how does a myth
come to be
come to be
What strange girls they are! And yet strange in the same way, and isn’t that the best kind of belonging?
Where Leto is black, Iscariot is, too; the bones in their hair sing the same wild song; on Leto’s skin is the same warm, dusty scent that so often tailed Magdalene’s bed, her sheets, her hair. Iscariot’s nostrils flare as she breathes it in deep. Home, home, home. Leto smells like childhood. She talks like belonging. But past the blanket of her relief at having someone to talk to, in her bones Iscariot is scared, scared, scared.
Scared the cure won’t work. Scared it won’t even exist. Scared that all this will be nothing, scared that by the time she makes it back home, the unmarked grave next to her mother—the one that was supposed to be for her—will be long filled by some unworthy stranger.
Fear fuels her as much as blood, now, and Iscariot’s head is buzzing as she tries to keep her feet still in the shifting sands. Her heart races in her chest like a wild snarling thing.
They are close, so close. She can see the soft single curls of Leto’s dark lashes and the easy plane of her cheeks, the threads of fine black hair across her muzzle, the easy movement of her lips. Iscariot’s stomach clenches, her mouth burns dry. When the laugh escapes her it is hard and sharp: “I am dying. Cursed,” she says, with a grin like ice. “And tired of it.”
A lapse of silence follows. Her amber eyes drop to the sand. The wind howls overhead, and even if Iscariot had a bigger heart than she does, she is sure she would not want to admit anything more.
