WHAT IF DEATH IS JUST ANOTHER
PAIR OF HANDCUFFS
PAIR OF HANDCUFFS
There is something lonely about the lake, about the way it stretches from margin to margin within Sterling’s view, sleek and gray and quiet. The day is hazy, the afternoon sun lost inside a low layer of fog, and as he picks his way along the shoreline the stallion wonders what this place must look like under different weather. It requires little effort of imagination; from what he’s seen so far, Denocte is unfaltering in its beauty. Sterling does not doubt how the waters must roll and sparkle in the midday light, or glimmer smoothly with the reflection of the stars, like fireflies caught beneath a plane of glass.
But today there is no sun, no stars, no breeze to stir the trailing branches of the willow trees. The lake is still, and hot, and almost otherworldly.
Sterling likes it. After the dazzling press of the markets the night before, the music and the crowds and the dizzying array of wares, he is glad for the space and silence. For a long while he is content to simply walk the curve of the lake, the humid air closing in around him like a sweaty fist, the plash of his hooves in the shallow water the only sound—
—though he is not, he recognizes suddenly, alone. There is a mare, half-hidden between the willows; a unicorn, he realizes, as he draws nearer. She, too, is otherworldly, so still she might be a part of the tree herself, her horn a gleaming spike among the branches.
On a different day, in a different place, Sterling would not so much as pause to question whether he might be intruding. Here, he cannot help but feel a trespasser, noisy and piebald-bright and as much at odds with the scene as the unicorn seems to be a piece of it.
It is too late to turn away, however, without seeming strange, and so he steps up alongside her, the leaves of the willows gliding like the hands of ghosts across his withers and flanks. Her eyes, he sees now, are the violet-blue of a storm at night, and Sterling feels a shiver of electricity whisper along his spine.
“What is it that you see?” he asks her, and his words feel like buckshot in the still, hot air.
But today there is no sun, no stars, no breeze to stir the trailing branches of the willow trees. The lake is still, and hot, and almost otherworldly.
Sterling likes it. After the dazzling press of the markets the night before, the music and the crowds and the dizzying array of wares, he is glad for the space and silence. For a long while he is content to simply walk the curve of the lake, the humid air closing in around him like a sweaty fist, the plash of his hooves in the shallow water the only sound—
—though he is not, he recognizes suddenly, alone. There is a mare, half-hidden between the willows; a unicorn, he realizes, as he draws nearer. She, too, is otherworldly, so still she might be a part of the tree herself, her horn a gleaming spike among the branches.
On a different day, in a different place, Sterling would not so much as pause to question whether he might be intruding. Here, he cannot help but feel a trespasser, noisy and piebald-bright and as much at odds with the scene as the unicorn seems to be a piece of it.
It is too late to turn away, however, without seeming strange, and so he steps up alongside her, the leaves of the willows gliding like the hands of ghosts across his withers and flanks. Her eyes, he sees now, are the violet-blue of a storm at night, and Sterling feels a shiver of electricity whisper along his spine.
“What is it that you see?” he asks her, and his words feel like buckshot in the still, hot air.
AND MAYBE GOD IS JUST A COP
THAT WE CAN FAST TALK
THAT WE CAN FAST TALK
@nestle for whomever you like <3 was somewhat thinking of Thana, but realized it could apply to several of yours :)
