this year I devour.
She looks just as he remembered her—so tall, so svelte, dark as deep earth and just as sweet-smelling. And her wings both lay the right way now, miracle of miracles; Elchanan’s heart seems to swell in something like happiness, or maybe pride. She walks quicker now, and more confidently. Perhaps a little sadder, but not as uncertainly. He cannot imagine what it would have been like to have his own body crippled. What it be like to be held to the ground without refuge, without any freedom.
A kind of shudder runs up the priest’s spine as he imagines it. His mouth goes dry as the Mors, it itches like a bug bite from his teeth to the back of his throat, and for a brief moment he pauses and stands perfectly still, letting the barely-there waves of the lake wash up against his hooves. A chill lances up his legs. Underfoot, the white stones roll and tumble over one another, softened by the water, bumping gently against his ankles and hooves, a ghostly reminder of all the ways the world has changed.
For a moment there is a heart-pang, as if of wanting, or despair. Then he shakes off the melancholy and smiles.
Elchanan notices but does not comment on her sadness—the look in her eyes that says, even now, she is thinking of something else. The soft brown of his gaze tracks her face without ever really stopping. He does not make outward note of the sad curve of her mouth, or the strange, sorrowful silver of her eyes. There is nothing to do about it. And he has never been the kind to wallow. No, the night is young and bright with stars, and there is a whole lake for them to dance across. To waste it would be just pitiful. So they won’t.
“Waiting,” he says simply. It is so open, so possible; perhaps on purpose, but Elchanan would never be so brash as to admit it. Instead he half-smiles, a quick and dirty slice of almost-fanged white teeth. He presses a wide eggshell-blue wing up against his chest and drops into a knight’s deep bow, hooves scattering a shower of rocks, knee landing against the almost-sand; looking up at her from a place just above the ground, those dark brown eyes glint with something only a little darker than charm.
And the priest says, with a voice sweet like honey and weighted down by magic, “Don’t be so sad, Samaira.” The brown eyes blink; Elchanan’s tone is unexpectedly sympathetic, on the surface, at the very least. “You would like to dance. It will help, a little.”
He stands and extends a wing, an invitation.
