This keening soul;
Leto’s skin is the metallic smell of earth succumbing to rain. It is ozone and the moments where sky and earth meet – lightning and snow and rain and so much more. She feels their rub, more agonizing than friction. It casts her out and yet she strives to belong, to the Ilati and the Shed-stars for she is both and yet… neither. The star-girl is a liminal space, neither here, neither there. Leto is ozone and she breathes in the static of her un-belonging.
Iscariot (she now knows) flinches from her touch and Leto pauses where she reaches, where she strains. The bones are a centimeter from her lips, but she does not touch, except to let a breath, warm with knowing, glide fondly across the smooth ivory of bone.
She smiles – such a strange thing upon her serious lips – and knows the twinge in her stomach is the same twinge she saw in Asterion’s eyes when he reached for her and she too flinched away again and again and again. Ah Ilati girls! Untouchable, wild, independent, scarred. They are all of those things and more.
So Leto draws back and knows of Iscariot’s desire – to never be touched and yet to yearn. It is a pining, a craving that itches and will not settle. But the Ilati are not made for touching.
And Leto does not know how this new girl searches for her secrets in the dark. If she only asked have you killed the creature that once animated these bones? then they would be secrets no more. For Iscariot may shy from killing, but Leto has never. It is in her blood, it is the Ilati way. They do not eat their sacrifices, for they are rituals and sacred. Each death carried out with deepest respect and gratitude.
But the girl is smiling and Leto is following the upward curve of her lips as if their ascension will bring her closer to the sun.
Help.
The word hangs and Leto’s lashes, thick with Tinea’s darkness, press down and up as she bathes this girl in the galaxy light of her unearthly gaze. “What help do you ask of us, Iscariot? All our sisters are welcome, no matter how new.” Her head tilts in waiting and her bells chime and her bones clink in a chorus, tell us, tell us.
@Iscariot | "speaks" | notes: <3
