Learning to shoot an arrow is like realizing that she has forgotten how to breathe properly.
At first it seems simple-- inhale, pull back, exhale, aim straight and true, inhale, exhale, release. In her dreams it was always easy, like breathing or like loving Eik. She has read all the books she owns on the subject of weaponry. Stories of mares with fire in their eyes and arrows at their shoulders fill the space behind her eyes. Isra knows she has the fire in her eyes, blue and hot enough to singe. Her magic has made the weapon, forged it from the stones of her city blessed once (or so they say) by Caligo.
The bow feels like moon-fire caught and barely tamed in the grip of her telekinesis. Each time she pulls back and shoots it feels like she should be aiming for the stars instead of the golden apples hanging strangely from a willow tree. Each wicked arrow looks like a shooting star leaving wishes in the black night around her. The moon-light catches on her quiver of arrows and never makes it further than that.
The ground is littered with more arrows than apples. But there are some apples in which an arrow is buried deep into the meaty, golden core.
Isra practices for hours, until her magic is weary of making arrows and her eyes burn like she's gone swimming in the salted sea. Sleep starts to call her name as the dawn starts to rise over the hills. The moon is a dim silver by the time she decides that she's practiced enough. Her arrows never pale, not until they sink to the ground or into an apple core. When she finally lowers her bow the field mice start to make their way across the snow towards the apples she managed to split down the center. Overhead an owl calls and circles.
Life is moving around her, although sometimes when she dreams it feels like life will never move again. Sometimes it feels like all there is now is death.
A sound breaks the silence, a whisper of hoof and snow. She's quick to raise her bow, and the white-fire flickers across the planes of her face like she's made of glass instead of flesh. Her lungs have remembered how breathing works by the time she realizes who has joined her.
But it's not until she finishes saying, “Ipomoea”, that she lowers the tip of her arrow to the ground. The fire, glowing like the moon, winks out.
“She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness.”
@Ipomoea
