and pluck til time and times are done
the silver apples of the moon
the golden apples of the sun
the silver apples of the moon
the golden apples of the sun
I
t is cold, cold in the lashing waves and the rising tide as the ocean tries to crowd into the little stone-wrapped cove. Against the summer-hot storm-humid air it is a shock and Aster wants to laugh at the way her blood races to keep her warm and little bits of salt-spray are whipped by the wind from off the waves. They write patterns that fade as soon as they are born and the girl stretches her fledgling wings to catch them in her golden feathers. Maybe tonight they will tell her what they were trying to say. If she wasn’t here, how far would Avesta walk out into the waves? It isn’t hard to think she might be a princess of the undersea; that the beach and cliffsides and rolling hills beyond are not her home, that she is visiting the shore to plant pearls for a garden of iridescent flowers.
It is even easier to think it when the unicorn says We could be anything.
Aster doesn’t respond We already are. Instead she only lips at a seed-pearl caught like a dark star in a black net against the girl’s neck and glories in the way the only warmth is where their narrow bodies press together. When Avesta says her name and the thunder answers Aster grins and it is not the kind of look a girl should wear. Her eyes are gold gold gold when she looks at the sea-gray storm-blue unicorn beside her.
She thinks that she will give her name to no one else. That only Leonidas and Avesta can have it, the one who says it like home and the other who says it like a storm.
Only because they stand so close does she hear her companion’s voice. She watches a wave rise up that almost becomes more, the glitter of lightning on water and all the dark of the sky behind it making it look like wings, but it is from the shore that she feels the burn of eyes on her. Aster does not turn around.
“I don’t live anywhere,” she says, and she hasn’t learned how to keep the pride from her voice (or why she should). And yet, and yet, she thinks of a mother. Of curling up in the curve of her belly and listening to the lull of her heartbeat as Florentine told story after story until she fell asleep. Of a father, green-eyed and laughing, the dark curl of his hair like her twin’s. When she speaks again, her voice is soft, the softest thing on the beach. “My brother and I have no home. Our parents disappeared.”
She cannot see the island through the haze of fog and storm. There is only darkness on the horizon, only the whitecaps of waves, only a tongue of lightning and an answering groan.
Aster hates the way sorrow makes her feel like drowning, like all her bird-bones have turned to heavy pearl. She tosses her head, defiant, like if she were grown she could rip down the clouds with her antlers of gold (only the beginning of pyrite buds on her forehead).
“We follow no rules, we are loyal to only each other.” Wild children, defiant children, laughing and fae.
And, sometimes, lonely.
@Avesta <3
