'light up, light up. let's glitter like a stain in the moonlight'
“But,” Isra starts and the smile on her lips looks like a bitter crack of heartbreak, a million diamond sharp edges that break up the darkness of her face. Her words are nothing more than the ring of falling pearls and stardust and she feels like they break and shatter where they clash against the silence. “who will care for you when the devils of sleep decide they will have you, willing or not?” She asks as their hooves turn to lead them both away from the infirmary.
She allows herself to be led away as if she's the weakest of them all, with her tender knees and doe eyes that beg and pray and promise to break. It's easy for her to brush their shoulders together and let the winged mare take her from the sick and the sleeping. There are others to watch, other guardians to hold tight the keep against the day and the winter chill that reaches with clawed, reaper hands.
So silently she lets herself be taken back to the porridge cauldron where soft pillows lay spread about in strangely cheerful piles of colors against the cold, dark floors. Isra says nothing until they are close enough for the pillows to brush at their hooves. She imagines the silk sings like a siren to them, whispers of satin against bone and dusted chants of dreaming against the distant thrum of rebuilding that echoes softly to them from outside the walls.
Isra has survived much worse things than being tired and weary of the futures weight. She's worn crowns of chains and her soul has been made to remember the stories barbed wire can tell in words of blood when theiy are applied at just the right angle against tender, mortal flesh. And for a moment she wants to snap, to lash out and feel so very, very alive when she yells loud enough that the hidden moon might hear her and smile for the violence of her mind.
Isra wants to shout and shout, to the stars and the sea and the dark demons that hide between the two. She wants to shout over and over again, I am not broken, not yet, not yet, not yet. She wants to yell until the words become a chant and a challenge. You will have to do worse than all of this to break me. Oh, she feels like a true unicorn in the silent place inside her, the one that cowers beneath the dark stain of her soul. It comes out in flashes and bursts of solar flare but this dawn she's too heavy, too like a stone to do anything more than feel a spark of star-fire flashing in her bitter, heartbreak smile.
“Rest.” She says and perhaps a touch of that star-fire flares fleetingly bright in that request that comes out almost like a command. It's faint enough to fall and blaze like a comet tail when it does, dusted and silver and made for wishes. “And we can both eat and drink and I will tell you a story. Then we can talk about what comes when our hearts do not feel so broken with sadness. Sorrow is not made for dreams.” Her eyes flash like a glint of sun on the white foam of a wave, fleeting and blinding. It's a flash that feels like whimsy when one thinks of all things that might surf upon the flotsam.
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