[P] til the day you cast a shadow;

[Sabine]

Sabine,

The way the darkness in his gaze seeks out the light in hers gives birth to a sensation along her spine that she did not recognise. She wants to name it, to illuminate it -- and then send it spiralling back into the gorge that harboured all the things she did not know. For it was a feeling of contradictions; in one instance it seemed to prick red like a needle breaking her fine skin and, yet, in the next it set the furled dahlias in her chest blooming out, out, out toward the sun. 

Perhaps, it was nothing quite as nuanced as all the complexities she imagined it might be. Perhaps, instead, it was simply the realisation that for the first time in a long time, she did not feel quite so alone. Standing here, ankle-deep in ancient sand that made her skin itch and her throat burn, staring at a boy she had just met -- a boy who, inadvertently and unknowingly, had managed to penetrate the great tangled web that had isolated her so unconditionally. 

When Abel speaks, she hangs on every short candid click of his tongue against the roof his mouth. There is only truth in him. There is only falsehood in her. Sabine is a book of her own lies -- they fester unspoken, borne regardless by her flightless wings. When she imagines the face of her father, it is a lie. When she tells herself that Rhoswen did love her, it is a lie. When she barricades the thought of Acton from her mind, it is perhaps the worst lie of all. 

And she is drowning in their multitude; she can control their angry reaching claws no longer.

So when Abel marks the withered blistering air with his truth, Sabine does not know how to contain the bruised ocean in her heart. "It looks like a feather," she breathes, "or a dandelion caught in the breeze." She wants to burn, she wants to disappear. "It is feeling so light you think it almost possible to fly," she stops herself, "but sometimes being okay just looks better than this." 

When he asks her if she is okay, she wants to crumble. She might have once, but that was a lifetime ago and that girl, in one way or another, is dead. "No," his honesty forces her to meet him, and with one stabbing breath Sabine's truth fills the air, "my father is the new king of Solterra."

(sad birds still sing.)

@tag | "speech" | notes:

rallidae

@abel