'A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.'
Isra is far enough from the fires to miss the heat but close enough to still taste soot and smoke when she licks away the winter front from her lips. The broken market stalls do little to corral the wicked, icy winds and still she feels a faint touch of feverish hope blooming like a fresh lit pyre in her chest. It warms her some and keeps her bones from creaking in the chill when she moves between the stalls.
It feels like she could walk on endlessly, borrowing small apples to give to the wandering orphans that run like tender-footed wild things through the darkened streets. Around her the world is broken but beautiful. At her hooves bits of driftwood shine white as bone on the gemstones of star shine that glint like dreams in the moonlight. Above the sky glows blue and green and it shifts in patterns that promise the world is so much more than the cells between her skin and the fire-bright endlessness of her soul.
When she first looks up at the rustle of wings and watches the owl dive swiftly through the darkness she thinks not of birds but of comets. “Oh,” Isra startles and whispers as the bird watches her as strangely at she watches it, as if birds and unicorns are not used to staring at each other underneath a forest of constellations. Already she's almost forgotten, between the fire and the grandness of night, that she's more than a slat-ribbed unicorn starving on the streets.
It seems strange to think a letter borne by an owl who watches her with eternity eyes should not seem very strange at all. It's stranger still to read that letter addressed to Isra, the Sovereign of the Night Court instead of Isra, the slave.
She reads the letter through with a soft smile, watching the owl more than the letters and wonders what stories might live below those feathers and in the winds that whistle through them. And when she reaches the end it takes her a moment to remember that she's read anything at all when she looks at the owl and speaks as if it's not an owl she's talking to but a comet that blazed through the sky like a moon. “I believe there's food and a place to rest in a rookery not far from here” Isra tries not to think of devils and all her old fears as she offers to travel back through the streets she once ran though like a fearful deer.
Almost shyly does she look at her back and silently offer the owl a way to follow free of flying, to perhaps rest her quite ruffled looking wings, before she turns and walks backthrough the walls and into the rookery.
And before she begins writing she lays out two bowls. One is full of small bits of meat, the other water and between the two a hollow nest of silk.
Her letter is filled with splotches of ink that fall into wistful shapes and splatter on the edges of her letter like black stars upon a sky a ivory. It looks nothing like a letter from a queen might look like. It looks like one writ by a storyteller who can hardly wait to reach the end of the battle, the end of the climax, the end where one takes a breath and starts another story so that the true end might never come.
Somnus, of the Crown, of the Dawn,
I fear that your letter has found me in a court torn apart by the sea and lightning upon which predators rode currents of storm-clouds like great war-beasts of the sky. We are hard at work repairing the damage and the night is full of fire-smoke as we burn away all the debris as we try to burn away all our sorrows and sadness with it.
(But oh! How they dance around the fires). I hope the whole word might see how 'my' people dance.
Take all my wishes and prayers that your court has suffered less, that all of Novus might have suffered less just so that my heart might not weep for all the world but only a small part of it.
I commend your choice to remain where you are needed most. Know that my gates are forever open now. You and yours are always welcome to come see the fires and the way the night sky might seem to shine just a little brighter here.
Alba will want for nothing while she's here.
I stayed briefly in your court after the mountains burned and I remember how the sunrise had never looked more lovely when it rose upon the fields of flowers that bloomed red beside the bed of a river. You have a beautiful home, I perhaps would not want to leave it either.
Talks of alliances of trade, citizens and perhaps knowledge (I hear you have a most massive library) would be warmly met. Our Regent will be on his way to you shortly, I believe.
He will bring with him an invitation.
I wont spoil the surprise but I hope we have a chance to meet in person soon. Perhaps you might bring with you a book and I will bring with me a thing that looks like a star and I will tell you a story of a universe that was borne from not blood but star-light.
All my wishes and hopes to you.
Isra.
When she's finished she rolls it up and waits for the owl to fully rest (filling the hours with whispers of bird-story and beasts made of feathers and clouds) before offering her the letter with a simple, “please.”
@Somnus
