MINYA
take that look from off your face
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Her childhood felt like a distant dream. It almost felt unreal now that adulthood worked itself into a weave that wrapped her up tightly, tightly. Had she been a happy child? No. And maybe that is why her younger years felt like another world. As a slave there had been few moments to truly feel the warmth of love and joy. Yet Minya was lucky to be in slavery with her mother. Her mother who whispered stories of fantastical places. They were places where beauty was unblemished, where magic ruled and was so utterly uncontainable. They were places where creatures existed beyond the limits of her imagination.
Minya stands before the Oasis pool. It gleams crystalline and clear. Even beneath the spring sun, the water seems warm and yet cool. All around it trees reach up toward the sky and bow their bodies over the glistening pool, offering shade from the midday sun. But it is not the midday. The sun has only just begun to rise above the Canyon. Still the sky is purple with sleep, its cheeks still flushed with the warmth of slumber. The water babbles in the way that Minya has always thought nymphs might speak. It is tuneful, peaceful.
Around the Oasis flowers are budding, rich colours glowing brighter as the sky grows lighter with every breath Minya takes. The shadows are still breathing slowly. They hang over everything, thin like sweet smoke - a gauze she can barely touch but melts away the more she looks. There is tranquility and beauty here.
But Minya is none of those things.
Where the Oasis rouses into a well-rested wakefulness, so her body aches with travel. She is bloodstained and wretched. Sand clings to sweat and blood, it turns her steel grey skin dark and raw. Granules rub at the silken-soft of her skin. Blood and sand congeal in her lashes and in the fuscia pink of her hair. There is nothing beautiful about Minya this day. Oh she feels it.
Where is her grace? Where is her elegance? She steps towards the water’s edge with muscles bruised and swollen. Her strides are not graceful like a dance they are short, staccato and lame. She is a dancer broken, a girl for whom music is no longer a healer.
Her eyes close as she steps into the water - against the pain, against her reflection. Dirt and sand and blood lifts from her, carried away by the rippling water. It turns pink and Minya wonders of the story she once was told. Vitae Oasis: Oasis of Life. Did it heal like her mother once said? Minya wades out, deeper, deeper, heading for the small waterfall where water tumbles merrily to the pool below.
She puts her crown beneath its flow and cries a sob. Her tears are washed away by the flowing water, she looks down to see blood flow anew. Fresh from the jagged, broken stumps where her antlers once had been. They sting. Oh how they sting! Her breath it trapped within her lungs and yet somehow she is still crying.
@Orestes | "speaks" | notes: <3
