[P] unbraiding the sun

[Sabine]

for those who dream of stranger worlds,  S A B I N E ♥ Their eyes catch for a moment that passes as quickly as the light that gathers around their ankles in folds and pleats, but even a splinter of time this brief is too long for a child without a home and a man without a gun. There are monsters in his eyes that circle and bloom and Sabine is caught like a rabbit in a snare by the shadows that braid the edges of his gaze, haunting her thoughts long after she looks away. She is too young to understand that these monsters are not his own. Still, questions burn the edges of her thoughts: what darkness plagues this pale-skinned stranger? Does he know of the horrors that live in his head? Sabine shoots her gaze downward, finding sudden unprecedented fascination with the sand that sifts beneath her feet; searching for anything magnetic enough to keep her from staring into those twin black-moons. And it poses the question, when he looked into her eyes, what did he see?  She didn't want to know.  Despite what she had witnessed, Sabine is not afraid. She has lost too much to feel the prick of fear, for it is a needle dulled by circumstance and grief. And so, with the girl's mind ringing only with wonder at the very fabric of this man, they walk on into the gold.  The silence between them is enough to settle the hummingbird beat of her little patchwork heart, for it is a friend Sabi has known longer than any other; it does not matter to her that it is skinless and unseen, for in many ways she is much the same. So it does not bother her when the soundless air stretches between them like a loose wire that drapes over their shoulders; if anything she wears it with ease. The sky overheard watches their solemn march behind an assembly of iron clouds, like a king shielded by his legion. And Sabine has never seen a vault of heaven so inordinately wide as that which looms high over the desert - it sends bone-cracking awe shooting down her legs. But even then, with her mind running desperately away from the ceaseless possibilities that hid the light from this man's gaze, Sabine does not miss the way he grabs glimpses of her; stealing something she had not yet realised was her own. His first question is a simple one, one that she had expected to drop anchor from the outset, and so her answer comes easily: "My father." The truth of her who her father is, however, came less so.

art created by chrystalunicorn | table by kezz