[P] claw marks and clouds

[Marisol]

heaven talks
but not to me

She is thinking about the book now. The infinite meadows of heaven. It replays in her head again and again and she tilts her head upward to watch the blue of the sky, freckled with white stars, the infinite meadows of heaven, …blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels, and she hardly realizes she’s even talking, so engrossed is she by the music in her head, until she hears her own voice in the cool, damp air and blinks in furious embarrassment. Her heart swirls against her ribs.

It is a foolish love and always has been, her weakness for poetry. And it is for that reason that the shame that floods her then is so dark and so total. She feels it like ice against her dark skin, like acid in her blood, and turns those dark eyes as far away from Asterion as she feasibly can to watch the city swell around them instead. Towers glittering with warm yellow light, buildings bleeding through their stained glass onto the cobblestone. She sniffs and glances at the white dome of the citadel.

They walk side by side now and Marisol is too-conscious of the warmth that drifts from Asterion’s skin, how it hits her like a drug. The cobblestone is metallic with shed light, cut in places by their shadows, by pools of rain, her steps on the cobblestone.

Right, she says. It’s a mockery of casualty, the way her voice slips from her so easily. You can always fly again. Forests always grow back. Et cetera. Until they don’t. She coughs, a brackish sound, and folds her wings in tighter. 

Does it make sense? Well, who's to say - they're both right, she thinks, and not one righter than the other. But still she almost feels hurt by the way he says it so casually, that you can always fly again, because she knows, in her heart of hearts, she is as likely as not to lose that possibility in any one instant.

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