"into the castle’s dark shadows where night met blackened air.”
“Then let it remake you.” Isra prays like the feathers whispering against all her dark, moonless skin are an altar of some new god. Each of the feathers kissing along her skin carries her away to another world. A world where war is nothing more than ink in a old, old book and suffering a thing that only thrives in nightmares.
Her nose presses to Marisol's cheek as if she can put back together each word that's breaking the Commander's lips. Perhaps this is how wars are ended, girls piecing each other back together with lips and wings, love and heartbreak. Isra could almost forget that she knows how to smile like a spider or how she can still dissolve into the blackness like something made of silken threads instead of blood.
And oh, when Marisol presses her forehead against her, she wants to forget.
But outside their cocoon of feathers, grief, and prayers the world is suffocating in suffering. The sand is is hot with sunlight and stained with blood. Isra is already becoming aware of the way she's tilting her hollow horn away from Marisol because she's gotten used to keeping it canted down between her and the world. She's aware of the way her body is hard now from running, from fighting, from everything that does not make her happy like dancing had once.
Isra wants to cry because she knows that as much as she wants to loose herself in feathers, and the rain of white sparks tracing their way down her spine, she must not. There are so many things she's willing to give up like the heart beating in her chest, her crown, this unicorn skin. She would give them all up, toss them off a cliff with the wind at the back of each sacrifice. There is nothing she will not surrender for all the names etched in veins upon her heart.
Yet, this feels like one of the hardest thing to sacrifice: the memory of dancing, of learning another secret in this world that makes her feel less tragic and more full.
Isra pulls away and she feels like it's the pieces of her that are breaking now. She's afraid to speak because she doesn't know what sharp glass shards will fall from her lips like bits of ice. The tornado in her gut feels almost impossible to wrangle. When she leaves the bed of feathers she feels like she's no longer a bright star but a dying one in the shadow of the moon.
She does not think she will ever be whole again.
“Why did you come?” And even though she tries so very hard each word falls from her lips like glass, sharp and waiting. Isra is crying glass instead of tears and she cannot help but think that war must make sharp, dangerous things out of all of them.
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