[AW] little ghost, so forgotten and small

[Isra]

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 @Acton