“… That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home—someday, somehow. … ”
There is a moment, thin as a web, in which Isra inhales the cool air and thinks silence is the loveliest thing she has ever heard. It washes over her like a sermon, all long shadows written out in inky blackness, and breezes that whisper in chorus. Even her steps slow and move as if it's red silk beneath her hooves instead of long grass.
Of course in some places, when she thinks only of silence and something that throbs in her heart and sounds like love, the grasses flatten out and turn to satin red as blood. Isra looks at it once, long enough to blink and tell herself that the meadow isn't dead now that she's leeched magic into it like oil.
Perhaps it's that thought that quickens her steps from a walk, to a trot, and then to a run. She runs quick enough that the grasses tickling her belly are only stalks of wheat and autumn blooms. She runs because when she thinks of death, and magic, and love the silence feels like a reaper instead of a sermon.
She runs because she wants to fly. She wants to shed all her scales and darkness for wings and fire. Maybe she would have run forever (or until the grass turned to the cobblestones of her city) if the stallion didn't rise up from the horizon like a low, dying sun. Something in the way he walks (like a deer instead of a horse) reminds her of herself when she only wanted to drown. He reminds her of dust and apples and boys brighter than she could ever hope to be.
When she draws close enough to pick out his golden colors between the meadow grasses he reminds her of home. It's the memories of deserts and sadness that are in her voice when she draws beside him and asks, “Have you been walking long?” Isra remembers walking until the mountains and the sea swallowed her whole. She remembers how it felt to never want to stop because stopping brought dreams and gravestones.
Yet when the silence rises up between them again, she thinks once more of sermons and fire instead of darkness.
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