In the end, it's Michael that saves her, with his shield of hair and his eyes deeper than the sea.
And if he doesn't save her at least this time, when she moves towards him, it's as a queen instead of a unicorn in which a violent sea churns, and thrives, and grows. Her eyes grow soft, like whippoorwills blown into the lake instead of the shore. There is still that shattering decibel of justice clanging in her like a hammer against the anvil of her rib-cage. But it's easier now to swallow down the sharp sting of it.
The gulls overhead are cawing and Fable is dripping salt-water like rain. Each echoes in her veins like the sound of gravity pulling her over the mountains to another shore. She wonders how she stayed away so long. She wonders if all this justice and vengeance are her, or if they are a creature growing a new country across the landscape of her insides.
Her dragon looks at her and she can read his thoughts in the deep-green eddy of his eyes before he shares them.
I would like to go home. His unicorn looks at him and he knows then, that she will deny him nothing, not when there is a new country spanning the space between her skin.
But still she looks at Michael and says, because she thinks she must,
“There is no one else I would see carry the weight of it all. How could I ever ask it of someone?” Thoughts run through her in the wake of her own voice. She thinks of Eik, how he wanted to take her to see the sun rise over the sand. She thinks of Seraphina with gold scars bright across her cheek and religion a hopeful drum inside her soul. She thinks of Acton, dead Acton.
Isra thinks of everyone (everyone but herself). She thinks that out of all of them she deserves this expanse of justice, and hate, and rage in her bones.
“But for just a little while I will come home.” This she says only because Michael and Fable want it of her. She has always considered the wants of others before her own. Perhaps she is violent now, hungry and full of rage, but let it never be said that she is selfish.
Fable purrs his approval and starts to walk up the dunes. Isra follows and this time when she looks back at Michael her smile is softer than the place where the mist and the sky swallow up the distant sea.
“Someday I will teach you the art of telling a story. You are not very good at it.” To her the laughter on her lips feels like a answered prayer. How long has it been since she's felt lightness instead of blackness?
This laughter feels better than any purpose.
She brushes her shoulder against a boulder on the shore. It shivers briefly, almost too quick to see, with magic before it's no longer a stone rising out of the sand and seaweed. The sunlight reflects on the snow and the gold spirals of the half spherical cage large enough to hold two horses (if they stayed very close and very still). On the bottom where all that twisting, twining gold meets is a cushion of blood-red ruby. There might be laughter on her tongue and softness in her eyes but there is still rage simmering low, low inside of her.
“Shall we go now?” The ocean of her eyes glimmers with challenge, a memory of that moment in which they met on a hill. Fable spreads his wings and the sand dances around his thrasing tail. In his eyes there is laughter too, bright and shining like a snow. Isra walks through the door of the cage, and settles herself down like a doe in the thicket.
“Perhaps on the way, I will tell you a real story.” Isra waits and a story starts to rise like a hawk through the mire of all her anger.
Isra is ready to return home and remember, for a just a little while, what it's like to be saved.
ISRA WHO DARES TO FLY;
“If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.”
