“ I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren swims . . . ”
The darkness devours her as they go deeper in the cave and soon she forgets to think of brine and storms and death. Here in the blackness with steam rising up she thinks only of how much she misses starlight and the way it might have glinted off all their skin and made them seem almost holy. The air this deep feels heavy with metals and minerals and Isra feels a little like sand made heavy with all the weight water leaves behind when it evaporates.
Overhead stalagmites drips and it sounds like rain surrounds them. There is no light but what brief flashes of lightning can break through the maze of stone they traveled. And when Lysander touches his lips to her hip she trembles and feels thankful for the darkness and the sound of rain when she closes her eyes and sighs.
Perhaps it is a blessing that Isra has only known dark mortal realms where magic slumbered half dead in the ground and all the gods cared nothing for their children. She doesn't know to fear the water, to think it might burn her flesh like acid or steal from her bits of her soul that long for her old skin and bones and grace. But part of her is a unicorn, cautious in a light less place that smells a little like blood and she dips her horn into the water first and watches it drip from her like tears as her eyesight adjusts.
“Seems safe enough.” She whispers to them both, hating the way that her voice chimes not like a bell but like hummingbird wings (feathers on air and air on dreams). The hot water takes her breath away as she slowly walks into the pool and trembles when it burns all the chill from her in a fury that feels born from wildfire instead of spring-water. Her tail drifts like leaves in the ripples from her body and when she ducks her head underwater it feels like she's a phoenix when she rises back up and drinks of the steamy air.
How sweet it feels to linger underwater and want only air instead of darkness and brine and ocean-floor.
Almost joyfully does she turn, wondering at how light and graceful she moves when her chain is silent underwater. Her eyes in the dark hold a secret, a darkness of the blue that shifts behind the wall of steam cutting her off from Katniss and Lysander. “It feels like we've stumbled upon Utopia.” Isra whispers like a whippoorwill and the hot air moves in shapes that seem to start in the expressive curl of her lips and fade away in the slender dark hollow where her horn reflects on the water when a blink of the storm reaches them.
“Come and I will tell you both a story, one that begins in the place where another has just ended.” Lysander perhaps will hear the laughter in her voice as she moves deeper and deeper into the pool. Her hair settles over the water like seaweeds hiding pearls and treasure and it sways in the ripples they make like nets thrown to catch all the secrets of the sea.
Here she's not a queen but a siren, one who sings with words and wonders and dreams instead of drowns.
@
