There are a hundred different eyes on me as I walk back into the crowd. They all feel more like touches than looks, more like knives and nothing at all like kisses. I know I should wonder what they all think of me, the citizens of my court, I know I should worry. But, here I am with an electric boy at my back and a thousand lines of war painting the same maps across our skin. And I don't worry the way I should.
Later tonight I will, but not now with the copper bending beneath our hooves and the fire-heat cooling from our skin. Now I will only take each of those sharp stares and let them remind me of all the things I must do (because if I don't there is no one else who will). Maybe he can see it in the echo of my hooves on copper-- a million small, holy goodbyes.
Maybe his hooves are walking across my city in notes of the same song.
(maybe it's not my city anymore)
Etiquette demands that I slow down when he starts to talk. I don't. There is only a flash of a smile over my shoulder to show that I'm listening to him at all. It's a look I never used to understand: slyness, happiness, joy, a little monstrous. Caligo looked like that once, when I met her beneath the wings of thunder-birds. It's no wonder now why I didn't trust her then. Even then I knew that whatever part of her that was all god was all terrible.
I let his question hang in the silence between our goodbye steps just long enough to gather weight. I laugh. “Better keep up then.” Kicking my hooves up into a run is so much easier now than it used to be. Suffering has made me strong, rage stronger. I let my laughter echo to lead him onward and for the first time I leave no trail in my wake to show him the way. Overhead Fable joins us, blotting out the moonlight for a moment as he flies towards his favorite spire on our castle.
I run, and run, and run until I'm at the great marble, wood and gemstone doors of home. My lungs are hardly aching in my chest; I could have run for hours. The autumn breeze cools whatever sweat has gathered on my skin and just when I feel like I might shiver I hear him behind me. There is a heat in my gaze when I look at him, like a dog that has discovered the wonder of running with wolves and lions. I feel wild, and feral, and I know that look is on my face again. The otherness, I can feel it dragging at my shoulders like wings.
The doors moan as push through them. I lead him towards the library. A fire is burning low enough to be almost considered dead. The pillow are where I left them (and what I left them as). I don't wonder if he'll see the single chain-mail one tucked beneath the others, and I don't wonder if he'll notice how it's rusted instead of polished.
On a red silk pillow my journal flutters open.
I don't wonder if he'll notice that either. He will.
“Find out for yourself.” I answer his question finally and I know it's the same way any god answers a prayer. Nothing is free. By blood, and scar, and suffering I learned that. And I hope he can learn everything I learned from the sea without having to die. I hope it so hard that it's almost a prayer.
Even when I close the door behind me I don't stop hoping.
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