite how thin and wavering that dark place in her heart is she cannot help but step closer to Isolt, to feel the memory of the girl’s skin beneath her sister’s teeth as if the bite had come from her. She cannot help the way her tail taps against the roots rising from the ground to the very heartbeat of the earth. All the snow on her spine turns to water, and the snow on her horn melts into tears running down her cheeks, as her bloods heats with the promise of the chase.

Perhaps if a sparrow beneath the grave-bottom, the one that echoed in her chest, had not started to sing and pray to the magic in their blood she would have given chase with or without Isolt. But the song turns to lament and Danae can feel how his cracked beak is begging for a vine. And Danaë with her tiny dark soul, cannot help but step towards where he sleeps.

The girl had been too afraid to step into her grave, to really find the dead she begged to find, but Danaë does not feel fear as she descends into the grave. All she feels, as she curls up in the dark earth with a hollow space for Isolt waiting to be filled beside her, is hope.

And that hope, as it rises like a root, swallows up the dark thrill of the promised chase.

{ @Isolt @Elliana "speaks" notes: <3

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[Isolt]

I can feel my sister waiting beside me. I can feel the aching of her, the dark part of her that wants to turn into wolf hunting the hare. The feel of the want trembling in her bones, the hunger of her echoing in me — it makes that dark part of me sigh with pleasure.

I want to let her go. I want to run with her after this true-child that we never got a chance to be.

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I

solt wants a thousand things in this life — but most of them begin in blood.

When she lays the tip of her horn against the girl’s brow in a promise, she wants to dig it deeper into her skin, to draw blood with it the way her sister had drawn blood on her lips. She wants to chase her down into the night, to carve away the bits of innocence like she might then stitch them into her skin, into her sister’s, and wear them like a mockery of the real thing. She wants to destroy her in the way she wants to destroy everything in this world that is more alive than her.

But she does not. She taps her horn once (only once — if she did more she might never stop) and pulls away. “When you will go into it without fear, you will be. And we will find you when you are.”

The feel of Danaë against her skin makes her tremble with want. But the dead of the forest are calling (always, they are calling), and in the echo of their voices Isolt has no heart to care for girls who are not ready to become dead.

“Until then — you can keep dancing.” The words sound like permission granted from a god to a mortal. And Isolt smiles that terrible, bloody smile, the one that cracks seeds and bones and hope alike between her too-bright teeth that shine like a scar on her dark lips.

She waits until she does, until Elliana goes dancing off into the darkness (and out of their winter forest that she does not belong to.) And once she disappears between the trees, she steps into the grave that she had not been willing to go into.

It is there that she curls around her sister, and drapes her throat around her spine with a sigh. Beneath them she can hear the sparrow singing and praying (to them, always to them). And she begins to hum along to the song of it like a lullaby. But she does not lull the dead around them to sleep.

She begs them to come awake, awake, awake, with their daisy eyes and root-joints, and dance along to the unicorn song.

Elliana @danaë speaks

isolt
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