“because you'll never be this way ever again.”
“Yes.” I say the word into the howling wind like it's a word of claiming, of taking, of war. The autumn wind takes it and I hope it will make it out across my city, past the horizon, and to that gleaming shore. Yes. I want it to say the word there, against the tide and the shore and the general's lips,
Yes. I am coming for you. Hopefully the wind is still howling then. I hope it's full of hail and thunder.
If I can see anything in Michael, anything at all, it's the sad sorrow curling like a sleeping lion under the thick tangles of his mane. And if anything in me matches what is in him it's that, only my lion is awake and she's sharpening her teeth on stones every day. Maybe Michael can see the way she's calling to his, the way she's begging in the way of wildcats and hungry things for him to wake up, wake up, wake up.
Time is slipping by faster, and faster, and faster. Even all my magic, and my rage, and my purpose cannot hold it back for long. It's like a river and my lungs are parched for water. I'm always parched.
Rocks clatter under my hooves. I let them be just rocks as I pull away from him. Even years later it still feels like a ghost is nipping at my heels, pushing me onward towards that memory. “Follow me.” I know he will. My lions knows too and she walks with us with a stone in her teeth even though she already has a belly full of them.
Too soon I'm at the burned pass. There are young saplings bare of leaves, sprouting between the graves. Each is no more than a pile of dirt packed down by the rain, and snow, and time. It's almost hard to image them as graves at all, it seems more likely that they have been left behind by the shifting of the mountain. But I know what's below all that dirt. Bone by bone, with bloody knees and a dirt horn I had made them.
I didn't have magic then. Maybe if I did there would be no graves to greet us.
The scar on my hip tingles when I turn back to Micheal. My lion bares her rock-ground fangs, she roars. Wake up, wake up, wake up. I wonder if maybe this is where my daughter got her magic from-- from a lioness with a belly full of stones. My cheek burns when I press it against him to ground myself, to keep me in this body of flesh and blood. Without something to ground me I'm worried that I will explode and there will be nothing less of the world for anyone to put back together (certainly nothing of me, I would be stardust and glass shards).
“There was a wall here once to keep the rest of Novus out of Denocte. Merchants would come to seek fortune beyond the gates and children from other courts would look up with wonder in their eyes at all the magic held secret in the streets of our home. I imagine that even then, it was more a warning than a wall.” I know I might be wrong, but I've always hoped for something different. Even when I was running from the fires I hoped.
Michael is almost cold under my touch. I feel like I'm burning up (like I'm awake, awake, awake). “And then the last leaders of Denocte burned the entire pass and called it our salvation and our protection.” If there are any tears falling from my eyes they are diamond hard and begging to shaped into weapon. I know he can see them even when I tuck my nose into his hair, even when I breathe there with an echo of the howling wind that is even now carrying my voice across the horizon.
“Do you understand?” He must. He must.
The scar on my hip aches.
He must.
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