“Your eyes have the colour of the moon,”
Isra does not know how wild she seems, or how strangely the moon (and the dying fireflies) make her eyes glow. She does not know how her scales glimmer like a hurricane sea in all this waving, fading light. Nor does she realize how reckless she might seem, hunting in the forest like a lioness instead of nesting like a sparrow. But in each touch between them there is still the sea, and wildness, and desperation. It makes her forget to be afraid of the things she does not know.
Each time she tugs at a bit of mane or brushes their bones together, she is rushing out to meet him with her thoughts. She always feels like a thing before history with him. Every time he touches her there is another bit of her to be discovered. First it's a pillar of bone she did not know could feel. After there is a plane of her hip she did not know could bloom. Then--
Then, there is the feel of eight legs tangling in a web that's already catching dreams, and hopes, and eternity. It is like nothing she has ever experienced and she wants to paint his skin in a thousand thank yous for it. Thank you for these two perfect souls. Her teeth are aching with the words, but she only lets those words leak out towards him over, and over, and over again like petals opening.
If there is still light around them, and between them, she has forgotten it. All she can see is the burst of moonlight caught in her skin and the way his whole body is slick with oily light. Because he's saying that he is coming home and that too is only another thing trapped between this massive ball of light exploding inside them.
It is always light-- bright, bright light.
When he touches her belly again, and their stars, Eik will find waves (and waves upon waves) of happiness rushing out to meet him. It is blooming inside Isra like a garden she never knew went to seed and root. It's a small sun worth of joy trapped in bones that ever only held between them cool silver moonlight. “I did not know I needed you to say the words.” Isra says against the curl of bone around his heart. And if the words start to taste a little bitter and sour like betrayal, she tells herself that it is only the tang of dead fireflies around them spoiling it.
She knows what it cost him to say the words and she knows it's a payment she wasn't prepared to make. Isra knows it makes her terrible. She knows that he can taste the thought in the sea they are always drowning together in. The knowing waters the sea between them a little more with fat drops of sorrow.
Will there ever not be a drop of sorrow between them?
“But if you ever need to go back,” Isra pulls away and the two bodies inside her lament at the loss of their father's touch. “I will understand.” She would have to cover up the ears of her heart to it, but she would understand even as it broke it to listen.
Isra hopes though, with a feverish hope, that she will never have to hear the words.
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