For every inch of anger that runs across the expressions on her face, for every tense muscle between her bones, for every inch of her that I can see learning to hate me--
For every inch on her a mile of sorrow opens up in this chasm of my heart. There are more miles of pain racing across my soul than miles my hooves in this body have known. My sorrows could shape the outline of a new universe and my heartbreak, oh my heartbreak, it could water a million forests across the cosmos. I want to close to distance between us. I want to do anything but stand here below the shadow of my angry horn and my sad dragon.
But the time for touching her, the time for love-- oh all that time has slipped away from me, from us, from this flesh and blood form of mine. It's gone, gone, gone. Like a river it's gone out with the tide. “I am going because I must.” Because all the time for staying is out in the sea with the love. “There is a country I can free. One that killed me once. Every day it's killing a hundred other hearts, every day someone there is begging for death. I am going because I have enough power in my body to save it, to save the ones still dying. Surely you can understand that. This country does not need me in the same way.” And I know that all of them are not the beloved of the sea, all of them will only turn to worm and rot when their body has no blood left to give.
My eyes are begging her to understand, to see all this rage and fury in me begging for a direction. This world, and that world, and the sea have all made a lion out of me. Nothing has let me stay soft. I wish I was, I wish I was soft enough to curl in her side and cry and cry and cry until we watered the desert. But I have only learned how to replace my sorrows with tears and my heartbreak with weapons. I have only learned what this world has let me learn. All my stories are about blood now. All of them.
“And I promise you,” My knees tremble beneath my sinew and blood when I move to her, they knock like dead trees in a storm. If her eyes are red-rimmed with exhaustion mine are bloody with all the magic that's slowly eating this form alive. I can feel her breath so close to mine, I can feel the way my skin is begging me to comfort her. “I will come back.” It feels strange to tuck my ears back against my mane, to look like an angry hurting unicorn instead of a queen. It feels strange to want to beg forgiveness with my heart and have my lips refuse to form the words. The notes of forgiveness turn to moth wings in my throat, they die each time I try to give them air.
There is a lock of hair upon her cheek I want to brush back. But all I do is wait before her, a warrior going to war for love, for freedom, for a reason to soothe all these sharp edges that are bleeding me dry. And when I say, “Aspara wants to stay,” I hope she can read all the death moth wing words my lips do not know how to form.
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