The words,
I'm sorry, are a litany beating out a song against her ribs. Each word is an ache in that hollow behind her gaze where a million things are begging to be given life from the fires of all the things she feels. The seeded shore becomes littered not with lost wishes but with hard stones, gray and round. They clack against her hooves like dull teeth each time a wave crashes against her. Isra doesn't try to turn them back to wishes and seeds, she only feels the beat of stone against her bones and welcomes it.
Each flake of rust on her chain turns to a smear of ore, as if she's using that black metal snake to remind herself that she needs to be dark now, dark as the night sky that swallows up the sun against a twilight sky. And still those words,
I'm sorry, are bellowing in her like an organ through a steeple.
Michael says, please, and there is something in her that wants to answer all the questions can see crawling across his skin like itches. Isra wants to answer,
anything. She wants to beg the questions from him like a lost god begs for each ounce of worship.
“Yes,” The word falls from her like snow that's both a declaration of winter and a promise of spring's arrival. She doesn't know what else to tell him, for all the other words like,
I'm sorry, and
anything are still strapped in that ivory shield of teeth. They want out but her lungs are brittle things filled with desert sand and they don't know how to breath in brine and breathe out wonder anymore.
Was her magic ever sweet? Was the brine ever not sharp and gritty on her lips? Was the sea ever anything but a dark beast looming before her whispering
come home, come home?
Was there ever not a litany of sorrow and rage not rattling her bones like a cage?
She doesn't touch him again, but she wants too. Instead she only watches him with everything conflicting swirling in her eyes like a disaster wrought from heaven. Fable joins them, a behemoth risen from that black sea that wants Isra back. He lowers his nose towards Michael who is still making his unicorn feel too many things.
He's gentle despite the anger and the worry running through him like Isra's magic is running hot through her. Isra wonders which of them is more gentle. Once she knew, but now like everything else, she's forgotten.
ISRA, DASHED UPON THE ROCKS;
“It's only water, only blood, it's only love ”
