“It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want."
If there is anything Isra is good at spotting it's the uncertainty of horses in their skin. And if the ghost was an uncertain sort of villain she would have spotted him as easily as she could pick out constellations from the night sky. Instead Isra can only see the flash of something in the golden mare's gaze and the shadows pooling between the teeth of their sad smiles.
This is what she's familiar with.
Isra closes the distance between them and the stones at her hooves turn to sweet, soft grass and blooms of white-flower that taint the smoke and spice air with tendrils of sugar-smell. The sweetness taints her lips as she reaches to brush them across Noctillucent's shoulder, her cheek. In her own gaze there is nothing but empathy. There is no forgiveness because none is needed.
When she breaks the heavy, full of sorrow, silence her voice is whisper thin as she swallows up a hundred little lies. “I've been well enough.” Isra wonders if the other mare can taste the taint of bitterness in her words, the way it rots the sweet sugar and smoke around them. Between them one of the flowers starts to wilt and return back to black stone and dust.
Fable presses his nose to the tender place behind her ear and when he hums it sounds to her like the sound a conch shell makes when she listens to it ache for the sea. It sounds like waves and surf and sand song. In the song he sends her a image and this time when she smiles there is no sorrow and her gaze sparks with something that almost looks impish.
“I know just the place.” Isra laughs and turns to press her way through the crowd. Fable rises from her back and with a soft spurt of sea-water from his lips he leads the way. The water tastes like salted rain when Isra lifts her gaze and kicks her heels up into a slow trot. “Follow me.” Each stride takes them further from the center of the markets and each ringing fall of her hooves on stone leaves behind pearl and gold instead of slate.
Isra doesn't stop until the brightness of the markets fade, until the smoke and spice on her tongue turns to dust and rot and age. She only stops when the crooked door of an old building looms before her, covered in cobwebs. “There is no need to apologize.” She offers belatedly, knowing that perhaps guilt chased the two mares as much as their own shadows did.
And when Isra walks to the door and taps it with her horn it turns into curtains of sea-weed that cling hungrily to her skin as she walks into the darkness of the old, ancient building.
@Noctiilucent
