' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '
Veer watches the other stallion move as nimbly as a doe. He listens to the way the stallion's hooves make no more sound on the loam than a sparrow's wings might make through a cloud. There is a sharpness in Veer's gaze, beneath his long and thick lashes. And for a moment he is no stag, no horse, no mere pegasus. He is a wildcat, an eagle clocked in a skin of silk and feathers and gold.
His voice is a secret of the sands and his teeth each seem an oasis when he smiles, moves closer and speaks. “Ah,” He says on a sigh, a whisper of a distant sand storm. “but this isn't a real secret.” When his opens his eyes and shakes off that sleepy facade, this revelation of him seems like the most secret thing in the forest.
“Only blood can keep a real secret.” His smile flashes and his chains jingle a tune that sounds almost jolly as he walks to the path of mushrooms. When he lowers to eat a single cap, there is in all his movements somethings that suggests he is as comfortable with opening universes inside him as he is tearing them out of others.
And if he takes a few more caps and tucks them between his feathers who is there to tell him 'no'? Who will bleed universes and secrets out of him?
His wings are louder than the birdsong as he beds down in the ferns and the moss (as if the whole forest has paused to watch him). In the moment before the cap opens up worlds inside him Veer chuckles and says, “Let us.” And the way he stretches out his wings seems to suggest hat he already knows where all the gods have gone, where they hide.
His smile says, not unlike a secret, they are here already. I ate them all.
All his smiles fade as the universes grow and roll inside him. The gods in his belly reach up their prayers in kisses along the knuckles of his spine. His organs turn gold and glittering and all the wealth of the world lives inside him.
Veer rolls back his head. He sighs and his chains fall in cascades over the arch of his neck and glow brighter than diamonds in the thin tendrils of sunlight that shift through the trees.
When he sighs all the gods sigh too, cracking all their joints in repose.
