“And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.”
Isra turns to watch the sea as the others come and whisper what they make of the stars. She tracks the waves, each one further up than the last and soon bits of kelp twist about her hooves, caught and left behind whenthe waves crash back out to the deep again. Parts of her feel like the moon and parts of her feel like the sea and she ebbs and flows and crashes in waves against both the night-sky and the horizon.
When she watches her goddess look over her like a shadow she feels as if she knows that she is Isra of the pieces. The queen is not only of the night, could never be only of the constellations and bonfires and silken sheets.
The world shifts around them and a bird flashes in the starlight and his wings sound like a distant storm that hasn't decided to go towards the sea or mountains. Parts of her story come back to her and she tucks her nose to her chest and whispers like those mighty wings overhead (in her voice is a storm churning miles and miles away). “And soon we ran and ran, the devils nipping at out heels as the world trembled and we thought the waves were soon to devour us.” Isra shudders with the memories of all the dead things and the bones.
Caligo speaks and she can still see the bleached bones and she can still smell the salt and iron of the places where Moira, Raymond and Calliope still wear the crusted echoes of war. Now when the shards of her sift like the tide she wonders partly why it feels like bitterness and betrayal. And Isra when she lifts her head from the darkness of her own shadow wonders if it's the birds, the ocean or the goddess that makes her feel that way.
“I will go.” Isra says and wonders why it feels to strange to feel the fire in her belly between all that dark betrayal (and she's unsure what sort of fire it is that blazes). “And if we becomes stars and they decide that stars do not make very good friends for a storm, then what?” Her words ring like a bell-- tolling, tolling, tolling over the horizon. Isra rings like a church-bell and a funeral-bell and her lips still taste like salt and blood when she chews at her lower lip.
No part of her is afraid of death, of the darkness and the pain and bolts of electricity coursing through her blood. But it doesn't mean she wants to die, not now that her eyes dance with dreams like a heroine's might.
