simmer and burn and turn to dust that floats on the breeze like a dandelion wish
It starts as a lick of sun against her sorrow, something less than fire melting away the crystalline and frozen edges of her sorrow. When she melts her thoughts taste the salt and brine and forget for a moment if it's snow her hooves stand upon or desert dune or heavy, hungry sea shores. That sunshine licks and laps at the crystal sadness and she melts and melts down to dark, black puddles of stain and rot and survival. Isra melts so slowly that at first she doesn't notice how she drips and her bones start to feel ancient with rust.
But then the tendrils of sun turn to flames and the flames turn to an inferno of exploding star-fire. Everything feels white hot and she's consumed long before she see's him crumbling to his knees that seem as pale as the snowfall. Her thoughts, her song, all the things that feel like her when she reaches into that dark soul of hers are gone. She's dust and ash and she wonders if when she opens her eyes and looks down at the snow if she will cast any shadow at all.
Stop. Her bones sing to her in shards of rust and her heart screams as it's pierced with arrows of ice that melt from her like a waterfall. The fragile web of her lungs quivers and fills with the command (stop, stop, stop) and it feels as if she's downing all over again, dragged down by the weight of all the water the sun and fire took from her.
I. She thinks it's not her word at all, for she is nothing now but sun and fire and loneliness.
The bison herd feels as if it's long gone, stolen from her dreaming wonder as the sun steals the constellation from the black blanket of the moon.
Am. These are not her words and her panic stars to rise and she flings open her eyes and they are paler than the snow when she turns to finally sees him, watches him stumble across the snow as if it's glass he walks across and not the earth at all.
Drowning. Can he feel this? Can he feel how she drips like the rain, colder than any snow could be? Can he feel this thing, this fire that belongs to the galaxies churning like whirlpools of space-dust above their heads, further than even gods can see? Can he feel? Can he feel?
Can he feel her?
And when his words make a sound that is not the cracking and hiss of that space-fire Isra can feel the melted salt water inside her start to freeze again as the fire suddenly blinks out like a firefly inside her soul, her heart, her mind. The silence feels like a blessing and the sighs of him and the herd feel like touches of dreaming across her brow. Her skin feels damp with sweat as if it too had been dreaming of fire and sun and desert dunes .
“Is this death then? Have I frozen in the snow while my thoughts ran wild like wolves?” Isra asks and she wonders that even the words feel hotter than they should on her parched tongue and sweaty lips.
She wonders that she should miss the fire now that the ice has returned to her stained soul.
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