[P] divinity in our bones

[Sabine]

sad birds still sing

 
Ethereal, she drifted. The plush red-lavender hue of her skin shifted into a labyrinth of colour as she swam through a sea of emerald grass, floating beneath lanterns that sang their own hidden song - bumping and brushing against the oaken leaves overhead. Could you tell she was touching the earth? So gentle were her steps, so doused in grace - she might have been a roseate cloud set to sail the skies. Innocence was a gossamer gown; its fabric draped over her glass hips and marble ribs, caressing her avian frame with a mother's touch - softer than Rhoswen's own.

Here, the earth spun a second slower, the birds sang a little longer into the burnished twilight and when she called, the flowers answered. What was loneliness to Delumine? A whisper on a forgotten summer evening or the soft down of nightingale setting in to roost. It was there, it was present, but it was eclipsed by the dawn chorus and the celestial beat of a sacred drum: a new beginning just for you. 

And yet, with all things, there was a price to pay. For her quietude was drowned out by the loud silence of her parent's rift. It grew - knotted and bruised - with each passing day, and in her heart she feared a repeat of what had happened on the steppe. Acton had seen it too; she knew that look in his lupine eyes, for she felt it stir in her own. What would become of their oh-so-fragile future? Even the Gods could not say: not Solis, not Calligo, Sabine felt their impotence like a cross nailed into her bones.

But as the evening drew on, the girl felt her mind riding away from the fissure between Rhoswen and Raum. It is easy to think of simpler things when you are surrounded by beauty. And, then, it was as she skimmed in and out of the ancient soaring trees (whom she now considered to be old friends) that the sight of him was born. At first he might have been but a shadow in the corner of her eye: a thick, nebulous black that lingered on and on, but with a fleeting glance, Sabine realised this was no shadow, but instead a spectre. 

Behind glacier-blue eyes she peered up, tracing the strong sure lines of his dark legs, wondering perhaps if they might ever end, cascading across a chest that she was sure concealed a thousand secrets, until at last reaching his gaze. Molten silver, permeated by touches of graphite, and they hold her like a steel clasp, stealing her breath for a second too long. Sabine, too young to see the darkness writhing like a living beast beneath his cobalt skin, offered the only thing she knew to be her own: her smile. It was tempered by the shyness in her throat, and was gone before it could stain her expression; but he could not have missed its light, its honesty. 

What was an enigma like he doing in a world of fairytales and blue-eyed children?

Sabine's gaze broke from the stranger's to glance down at the grass, before flitting back up again to watch as he outstretched the swaying daisy she had used to replace Acton's illusion. She had not even noticed it had fallen from her mellow-blond curls. 

"Oh," Sabine breathed, catching his leaden stare and tight smile, "yes" and quickly she pulled the flower to her chest, feeling hot beneath the weight of this man's caliginous attention. She did not smooth the daisy into her hair but instead twisted it anxiously round and round against her skin, suddenly unsure of herself. "Thank you, sir."



@caine <33