The sun rises, and sets on another day. Snow is falling in fat, wet flakes that stick to his mane and pile in the thick winter coat on his back. And like he must, Michael returns to the sea.
It's been whispering his name for days: waves breaking, the saltwater roar. When he hears it outside the city his heart feels like a fist, or like a bird, or like a rock, hard and sharp. It's been a year since he's seen the ocean, even crashing against these steep cliffs - not since he went to the ocean to open his hands and bring Isra home, hands that were too small and a grip that was too shaky to hold her and all of her wild magic.
Michael stares in rapt silence, eyes fixed on the distant, cresting waves as they roll in toward the dark rock of the continent, wondering many things that do not ever quite take shape - nameless things, half-formed things, things that swim close enough to the surface to be seen in the slanted shafts of light but do not break into the open. He thinks someday he will write a poem about the sea and her wild magic like Isra's--a long love poem to the deep and the dark.
Michael starts walking, along the cliff, as if daring that green and angry sea to rise up and meet him. Take him. And he doesn't stop until the vineyard rises up against the still-falling snow and the heavy gray clouds that block out the night sky. Before he knows it he is closed in on all sides by grape vine sleeping in the snow, and again, before he knows it, he is at the door of the quiet little house.
Knocking.
It isn't that late, he supposes. An hour or two past sundown in that time of year that sundown visits earlier and earlier. And he thought, he saw a light in the window, but who knows.
It's been whispering his name for days: waves breaking, the saltwater roar. When he hears it outside the city his heart feels like a fist, or like a bird, or like a rock, hard and sharp. It's been a year since he's seen the ocean, even crashing against these steep cliffs - not since he went to the ocean to open his hands and bring Isra home, hands that were too small and a grip that was too shaky to hold her and all of her wild magic.
Michael stares in rapt silence, eyes fixed on the distant, cresting waves as they roll in toward the dark rock of the continent, wondering many things that do not ever quite take shape - nameless things, half-formed things, things that swim close enough to the surface to be seen in the slanted shafts of light but do not break into the open. He thinks someday he will write a poem about the sea and her wild magic like Isra's--a long love poem to the deep and the dark.
Michael starts walking, along the cliff, as if daring that green and angry sea to rise up and meet him. Take him. And he doesn't stop until the vineyard rises up against the still-falling snow and the heavy gray clouds that block out the night sky. Before he knows it he is closed in on all sides by grape vine sleeping in the snow, and again, before he knows it, he is at the door of the quiet little house.
Knocking.
It isn't that late, he supposes. An hour or two past sundown in that time of year that sundown visits earlier and earlier. And he thought, he saw a light in the window, but who knows.
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us."
@red <3
