“No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.”
Around them the night markets go on, heedless of two mares meeting like ships in a dark and current-less sea. At their backs fires crackle and hiss. Isra picks out songs in the wood sound, stories in the way the smoke catches the corners of her gaze as it spirals up, up, up. For a moment each of them bubble up against her lips as furious bits of words that hum behind her teeth like bees and cicadas.
But then a shadow drifts over them and Fable vibrates with his own sort of song and all the stories float away like gossamer webs in a storm. His wings rain down bits of silt and sea-brine as he dives between Katniss and Isra and curls onto pile of fabric on a merchant's table. Isra is momentarily caught in that tunnel of emotion between them; she can feel the fullness of his belly and glimpse briefly the soft, almost half dreaming imagine that run across the dragon's mind.
Only the gentle, kindness of Katniss's works brings her gaze back to the dark mare. Isra answers the look with a soft apology on her, like a mother who has forgotten there are other things in the world besides 'hers'. “I've been well.” She swallows down the words of blood and fangs. They taste as bitter as lemon peel and her teeth ache between her smile.
“I'm sorry I ever came off as unsure. I think that the gods brought with them skepticism and fear without any miracles to soothe the betrayal.” Her hooves ring across the stone as she closes the distance between them. Moonlight catches like bits of ice on her horn when she reaches her nose towards the other mare in warm apology. “But I am glad you came when you did.”
Beside them Fable sleeps on, carefree as a dragon can be in a world of gods of horses that mean nothing to him. For him there is only Isra and the sea, nothing else.
“Will you walk with me and tell me about where you came from?” And something in her eyes that glints like a star suggests that tonight there are things other than stories on the unicorn's mind.
@
