WHAT WILL MY BECOMING LOOK LIKE?
GOD BURYING LION'S TEETH AND LILLY SEEDS IN MY HEART & ME BITING DOWN BECAUSE I THINK IT'LL BRING ME SOME DAMP SUNLIT PATH OF SILENCE? WILL IT HURT? WILL I BE COVERED IN BLOOD NOT BELONGING TO ME? GO ON THEN, GIVE ME THAT DREAM AGAIN WHERE YOU SHOW UP WITH ASH-STAINED CHEEKBONES & TEETH OF SPLINTERED GLASS. TELL ME HOW GOD IS THE SOUND MADE BY A FIST UNFOLDING INTO PETALS.
Watching the Gealach return to the sea is indescribable. It is light on water; it is the thousand incomprehensible shapes a wave forms; it is the idea that a drop of blood is one of many in a body, inseparable from the liters. Lyr marvels at the physique of the black stallion; the hard, unforgiving angles, as if cut from obsidian—and how, abruptly, those hard angles are dissolved into the soft motion of the sea. Lyr only notices after the fact that the stallion’s eyes had been an unnatural, harsh amethyst but he never connects it in his mind that, perhaps, that is the very reason his eyes are garnet. A relation. And that if the gem-stone eyes are beautiful in someone else’s face, why are they not beautiful in his own?
Lyr does not know and does not think to ask, anyways. He stands staring, breathless, after the creatures of myth. He stands until he feels the attention of the girl shift toward him and his words—what had he said again? Lyr is already forgetting—and she answers him with a smile. An imposition? she says. Without you I would have died. What I did was foolish… it was a combined effort. We’re survivors.
He nearly says, yes, what you did was foolish. But Lyr doesn’t, because something within him somewhere suggests that would be rude, even if it is true. He supposes he ought to be more thankful for her intervention, but long and cold nights in the North had taught him otherwise. People never had pure intentions; perhaps she had saved him for some type of recognition, or because she had always wanted to be a hero. Lyr doesn’t ask, however. He smiles shyly and glances toward the sand at his hooves, where he paws at it briefly. You must be exhausted.
“A bit, yes.” He grows uncomfortable with the conversation directing itself at him; he has to answer; he has to think. Lyr’s smile wavers nearly imperceivable, and he begins to head toward the cliff face alongside her. “They were chasing me because… that’s what they do. They’re Gealach kelpies, native to Terrastella. They live in the ocean and come to shore to lure horses to their death or change them.” He rolls his shoulders in a slight, supple shrug as he begins to ascend the small, twisting pathway behind her.
Lyr takes quiet note of her shakiness, of how she has to steel herself before she ascends. It makes him remember first time he felt that way; it was not quite the North, not yet… it was months before that, in a port of a distant land where they worshiped gods of war. Someone hired them the whole crew, to act as mercenaries and—
Lyr begins to ascend the trail; the rocks shift underfoot and the sea-breeze chills his skin—
—and there had been tribal people in the mountains with short, slashing swords for close combat, who gutted Lyr’s bunkmate in the first onslaught and—
He exhales. He inhales. He looks back toward the sea; and then toward her.
“Are you from here?” Lyr asks, in that quiet way of his.
@
EVERYONE WHO TOUCHES ME WILL WALK AWAY
UNHARMED AND SINGING
