[AW] the darkness of the dawn;

[Isra]

As always she has lost track of time in the sea. Her moments have been counted in kisses of ocean fauna, the sting of curious fish, the whisper soft crash of the waves against her skin and the sucking pull of the shore-sands at her hooves. The sea is a century of its own and it swallows, devours the tender, broken Isra in mighty crested white-water that rises and rises and steals away all her minutes. There is a spell somewhere in the sea-- black magic, creation magic, resurrection. Isra has learned well what the mighty waves hold for secrets, what monsters linger in the deep to sweep bloody, dying girls out with the tides. Perhaps it's the secrets that he breaks when he speaks; the secret of the way the waves crash and retreat and hold her gaze, her body, her soul like a snare. He breaks something when he comes and suddenly she remembers that the winter is coming and the water is cold, cold, cold. Her blood feels like icebergs in her veins, slow, sluggish and viscous. It stings and stabs when it slides back into the thrumming chambers of her heart. Isra feels like she just rose from the deep, risen like Aphrodite from the dark, dread sea. She feels as breathless as a drowning horse might, as a bird dragged deep down by a shark.   It's his voice (like sunlight cresting over the horizon in dull, pale golds) and the way the waves sound strange when they break against his knees that finally draw her back from the sea. He's as pragmatic with his words as she is wistful. She wonders for a flicker of a second why she can never think to stay back on the shores, where the air is still warm. There must be something wrong with me. Isra thinks and the words shift like bits of a storybook behind her eyelids when she turns to look at him and blinks slow enough for the gesture to seem strange. She's startled to see that he's the color of her old slave-skin, sunlight turned to silk and draped across bones that protect a mortal soul. Oh, she still remembers what it's like to glow, to glitter in the noontime. She remembers what it's like to hate beauty, to feel like skin is nothing more than a cold curse, colder than any chain, lash or cage. She remembers, remembers, remembers. It's on her lips in a bitter smile, a darkness that drips into the soft, hollow coo of her voice when she speaks. “I know. Better than most.” Isra could lament for this sadness. She could rage against the flashes of horror that dance like rainbows on the mist in the moments where another mare would laugh, touch and welcome the day that's just cresting with hope. Isra could cry for the part of her that shatters each breath, despite the tender brushes of something that burns like fledgling freedom against the rotten edges of her soul. “There is nothing the sea could do to me that I do not already know.” She's cold enough to be almost fearless as she turns from the tide and walks towards this man who wears a skin she remembers. The autumn air singes where is touches the icy skin of her belly, her knees, the dusting of scales that give her just a touch of color. When she stops she's close enough to touch him. The parts of her soul that remember hope sigh for the fresh warmness of him that barely brushes against her where the spaces around them cross like orbits of forgotten planets. Perhaps it's a sigh that slips out from her slightly parted lips. Perhaps it's a word, a phrase, a collection of sounds that make up conversation that die formless on the edges of her falling, bitter smile. She's not even sure she knows what it is that she wants to break the silence with. There is no story in her bones. Not tonight when the sea feels like ice, a resurrection made not of flames but suffering cold enough to burn. * * * * * we could be made of glass & ice & flame @Thranduil