"and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”
It is a strange thing, Isra thinks, to see the night start to fade against the thin strip of blue across the horizon. All the bonfires have dimmed to soot and smoke. The treasures of the night markets have been locked up or tucked away beneath curtains of silk and shrouds of burlap. She watches the last of the court yawn, turn away and make their way back to their downy pillows and gold-dusted dreams.
Soon almost every else but her is gone, just as the pinks and colds crest above that thin cold blue strip of day. In the solitude her skin feels too tight. Isra thinks there could be a million caterpillars changing beneath her skin for the way that her flesh seems to stretch and itch and burn. And so she paces through the quiet pathways, a lone sentinel guarding the night from the heat of the day.
It's only when the black turns to golds and yellows that Isra lifts her eyes and realizes that she's not alone at all. Ahead another wanders the streets, darker than her against all the daylight. Isra wonders, as she draws closer, if the other mare feels like there is a beast alive beneath her skin. She wonders what keeps Katniss from dreaming away the day with the majority of the court.
“Katniss.” She calls out and the wind whistles out a song between the curling hollows of her horn. When she draws close enough her lips twist in a smile as fragile as paper wings. Everything is different in the daylight and their last meeting was filled only with darkness, storm-clouds and a thing circling above their heads.
Isra cannot help but think that the mare looks larger in the light when there are no shadows to swallow up her edges.
“How have you been?” Her voice is a quiet thing, thick with the start of tiredness and lingering dreams. She hopes that perhaps they might not be strangers much longer, that they might soon share something more than a dark cave and a story without an end.
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