Warset's first thought when she watches him plummet from the cliff, is that today another star has fallen from the cosmic throne. Her own wings flutter at the memory, lifting out from her side, too large for the delicate bones of body.
But then she realizes that he is not lightness streaking through the darkness. He is a bladed streak of darkness cutting through the high noon sun. The weight of her wings settles into the sand, drawing stripes on the shore like claw marks. And when she blinks it is to shutter out the sorrow of his darkness cleaving through the low clouds and the brightness.
A drumming starts in the blackness of her eyelids when he hits the surf. She can almost feel the violence of it, bones and shore, froth and feather. The drumming intensifies as her heart picks up the rhythm of it. Her body begs for flight. Her wings unfold again. Refold. Unfold. Catch the sea-breeze. Always her wings are speaking but it's the language of the stars, a memory of before, a feline snarl of hunger. Warset has yet to learn the poetry of them.
It's only when he comes close enough that she opens her eyes. Brine hangs to him like a cloak and she thinks about the whisper of sea-monsters (dragons, kelpies and all the things stars remember the birth of). She wonders if he has the sea in his blood, caught between his bones like a seaweed caught in the tangle of his mane. Warset steps closer to pull the weed from his air. It tastes salted, like a moon-tear, like a bit of stardust caught in a river.
It tastes like she wants to learn the secret to falling into the ocean not like a star but like a weapon of darkness made to cleave instead of sing. She inhales and pulls away.
The red crow is a strange thing, she thinks, like a bit of blood smelted down and banged into form. She wonders what it would have looked like, falling from the sky beside him. Somewhere a memory of a crow itches at her thoughts. The leopard beneath her skin half-rouses and stretches. She starts to pay attention, for the noon is half-way to the twilight. The predator has been dreaming lilac dreams.
Warset steps further away from this dark man with his blood crow and his salted skin. The moonlight of her gaze reflects across the water on his wings, even from the not-large-enough distance it reflects. Everything inside her starts to feel an echo of a hum, a phantom memory of a dream. Everything in her starts to crack and break and all she knows is that it hurts.
Oh, it hurts.
“Why?” She asks with that moonlight on her tongue and stardust between her teeth. If there a secret to being darkness falling instead of light, she needs to learn it.
More than anything.
@Caine
