“with eyes blinking uncontrollably they gazed at each other one by one"
“I've yet to find an owl willing to tell me.” Isra smiles beneath her fluttering, weary eyelids and for as long as it takes for a start to fall above there heads she is the brightest of things in the meadow. There is something in the way her voice barely hides a hint of slyness and youthful impishness that hints at all they things she could have been. Before fate took her soul and crushed it like ancient porcelain, Isra could have been a little like Florentine. She could have been like the sea, wild with a world beneath her.
Now there is only a world inside her, wonder and words and nothing of wildness.
She sighs and lets the darkness and the wind fold over her like icy silks. They lend her strength and she takes up once more the mighty mantle of her tale. This time it's mostly words, her magic still aches softly from changing the meadow over and over again. “At first the young owl was deaf to the
magic of the prey. He could only hear chaotic chirps and chatters as each of the mice talked over themselves. Suddenly his hole in the tree didn't feel like a peaceful haven anymore. He might have thought a little about eating them all then and there. And if he did the story would end here.”
Isra opens her eyes to see that the meadow is just grass and wheat again, soft stalks that tap a muted song against her skin in the breeze. “Eventually the mice realized that they were making little sense to the owl and they all quieted at once. Then the oldest of them walked forward and bowed his head like a price before the owl and started to tell a story...” Here she pauses, inhales and her voice turns to something like smoke, heavy and ephemeral.
““There's a story in our culture,” the oldest mouse started and he spoke with edges as smooth as a blade of grass. “that has been passed down to generation after generation of mice. My own grandfather called it the promised land at the end of the rainbow. None of us have seen it, for mice are tiny and the distance to the bottom of a rainbow has ever been to great for us to reach.” And here the owl turned his head too look at the rainbow arching across the world outside his hollow tree. His eyes had never been so large as as they were at that moment, wide with wonder and magic and possibility. The oldest mouse watched him with a smile on his tiny, dry lips. And oh he knew what thoughts were rushing through the owl's mind!” Isra pauses, still weary and fluttering. The meadow is still just a meadow and all the wonder is in her words alone.
But what wonder it is-- of mice and magic and promises.
“Would you like to finish the story Florentine?” That youthful smile makes an appearance again and for tonight she's more unicorn than queen.
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