'like flotsam and silt I rise and fall upon the tides pulled by the moon'
Raymond's laughter sends her into a story and she dreams between the vibration of his ribs and bones and lungs. She thinks of kings laughing when their doom comes to call, of princess that smile coldly at the glittering code of love. Isra thinks of a hundred beasts in the stories living inside her that have laughed like that as they glittered like blood under the twilight.
What his laughter doesn't do is surprise her. Isra has never thought that a devil might be a normal man or that there wouldn't be a ring of fire around his head instead of a crown. She goes down into the fire of his laugh willing, confident now in the memories of the mountains to know that she has crawled through darkness thicker than all the black-blood that might be in his veins.
“I have little need of you to soothe me nor do I expect you to bow or bend.” A bit of that dark stain slips though, sad and bitter but darker than all the spaces in the starlight above the earth. Isra has tasted of fire and blood and she bares the scars of both in deeper places than her skin. “I imagine you would break your own knees before you would bow. A stone is not made to swim or a bird to fly higher than the atmosphere.” Upon her brown that horn whispers and sighs and almost feels like it belong there (like it's finally hers).
Above them the sky turns as dark as a bruise and she looks up, up, up to remind herself that the stars still shine in that darkness. Perhaps they even shine to in all the black remnants of her slave-soul. Her eyes reflect that brightness when she looks back at him. Isra's gaze is as honest as a star, beautiful and soft and full of a million different stories. “I know what you are and you know what I am. There are things I cannot do for this court that you might do.” She doesn't add, if it suits you but the words are in the tilt of her lips that belong to her old skin, her old hate and helpless fury.
That tilt of her lips turns brighter as her chain rings like a bell when she starts to turn away from him. She feels a burst of hope that this time she's neither running nor watching him fade into the night while she lays down on a a bed of bones and churned dirt. To turn away feels like a start and despite the night and the destruction about them she feels like the sun, glowing bright enough to blind behind an eclipsing moon.
“They are waiting for us, waiting for hope and a fury of inspiration to live when the night feels starless and darker than black.” Isra pauses once, her hoof poised in the air as if she's forgotten it's mortal ground she walks upon and not the crevices of the moon and the soft clouds of a dream. “Tonight is for choices, Raymond. What will yours be?” Her hoof falls and it's muffled by the dark puddles of the sea.
And it's salted water and eels of seaweed that spread out under her hooves as she walks away to the center of the court. It's upon the sea that her story begins.
Always the sea.
@Raymond
