“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.”
There is a universe that is born in Isra the moment Moira bows. It sparks like star-fire and it's as cool as the moon (and as broad). Gravity pulls them closer and closer, the bright mare and the dirt-colored unicorn. It pulls them into they are not revolving around each other, but tangled and sinking together. It pulls them until there is no division between the two.
Isra has never had a sister, or a cousin. She has only ever known the bond between slaves forged in suffering and blood. Already she knows that to the death she will defend this fresh tether between the two of them-- the universe made of them, and moonlight, and nothing else. Her lips tilt in a smile brighter than that bright glass spire at their backs.
For a moment is is the brightest thing in the room. Isra is made lovelier for Moira's devotion (brighter still with her own devotion to her emissary). Tonight they are the things religions are made of-- gods of the night, and grace, and hope. Tonight they are a beginning.
“Until the end of time.” She says as she presses their noses together. At her hooves the stone glitters like gold and marble, and it shimmers like the night-sky. The brightness is a clever way to hide that smear of darkness that shifts across her eyes when Moira talks of war.
Isra doesn't have to heart to tell her that there is a small war she's looking for. A beast of violence is blooming in her heart. It grows as slowly as an oak, but each day there are more and more rings of rage circling her heart like a planet.
Fable brushes his head against her chest and says in that sea between them, the time has come to hunt. She blinks so that Moira will not see the flash of a monster in her heart.
And so she presses their noses together harder, wishing that they were exchanging innocence instead of touches and devotion. She wishes she could share her secrets, wishes that Moira would brush her hair from her face and deck her in armor and send her off to war with a smile. But only one of them in innocent now (although Isra pretends that for tonight she is).
“Tomorrow will we start,” She smiles and tries not to think how Fable feels like winter against her, and how something in her that knows how stories change whispers to her that she is lying. “after you dress my wounds.” Her wink hides the shiver of fear and worry running through her like lava.
Isra pulls away. “Fable's hungry. I will find you again after.” She lies, but she still looks back over her shoulder, just one single time. She can't keep the dark sadness from her eyes then nor the quake of her skin that feels like a ghost nipping at her skin.
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