"dash away, and on and on, for hours"
Somewhere in the black water at the bottom of the lake there is a fish and a pearl. The pearl is coated in silt and barely shining when the sun manages to sink low beneath the surface like a golden blade. Beside it the fish is searching for seeds long forgotten in the dark depth, almost rotten and soft enough for him to swallow.
The fish passes by the dirty pearl, unable to the see the barely there shine of it with eyes looking over and over again for seed. It's only ever seed.
Perhaps only Fable knows there's a pearl waiting there-- silt covered and waiting. And if he does he's never told Isra of it (or how it was only there because she walked into the water once with her magic and love smoldering in her belly).
Isra can hear the grind of Michael teeth, although she can only see the stiffness of his jaw when she breathes into spot of tangled hair and tender skin behind his eyes. His sorrow calls to the sharp edges of her own. Her's are buried under layers of love, and hope, and death, and retribution. If there are any edges of her left waiting to break again she has forgotten them in the patterns of Eik's kisses night after night. “Have you ever been loved?” She asks before her thoughts even form around the words like a coffin.
Maybe the question got stuck between her heart and and her head-- somewhere between her bone-white teeth and the butterfly fist in her throat.
Either way it's out there somewhere between her lips and his ear and Isra doesn't want to take it back. The pearl grass is chiming hollowly against her hooves and hocks in a wind she's not quite aware of. Every inch of her is poised and waiting like a blade over a guilty throat. Later Isra will not remember why it was so vital for her to know.
Later she might wonder.
But now there is only the question waiting heavy as Michael's hidden eyes.
Isra thinks it might be the first line drawn between the moon and the stars that together make a map of this golden man who has left her once before.
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