“Promise me you'll never forget me
because if I thought you would,
I'd never leave.”
because if I thought you would,
I'd never leave.”
I want to paint those words across her throat when she inhales sharply. I want to pull the air from her lungs. I want--
When she says well enough I know the look I make is wavering and reading. How long have I understood that well enough us nothing more than an iron gate? It seems like I've known that gate all my life and only just now realized that it's a garden blooming with diamonds, and moon-petals, and jasmine waiting on the other side. I wonder if Marisol knows about the garden; I wonder if she knows about the gate and how it loves to lie as much as it longs for the truth.
The queen in me knows I should ask if she knows. This should be about insuring that all the wounds I healed with Asterion can remain whole. I should be worried about our borders, and our ports, and the merchants yelling out around us. What I should do is turn the quartz to cobble-stone, lead her to the ports to showcase all the things that Denocte might offer to her new crown. I should--
Marisol tucks her head to her chest. I am lost, lost, lost.
Instead I cross this wasteland of smokey quartz like a god walking across her newborn world. My hooves sound hollow, like I'm only a ghost instead of a thing made of flesh and bone and want. I do not pause to think of any of the things I need to be. I only know that there is this moment, her with her wavering breath and her tucked head. I only know that there will be so few of these moments, if any, left in this life for us. So I grab it between my teeth and pull. It doesn't feel like roots, it feels like an anchor, like holding a boat still in a storm knowing that the sea is going to take it no matter how hard I hold on. I try anyway.
I push my nose against hers in a touch that begs her to look up, up, up. I want her to see the fire halos all around us. I want her to see the constellations of diamond that are running wild through the quartz. There's a crack running across my heart with blood leaking out that I want her to see. “You should know...” I press our cheeks together even though I know that touch won't line our cracks up in just the right way. I inhale her. I pause.
This isn't like when my hollow soul found Eik. It's not like becoming, like flying, like imploding and making a new universe. It's not the forever of gods.
This is like remembering for the first time that I was mortal once. It's like being a slave and discovering that the moonlight hits the top of your pillow every night. I feel like my old skin, my old body, my old heart is trying to hold on to just a small piece of the new one. It reminds me of how sweet goodbyes are, how they ferment on the tongue with a hundred heavy flavors all at once.
I trace my nose across her cheek, her throat, the coldness below her eyes, before I continue. “that my heart has always loved you.” There's more I should say, but I've always been terrible at should. I'm too full of feeling and fire and wanting. How can anyone who is two bodies, two lives, two dreams be anything but pieces fitting poorly together? How can I be anything but a broken goodbye?
But I try not to think about that as I watch the pulse flutter behind her cheek. I try not to think anything at all as I wait.
And wait.
And wait.
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