This keening soul;
The stars are whispering, a keening that brings her soul to trembling. Her blood is warm, warm within her veins and Leto has eyes for naught but the sky. How can she listen to the earth when the sky is echoing with song? How can she hear the voice of trees when the stars are chanting?
He is here. He is here.
And that is what they cry.
It is more than a chant, more than a litany that repeats and repeats. Does the whole of Novus resound with their song? Are the mountains echoing with ghost song and stardust? She can hear their roaring, it is the sounds of ice and stone rising and rumbling. The snow lies silent, but their eyes are cast up, up, up into the skies. It is a white blanket, glittering, and it paints Leto black, black as a droplet of ink.
This starfire-girl streaks across white, she runs until her limbs ache, until the stars are spilling in her mind and in her blood. Light is burning and scolding and she shivers as it slips like a lance through her veins. Oh Leto is falling apart and only magic ties her together, only dark threads of Ilati shadow keep this girl from spilling open.
She is running and her magic is in her lungs and in her veins. It is brighter than air. It is more vital than the blood in her heart. Her breath blows as a dragon breaching her den of stone and snow. Oh the world is laughing and her magic is tugging, tugging, tugging. It chains her and it pulls her. Her legs are not enough, not for this wrenching, not for this command of stars and air and earth.
Yes, now the ground has heard, now it too rattles beneath her feet. Each thundering step of her feet is a roar, it is stars surging in her veins, stars crying out ever louder: He is here! He is here!
And he is there! He is stood where the stars are laughing and the gem flowers growing. He stands amongst them and each is a herald to this boy they brought. They gleam and shine and smile. They bathe him in white and adorn him in a coat of a thousand splitting colours. Oh Leto is gasping, her lungs aching, the starlight fills them full, full. She is glowing with her magic, white blood that ignites as hot as stars. It splits her for she is marble at her magic’s behest – white-hot light is pouring in cracks over her ebony skin. Leto is the sky at night, the space between stars and it paints her in its blacks and its star-bright whites.
The flowers are rattling and chattering. They declare her here – do they cry to him as well as her? Do they cry she is here, she is here! Leto does not know and she does not think, not when he is made of feathers (that reach for stars) and skin the colour of sunsets bleeding into night.
Oh Leto is gasping, drinking air as if it might be her last. She feels the ache in her limbs, the burn of stars that scold through her muscles. But he is asking where he is and her lips, though they thirst for air, though they are heavy with the night and with the stars, are forming the word, “Free.” And she does not know what it means, not when she is a girl made of stars and Ilati earth. Each has made her free, each has made her to run and fight and never know chains. Never has she known the tight grasp of leather about her ankles, never has she known darkness...
(But somewhere the sea is laughing, for it is dark and deep and fate has already planned the day Leto will know the darkness of its water.)
Slowly, carefully, she moves to him and the stars fall into silence. His bell chimes and hers replies as golden leaves and glittering pearls shift and sway amidst her hair – just to better see the boy the stars have brought.
@Sirius | "speaks" | notes: I love him. I love him so much.
