This keening soul;
There is a sea laughing within her ears, bubbling in her veins. She hears it, she feels its salt-slick touch frothing through her blood vessels. Her tongue betrays the earth and she dare not use it, for fear laments would chime out with the rolling of the waves. Would her voice become the rhythmic wash of a lamenting sea shanty?
She keeps her lips tight and layers fertile soil within her mouth. Enough to nourish roots that tie, tie her tongue down to the ground of her earthen mouth.
But hasn’t Fate been laughing as she whispers suggestions in the ears of those who listen, pushing them like tides this way and that to come at last to her planned destination. Leto watches, her destination now in sight, but her eyes unable to recognize it…
All is still, the world awaiting with bated breath for Fate’s next whisper. His breath rolls like silver waves, it sighs from his lungs like the tide hissing over sandy shores. She does not know what it is to feel sand shift beneath her feet, nor salt-water spill across her feet. But she has begun to dream.
Oh Leto dreams of a girl loosed of the chains that bind her to prophesy. She dares to dream of a girl that can swim, ink within the sea, floating, swirling mixing until she is one. Then she dreams of lungs so filled with wicked water and wakens, sweat-slick.
Such weaknesses she hides. Such fears she dampens down wetting them like kindling to slow the fire of her fear. A shudder shakes her bones, rippling along the curves of her back. The stars are laughing, no, they are weeping. Their tears fall white-hot and searing. They burn warnings upon her flesh, wicked where the blood rain is a cooling balm.
Her bells sing in the silence of the eclipse. They fill silence up like a cup: full, full and the star-girl drinks in the liquor of their song. But he is speaking, commanding her eyes to him and oh he is silver and ice.
It is never far from me, and Leto very well believes him. The ocean surges beneath his skin, it crystallizes in the icy point of his horn that dares even the stars to melt its wicked tip. He is the wicked sea and she the earth to drink him all down, down. Her chin tips up as Fate laughs yet louder still, whispering, whispering.
There is a king who will teach her how to swim. Their stars are shared, for he has constellations upon his skin and she has stars within her blood. He is water and Leto… oh, she is the wild fire of her starfire blood. They are water and fire and endless, endless stars. Her chin tips up and her lips smile for she dares to believe she might conquer the sea with limbs that know how to ride waves as well as stars.
“Is it the sea that clings to you, or you to it?” The starfire girl says, soft, dangerous, as if he were a viper, as if a droplet of water still upon his skin might become an ocean enough to drown her. And yet, oh how she yearns for it! As her blood burns with celestial fire, wicked, bright, white.
But, what has Leto left to be here (beneath this crimson sky like blood, like snow and like neither at all)? “Everything and nothing.” she declares in a voice as bold as the sun loosing from itself a solar storm. Her smile is splitting stars and the dark of black holes swallowing night. “The earth.” She confesses, her tongue freed of vines. She smiles, feeling the satin touch of sigils upon her skin, they grow like ivy and drink from this silver boy every drop of water he bears.
When Leto closes her eyes then, filling all of herself with starfire and ivy, she knows when her eyes open, setting themselves upon the ice of his silver skin that she will not tremble, but burn, hot, like stars.
@Amaroq | "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
