' I want you to show me wings '
This deep into the the court it's easy to forget that outside the rain still falls in patches, cold enough to turn to ice and bruise. It's easier to forget that the water once splashed in bursts of brine and rage against the buildings looming like towers around her. And in a warm spot of sunlight, with her eyes pressed tightly shut, it's hard to remember that she's queen of a broken city full of people who know how to break as much as they know how to dream.
Around her the streets are both alive and muted. Sounds of rebuilding and sounds of hopeful sorrow rise and fall in a chorus of survival. She opens and closes her eyes as it washes over her in a rain that doesn't feel like ice and suffering. This is the crown Isra wears. Her soul is too dark and stained for flowers but she wears her sadness like gold and her dream like a cloak made of satin and moonlight.
She sways to the sounds of her people and smiles when children beg her to run with them through the streets and play a game she never learned as a child. A memory flares then and her vision seems blacker when she blinks and her blood feels a little colder when she leaps into a canters to join the youth. As she runs she hopes that the movement will bring back the embers of her fire.
They run like wild things through the streets.
Their laughter sounds like a flock of sparrows singing instead of horses and their hooves sound like glass bells when they run on stone streets that survived the sea. They run until their lungs are heavy and her longer strides start to overtake the children with little effort. Isra is damp with sweat and her bones feel weary with something other than sorrow.
She's never been happier, never more content to blink and see life instead of dirt and bones. Never has she been happier to be a unicorn and not a slave, one that's now so very far from the sea. And so she feels like a star, ablaze with joy as she sends the children to the castle to eat whatever the kitchens are preparing, to fill their bellies to bursting.
The stallion finds her while she's still watching their distant shadows with something like love and something like avarice. It's in her gaze, a tangle of blue bright enough and deep enough to drown. There's a world in her eyes and it seems right that the broken city reflects in them when she turns to greet him. “Of course.” She says as she blinks to tuck away that dark depth of her gaze.
It's a gentler Isra that looks at him then, a story-teller who sometimes dreams of being more than just a 'teller' of legends and heroes and villains. “I could take you if you like.” She offers and her horn sighs when she moves close enough to him that her tail trails inside his shadow.
Perhaps that horn even says, like the cover of a book once said, follow me, follow me and it might feel like it's more than just a castle she could lead him towards.
@Ipomoea
