I liked this old boy’s company. It scared me a little, because I knew it could not last. And I did not know if or when we would ever meet again. It brought to my mind all those thoughts of the future, thoughts which to that moment had been gathering like stormclouds always on the horizon. I wanted to sink my teeth into the future, clamp down, make it my own. I had no interest in dominance over people or places, but time and magic— time and magic I felt entitled to. I was a unicorn, with the same angry spiral of a horn as my mother. I was a unicorn, and I had a kind of quiet rage that was all my own.
But the anger would come later, when I was alone. In his company I listened thoughtfully, head cocked as I thought. His words rolled around inside of me like dark velvet seeds in a wooden bowl, unable to find the perfect place to rest. I still did not know if I believed in what he said, but it did have an air of truth to it. I wanted to believe in complete and total freedom, but the longer I thought the more it seemed like it really might be impossible to love and be free.
“So I have a little piece of your heart, and you have a little piece of mine?”
I promised myself I would keep that little piece of his heart and hold it close. Protect it from how hard I knew the world could be. And yet— I really did not know, not yet. I just had a vague suggestion of it. Adversity had to be lived through to be understood. It could be conveyed in song and story but nothing would substitute for the real thing: loss and grief and all the little rebirths that followed. I had yet to go through all that, and I thought that when the bad times hit, I would be able to shelter in my heart everything precious and sacred and gentle.
It was a great responsibility which he gave me, although I’m sure he did not think twice about it. I was just a girl. And as far as I could tell, he seemed the type to hand out pieces of his heart carelessly, without concern to how they were treated. I, on the other hand, was determined to be careful with mine.
(It would turn out to be one of those funny things where the harder you try for something, the more the opposite happens. In the years to come, I would be beyond careless with my heart. I simply could not help myself. I think life has a most foul sense of humor.)
He said I was close to my sister. A fact as plain and simple as the sea being beautiful. But this time I knew he wasn’t just fumbling at small talk. He was showing me that he knew Avesta was the key to which all doors inside me opened. Coming from someone else, I might have taken this as a threat. But I was not afraid of him, even though his eyes were deep as the ocean and, in my opinion, eyes like that could not be trusted. I know there were many good and wondrous things in the sea, but I also knew there were dangers and horrors. Anyway. “You would be too, if you were me.” I scrunched my nose in silent laughter, because if he was me then who would I be?
Orestes spoke of the sea like a man in love, although I did not realize it then. I noticed how spellbound he was, and how his words seemed to come to me as though from the other side of a distant dream. I wanted to be there, in that dream space with him. My hooves dug deeper and deeper into the sand with every wave (the tide was slowly rising, I had noticed) but I did not feel any more rooted to reality. I was flying low over the desert as he spoke, feeling its radiant warmth on my whiskers, its violent character. Imagining what the rocks and stones and sand had to say to me.
“The sea will try to kill you, but it is romantic about it. The desert is austere and unapologetic; the desert tries to kill you up front. But it is beautiful because of it; it chooses people. Perhaps one day you can visit it.”
“Oh, I will. Papa said he’ll take us, when we’re older.” Or we would just go ourselves, when we felt the time was right. We would surf the sea of sand and trace our muzzles against red canyon walls and, if fate was kind (the sand dollar still flips, slowly, heads or tails) we would walk with a sad king through his golden kingdom. He would tell us more about the desert, and the sea, and how nothing belonged to itself. “It chose you?” I wondered out loud. “Is that why you’re the sovereign?” Would the desert would love me? Would it take a small piece of my heart, too, or would it be greedy?
I pictured all the pieces of all the hearts the desert claimed, and all the sun-kissed grains of sand. I pictured me and sister, sliding down the dunes. Laughing. When I raised my nose to the sky and howled like a wolf, the coyotes would yip and howl like long lost cousins.
“The sand dollar says…” I stopped flipping it, and gently pressed it to my cheek. I was not very good at magic yet, and it was easier to listen to the things that I was touching. I swear the ocean was at attention then; it seemed to perk up, the waves reaching further and further upshore. It was surely just the tides, but I wondered...
“It was alive once.” Nothing like life as we know it, not really— it was a grazer, and that’s about where our similarities end. “It was happiest when the tide was low, and it could feel the moonlight on its skin.” It also liked laying eggs, and it laid a lot of them. A lot. Gross. I snorted and gently lowered the skeleton to the ground.
And as the magic ebbed out of me and the tide rose, home was beginning to feel farther and farther away.
@Orestes RIP the rest of my post list x_x
