Being beside her makes me feel less alone, like I am not the only one left who doesn't know how to reform her bones into the shape of peace. My lips have forgotten how to make the sound of it. My heart has forgotten the beat of it, like hummingbirds instead of hornets. Together we are all sharp shards and flames reaching towards the sky trying to see how hot a star might burn. I want to brush our blades together just to hear the sound.
“No.” It comes out like the sound of a blade, our blades, our shards. And I want to tell her yes. I want to tell her that tearing the maze down to sharp weapons more gold than Acton's skin helped. But it did nothing to soothe the edges of me that want to learn the poetry in peace.
I don't know if anything will.
The entire meadow ripples into grass made of pearl-strings. The winter wind sings through them, and I wonder how I have the ability to still make something beautiful. It feels like my soul it rotten and stained with all the flavors of violence, sorrow, and longing. My magic wants to drown the world in blood. And I...
And I....
Want to save it as much as I want to drown it.
My own hoof drags a pattern in the sand. It's an arrow running straight through the ash, and my shoulder aches without the weight of a quiver. Like a phantom limb it aches. I do not look at my arrow as I search her eyes for something, for some hint at what beast I must become to save her from the fire eating her alive. “I used to run from everything.” I had run from fire, from the tide, from the sorrow nipping at my heels, from the boy who caught me stealing an apple. I had run and run until my entire body was sleek as a cheetah, and my lungs strong enough to hold in them the entire north-wind.
I wish I remembered how to run.
“Now I look at everything and beg it to come closer.” There is a purr in my chest, all lion and magic I haven't found the bottom of. It's sharpening its teeth and claws, preparing to conquer and devour. I smile at her, because I can already feel the things that I must say breaking my heart. “And soon I'm going to take back the world from all the things that made me run.” My heart trembles beneath my skin like a dying thing dashing itself to death in the places where our sharp pieces rub together.
I blink and I feel like I'm dying too when my eyes whisper the good-bye I cannot make my lips form, just like they cannot form the shape of peace. I want to cry. I want to hug her. I want to do anything but stand here with all my sharp edges and my fury.
But I cannot, and so I do not.
All I can do is burn.
@Morrighan
