The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
—
Still all the world is a held breath, and still Aster does not find it strange.
It’s all she knows, little daughter of a daughter of Time, and as long as her twin’s heartbeat is running fast and strong beside her what does she care for the sun, or the sea, or the birds in the sky? All the universe is woven with magic; it’s no secret to her, not when it whispered to her from the womb, when she was no more than half a dream.
But there are other secrets, buried in the soil and whispered by the trees, and Aster is hungrier for them than she is for manna, for milk. Today (though it has been today for hours and hours and hours, it is only ever today with the sun as frozen as a picture above them) she wanders through a forest gone silent as the world inside her head. Leonidas is not there (where is he? perhaps with father, perhaps with uncle; all she knows is safe but behind her is Florentine, golden, warm, laughing, good.
In a way the island is safe. There are no snakes, no wolves, no birds no bees - no wind, no storms. Just waiting. There is not even the sound of running water, although Aster is following a stream like a silver thread; its surface lies still as a mirror, and once she pauses to stare at herself in its surface. Pale face, fine bones, golden eyes. Her own face is strange to her, stranger than her brother’s. She paws the still water with a pale little hoof and the vision dissipates, and the filly is gone again before it falls back to stillness and reflects only the dead blue sky.
But she is not gone far. One more bend around the lifeless, silent stream, and the ground rises up in shoulders of rocks and a head of green canopy, and its face is another mirror, but carved rugged with lines -
a waterfall, frozen not in temperature but in time.
For a long moment Aster is frozen, too, staring up at the flat and shining face of it, and her curiosity is a flame that eats and eats. But it is also a butterfly, prone to wandering, and with a twist and a kick of her heels she’s whirling, galloping back to Florentine, racing her shadow in lieu of her brother and always winning, always losing.
When she reaches her mother she buries her face in her long golden hair, inhaling deeply the scent of flowers, of a forest at night when all things are close and safe and growing in secret. Aster closes her eyes and listens and listens to both of their heartbeats, and the sound of their feet, and there is nothing else, no other noise, and it is almost enough to imagine she is back in the womb and the universe is whispering secrets in her ear to the lulling tune of lungs and heart and rushing blood.
And then she withdraws, and touches her pale small lips to the dagger over her mother’s heart, and looks up into Florentine’s amethyst eyes with a gaze of searing gold, timeless as the frozen sun.
“Mama,” she asks, “what does it cut?”
@Florentine
It’s all she knows, little daughter of a daughter of Time, and as long as her twin’s heartbeat is running fast and strong beside her what does she care for the sun, or the sea, or the birds in the sky? All the universe is woven with magic; it’s no secret to her, not when it whispered to her from the womb, when she was no more than half a dream.
But there are other secrets, buried in the soil and whispered by the trees, and Aster is hungrier for them than she is for manna, for milk. Today (though it has been today for hours and hours and hours, it is only ever today with the sun as frozen as a picture above them) she wanders through a forest gone silent as the world inside her head. Leonidas is not there (where is he? perhaps with father, perhaps with uncle; all she knows is safe but behind her is Florentine, golden, warm, laughing, good.
In a way the island is safe. There are no snakes, no wolves, no birds no bees - no wind, no storms. Just waiting. There is not even the sound of running water, although Aster is following a stream like a silver thread; its surface lies still as a mirror, and once she pauses to stare at herself in its surface. Pale face, fine bones, golden eyes. Her own face is strange to her, stranger than her brother’s. She paws the still water with a pale little hoof and the vision dissipates, and the filly is gone again before it falls back to stillness and reflects only the dead blue sky.
But she is not gone far. One more bend around the lifeless, silent stream, and the ground rises up in shoulders of rocks and a head of green canopy, and its face is another mirror, but carved rugged with lines -
a waterfall, frozen not in temperature but in time.
For a long moment Aster is frozen, too, staring up at the flat and shining face of it, and her curiosity is a flame that eats and eats. But it is also a butterfly, prone to wandering, and with a twist and a kick of her heels she’s whirling, galloping back to Florentine, racing her shadow in lieu of her brother and always winning, always losing.
When she reaches her mother she buries her face in her long golden hair, inhaling deeply the scent of flowers, of a forest at night when all things are close and safe and growing in secret. Aster closes her eyes and listens and listens to both of their heartbeats, and the sound of their feet, and there is nothing else, no other noise, and it is almost enough to imagine she is back in the womb and the universe is whispering secrets in her ear to the lulling tune of lungs and heart and rushing blood.
And then she withdraws, and touches her pale small lips to the dagger over her mother’s heart, and looks up into Florentine’s amethyst eyes with a gaze of searing gold, timeless as the frozen sun.
“Mama,” she asks, “what does it cut?”
@
