"a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.”
Isra should feel like she's hiding, tucked away in a bright corner of the gardens while the rest of her court sleeps off the proclivities of the night. The golden heat on her skin should feel strange after all the hours she's lived by moonlight and star-maps, with brine and dragons instead of rolling fields and dandelions seeds floating on a breeze. Everything about this quiet corner with only bird-song and cicadas to keep her company should feel not-quite-right.
But she's doesn't feel uneasy at all. She doesn't feel hunted or taste the low, acid hum of rage in her belly. Isra only tastes sunshine and pollen. Even Fable is content to sleep in a ray of sunshine that makes his scales seem as shining as the surface of a calm, spring sea.
A antlered stallion breaks through the archway of ivy and flowers and Isra suddenly knows why today the daylight and golden-light seems like a haven instead of a place where night dies. Love has made her love the sunlight.
“Lysander.” She whispers from where her lips are pressed against a large, upturned leaf that looks a little like ivy and a lot like something of another world. With the warm brush of air from her lungs the leave turns gilded and gold-leaf and it catches on the sunlight in a way that her horn never could. It's golden instead of black and soft rainbow tones glitter around it where the last of mornings dew lingers in a thin humidity around them.
Fable, lifts his head to watch the stallion, his green eyes sharp as a sword. But when he reaches out and feel the slow bloom of joy and shyness running like wine through Isra he merely closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.
There are more words bubbling on her lips but they waiver like weak rain in a breeze when Lysander brushes her nose against her shoulder. It's a moment before she can get them back. She blinks slowly and tells herself, I should be used to this by now, Eik has taught me. (but it still feels so strange in the sunlight, hotter).
“Perhaps,” she says, turning from her golden leaf to meet his gaze. “But I have no words to tell today. Only flowers and art and I'm not sure it's all the same.” And on the last of her words, when she leans a little further into the space around Lysander the sun shifts across her scales and she looks like a sea that has, against all odds, caught aflame.
@Lysander
