[P] claw marks and clouds

[Marisol]

heaven talks
but not to me

When she was a child death had seemed a disparate thing. As stupid and fantastical as the legend of the Ilati and their bone-weaving and their sharp fangs and the way everyone said that monsters crawled out of the swamp at night to kiss their feet. But now Marisol looks death in the eyes and wants for its caress, and she thinks about the Ilati and wants for their power, and the world is as much nightmare as it is fantasy. 

She follows Asterion down the street.

…the way they hung over the sea, he says of their stars, and she watches the dark sky through long, sooty lashes and says calmly, The infinite meadows of heaven. It feels good and soft in her mouth. It is a sentence stolen out of a book she read years ago, when she was still a young girl with nothing to lose, when she had time to waste poring over prose and poetry. She cannot remember what it feels like, to have that kind of time. Or heart.

When he looks over his shoulder at her, she thinks he might have a question for her and her heart stutters in her chest at the intensity in his large, dark eyes. What kind of question, then? She doesn’t want to think about it, but she does - what do you want, Marisol? - do you love me? - and she crushes the nervous stumbling of her heart deep deep down inside her chest and turns her eyes down to the glass reflection of rain on the cobblestone.

Painful, she answers, and her voice is a bell in the dark, rasping against her throat. She levels her gaze at Asterion and watches him with eyes both cool and mercurial, and finally, finally she stretches her stride to walk at his side, not trailing quite as far behind him. She unfurls a wing halfway to watch the feathers glisten in the light. Because nothing else ever feels as good. But you can’t fly forever. 

credits