“If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.”
It feels like a wish to watch them take over her dream and make it their own. Isra watches them silently and breathes to the sound of their hooves on wood and gold. In those moment her eyes flutter like butterfly wings and in the darkness the seconds pull out to minutes. Her magic revives a little in that blackness and her sweat starts to cool and chill on her neck.
When she opens them again it's to the Asterion leading her citizens between the walls of water (and not the walls of glass). Something in her sparks like electricity at the sight of him blended into the builders. Here is almost looks like a dreamer or an artist instead of a king. And this time when she blinks it's to etch this new memory deep into the core of her heart.
There is no hiding the way her smiles waivers or the way her steps seem less that graceful when she joins them. “I can try to bind the panels.” She says and when her gaze meets Asterion's it glows a little with a secret sort of emotion, gratitude and something deeper (something hotter).
Isra moves easily between the Night horses and brushes her lips against their shoulders in thanks and in praise for being so clever where her magic failed her. It's easier, she thinks, to touch them without that hot thing smoldering in embers inside her chest. Once she's greeted them all she moves to the place where the first wall of glass meets the second. There she pauses for a moment and thinks while tapping her horn gently on the glass.
The tap, tap, tap rings out like a song and Isra lets herself be carried away on it while she thinks and thinks. She's better at dreaming than building, better as a lonely unicorn than as a queen.
An idea comes to her then and she lets her magic flow from the now still ocean of her power, through her skin and into her horn. The tip of her horn works like a forge fire (without heat and flame) and when she touches it the edges turn to a strange molten sort of glass. The edges do not smoke like they should but they still mold together as she changes the form of it.
She goes on like this from panel to panel, stopping briefly to rest her magic and to smile as the fish that watch her with wide, bright eyes. “I wonder what I must seem to them? A monster or a god?” This she says to no one in particular but she thinks Asterion must hear the thought and she blushes a little for that.
It's not until the last panel is molded to the one before it that she turns to all her citizens and the King of the Dusk that she smiles and lets her magic, slip back into her skin. There wasn't much left of it. Another panel, she thinks, would have been the death of her. “Let us retreat back to the castle so that you might all celebrate the first of many changes to our court.” Her hooves continue the same song as her tapping horn as she walks across the wood and golden pathway back to the shoreline.
And oh! Her gaze still feels like a secret thing when she looks back over her shoulder at Asterion and wishes, wishes, wishes that he will decide to join them in celebration.
@Asterion
