' oh Lazarus we're so afraid '
A flash breaks up the darkness and it burns white-hot, brighter than any star in the sky. For a moment, as she presses her eyes shut avoid the burn, Isra wonders if it's not lightning striking the ground but bits of enraged stars, hateful of the mortals who have strayed so very, very far from the old ways. The night trembles and the snow (for a moment shorter than a beat of her heart) when she opens her eyes looks like it might be falling up instead of down.
When she looks back to the sky both the brightness and that looming shadow of wings is gone. Isra laments the loss as much as she laments the way this storm seems to leech sanity from her as the winter leeches all the warmth from her body. Perhaps she thinks in thoughts that ebb like sobs we all died in the rushing sea and this is nothing more than the dreaming place of bones. But then the others come, eyes wide with fear and perhaps the fire of life, and she thinks that if she is dead she is certainly not alone in this madness.
Katniss brings with her the first deep breath of winter into Isra's lungs. Her eyes are bright enough to burn and Isra knows as she steps closer to the mare that she's not dead, not at all. Never could her bones dream of a red deep and dark enough to be dried blood.
It's relief that makes her sound breathless. “Oh,” Isra wonders what part of her it is that cannot just speak right away. Why she cannot ignore the way the world pauses in the expansion and contraction of Katniss's flank as she breathes. Why her thoughts run like stories on her tongue and behind her eyes. Why the thousands of words boil up like a tide and all she can say is, oh
“I'm not sure I really want to know what it is at all.” Another flash of lightning brightens them two of them to almost white and the wings slice again between the clouds overhead. Isra is happy to look away from the potential death looming ahead to the mare. “Thank you, Katniss.” The words do nothing to make her sound like a queen, nothing to make her sound like anything other than a unicorn trapped on the snowy mountain with a monster overhead.
Unicorns have always hated being trapped and slaves have always hated it more than that. Queens, she could not think of knowing what they like and what they hate.
“Lysander” His name in a breath against his nose as they touch and Isra thinks no more of traps and death and winter. She thinks only of survival now, only of the darkness looming at their backs that beckons and smells wet and almost warm compared to the snow. It feels almost like a dream to her when she steps deeper into the darkness and shakes all the snow and ice from her skin like a wolf.
“Only birds of prey circle like that.” And men, she thinks but she doesn't say the words as she turns to met their gazes. The blue of her eyes is the only bright spot of her left to see in that dark crevice. “Come. Let us all find shelter until the sun rises. This night feels colder than death.”
A flash of lightning lights up the sky again. And as the thunder trembles the snow at their hooves the last bit of white-light flashes upon her horn like the fire of the stars.
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