the sun shines low and red across the water,
The moon is a low slung sickle of brightness in the sky. In the blackness around the moon the stars are flicking out patterns of stories too soft for Avesta to hear no matter how hard she listens. Over and over again the blackness refuses to sing to her like the sea does. Somewhere, she knows, there are cresting waves of comets rushing over that empty space. And because she cannot hear the night, or anything but the cacophony of cicadas that drowns out the steady thrum of her heart, Avesta cannot settle.
So the forest cannot settle as it normally does when the owls swoop quick and silently through the trees.
A stone is rolling across the ground like an armadillidiidae between her legs. A cluster of dead pine needles have formed themselves in a dragonfly that hardly makes any sound as it dances around her horn like a small, dreaming planet. A wild-rose is spinning around, and around, and around in dizzy circles (and if Avesta had noticed, she would have wondered how the rose did not fall over and faint).
The woken up forest follows her as faithfully as any pack of hounds as she hurries through the footrest of the mountains. No matter how deeply she goes into the dark canopy her horn never stops pointing like sword at the bare, pale throat of the moon. And if she could wake up that single pillar of bone, Avesta thinks that it would say to the moon, sing to me, sing to me or I will cut you out of the darkness like a disease. But her horn stays nothing more than a sleepy blade of stone and the the moon continues its silence.
And still the rose, the stone, and the pine follow her.
“Are these trees as loud as the glass-tree?” Avesta turns towards her sister and tries not to think that the moon would talk to her twin if could sink low enough through that mire of blackness. She tries not to be jealous; she tries not to hate the forest that will follow silently on, and on, and on without a word. She tries not to fill the silence with more words, because she knows (oh with a terrible knowing) that the trees here might be screaming with loneliness and a hundred other memories they are too young to hold in their bones.
Avesta does not say any of the other words roaring against her throat like rabid lions. She is glad that her body can talk only in sound, and touch, and movement. She is glad that she bones cannot say all the terrible things living in her like sharks hiding themselves in the black sand at the bottom of the sea. Each word she does not share burns, and scars, and slows her steps until she is brushing her shoulder to her twin's. “If we are quick enough we might make it too deep into the mountains for Fable to follow us.” She winks, and runs her nose along the curl of Aspara's check, an encouragement to be wild, to run faster, to do anything to reach the promise of freedom and adventure. Somewhere in the distance she can hear the beat of a dragon's wings and Avesta is not ready to be caught between walls and parents so soon.
She wants to see if she can get close enough to the moon to finally hear it sing (or cut it loose from the black if it refuses).
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