'a kingdom for this'
The pillows sigh beneath her knees as she folds and falls upon them. Bits of dust rise up to dance in the rays of moonlight in the shifting red-light of firelight. Feathers too drift up with the dust, fewer in number but just as wild upon the currents of their movements and the tides of their breaths as the two of them inhale, exhale and inhale again.
Isra for a moment forgets the fires and Moira and loses herself to the motes of dust. She sees incandescent things where the granules of dust tangle and glint like flakes of diamonds in the moonlight. Faces form in the beams of light, gap jawed and heavy eyed with the weariest of slumbers. There are elk and spiders and birds that scream and cry in heartbreak in the shifting shapes.
She can see universes in the bolts of moonlight that feel to her like shards of lightning streaking through the hollowness of her exhaustion. When she exhales again it's a rumble of thunder the rattles loose the dust from the rays of light until she can see nothing but the droplets of her own breath. And when she breaks away her gaze as the last feather lands on the floor before her she can't help but feel hollow, as if she's lost something when her lungs erased the faces like the sun blows away dreams.
Moira brings Isra the rest of the way to reality and she sighs as the pillows did as they tuck themselves together . It's an easy thing to tuck her head against a wing and forget that her soul still struggles against the cage of this body of hers. It's easier still to skip a breath until their lungs flutter like two firefly wings and their eyes blink together between light and darkness and silt-gilded memories.
The food tastes like ash on her tongue between the lingering bits of sea-salt on her lips and the tea tastes like nothing but heat and water. Isra blinks but the burn never fades and her tongue still crawls and tingles as she swallows back both tea and what feels like a library of words. “Take me away then.” Her horn trembles against its bed of feathers, blood and salt. Each word is a breath and each breath carries on for a second and the fire is the only thing that seems to make any real noise at all.
And when the silence feels like it might never end she closes and eyes and says in a whisper, “Carry me away on a current of your story.” Isra almost opens her eyes just to see the way her words might rattle loose dust from Moira's feather and what faces those motes of dust might create. But her eyelids start to feel like planets of weights and so she waits in her own personal darkness to be carried away like a leaf upon the sea.
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