' "I have come for the girl in the window," he said, and his eyes filled with tears '
Her throat feels like a long, stretched out thing. The space between her lungs and between her tongue feels like a chasm . Each breath pools in her throat, gathers and gathers and gathers until the pool becomes an ocean, a deep dark place where words are flotsam and waves and questions miles and miles of sand. All her thoughts, her questions, all of her voice drowns in her throat when he looks at her home and smiles as if he's found treasure, wonder and joy.
Isra wishes she could always feel like that, like the smile upon his face and nothing like the tightness of her own smile that tries bravely to echo the lightness of his. It's feels almost impossible to meet his gaze and smile as if the words that rise like lava (thick and slow and hot) don't matter to her any more than the sun matters to the moon. “Does it seem the same?” She whispers, swallowing down in her throat (that still feels too long and too deep) all the other questions she wants to ask. The words of gates and brine and char drown in that sea of her lungs and they sink like stones.
The silence feels a little colder now when she hides in it again. But the streets feel brighter when the castle looms boldly before them on the path. Each stone on the archway catches the light and Isra wonder if he can see the constellation lines between those pricks of light. She wonders if he can taste the rust and brine on the doors, and if tastes like a mystery or like a eulogy.
Does he see the beauty or the decay, the way it all seems both tainted and blessed by the remnants of the sea?
Her steps are almost too quick when she steps upon that first pearl-dusted step to those star-map and gemstone doors. Isra wonders if she's given herself away, if that glint of worry and pride and fear are visible the deepness of her gaze. “And what do they say,” Her words are breathy, weary sighs when she turns to him, as if she has only suddenly realized how important his answer is. “of our queen where you come from?”Almost belatedly does she realize she's asked two questions instead of one in a strange way that drips with anything but charm and grace.
And instead of lifting her head up boldly like a queen (until the doors arch above her horn like a halo), Isra only watches him in a way that's both shy and intent. Air stutters in her lungs, waiting for him to say, they know the queen is no unicorn, she is nothing more than a corpse floating on the bottom of a sea and we know, we know, we know.
Part of her waits for him to tell her that she's really dead, that Denocte is just a dream.
He has come for her after all.
@Ipomoea
