“The stars beckoned. And she had to go.”
She falls a little in love with him when he finally shakes back the shroud of hair that keeps him half-hidden. There is something there in the way wonder shines through him like moonlight through the windowpanes of her castle. She falls in love him the same way a queen learns to love her shining city on the hill.
Isra wonders if she might look inside him one day, past the hair and the maps of his endless steps. Part of her thinks she might find a well of ink there, ink that is golden instead of black. She wonders if she might read the words, home or adventure or sorrow on his bones.
She wonders but she doesn't ask.
His laugh feels like that word wish when it echoes off the wings beating above them like a stone echoing down, down, down a cliff. Her lips feel like sand against the wave of laughter that boils against her teeth hungrily. It wants to escape that bell-chime and brine laugh, it wants to join him until the meadows are alive with the sound of their amusement.
Perhaps it's understandable then, why each wilting petal around her turns into a bell. They chime in the breeze beneath his laughter that is beneath the beat of dragon wings. Isra thinks it's the loveliest song she has ever heard. Already she knows that tonight she will put ink and poetry to the meadow so that this moment might become immortal.
She finally joins the bells, and the wing-song, and his laughter with a whistle. At the sound the dragon turns with a hum of his own that maybe sounds a little like amusement. Isra didn't need a whistle to call Fable, but of course a whistle feels more dramatic. (and something in her wants to seem like more than a plain unicorn before this man with golden skin)
“Would you like to meet him?” The question is belated. The ground is already shivering finely as the dragon lands just ahead of them. For a moment Isra is trapped in the ocean-gaze of Fable and it's painfully clear that there is between them a deep sea of devotion. She blinks it away quickly.
“This is Fable.” The dragon reaches out his nose to the horses, laying his neck on the ground so that he might seem smaller than something that could be called a sea-monster. “He is companion to the Sovereign of that city you don't know if you live in.” Isra winks and the dragon hums and they wonder if he can figure out just who she is.
And the bell-flowers keep on with their singing.
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