This keening soul;
Leto stands as if spilled from a midnight forge. Steam plumes from her skin as crimson snow alights upon her scolding skin. She looks up and the bells chime, declaring it as they hang like silver moons from amidst her hair. All about her is a swirling blanket of crimson snow. It settles in her lashes, melting upon her lips and cheeks.
When all is black and crimson, when stars blink bright, down, down upon the snow that turns from white to crimson beneath the light of the blood moon, Leto is the torch that remains.
She is marble, light splitting through the obsidian of her skin. She is riddled with light, split open like a shell. The Ilati girl has heard tales of another girl, a creature who holds light within her all the time. A god, made mortal, so the tales whisper. Leto wonders if that mortal-god burns too.
She still cannot breathe. Leto still aches as she pulls against the chain that tethers her tight. But here, this night, she might forget the anchor she so carelessly loosed. She might forget how fate will come creeping with death nipping at its heels.
And she does for this night is so far from the sea, so far from oracles who whisper of girls dying in the salt of the sea. Her eyes close and her chin tilts up, up to the sky. Where is her Ilati blood now? It is water beneath the oil of her shed-star magic. Oh the girl embraces the eclipse as it turns all to blood and bone.
From the dark, from amidst the shower of blood-red snow, tumbling like tears from the sky, a unicorn emerges. He is silver bright, sharp as a water forged blade. Oh he fills her lungs with the beauty of him. A horn pierces the storm and how the blood-flakes swirl about it. They dance for him, settling like roses into his hair, lying like droplets of ruby blood across his torso.
Has she seen anything as beautiful as he? The night bears him proudly to her, the eclipse adorning him in wonder and majesty. Was he walking to her, or she to him? Oh that thought whispers from just beyond her conscious. It slips into her veins like whiskey and wine. Her magic is humming, awoken and bright and though the stars call for her, she cannot pull her eyes from him.
When has this girl bothered with such beauty? When has she let her gaze linger, as if wantonly, over anything before. Leto tugs her gaze from him, but he is closer now, his pale eyes a mirror to her own. The moon croons to these two night creatures, it reminds them what it is when the moon dances across water and- oh! Yes, water tastes sweet upon her tongue. Magic breathes upon her skin and its voice is a wave sighing up, up upon the beach.
Since when has she thought of beauty like this? Since when has she not been able to pull her gaze from that which she finds alluring? It all began with Asterion and her thoughts are tumbling down the anchor-line and deep, deep into the ocean of hopes she has made for her king to fulfill. The scent of water upon this silver creature has her mind so full of a king of stars and water.
Her heart thrums within her veins, it is keening as she steps closer to this stranger and tastes the sea-scent that clings to him. Salt is upon her tongue and her veins burn hot, hot, hot with warning star fire. Oh she would pull the stars out of the sky just to be rid of her fate for one small moment. But the stranger’s horn is lowering, his lips are pulling into an enchanting smile and her eyes are filled with silver and her lungs with salt water.
"You smell of the ocean," the girl murmurs as fate begins to bloom. "Have you left it far behind?'
@Amaroq | "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
