So when the light grows dim
I've given all my love
I've given all my love
It was impossible for the dreaming girl to imagine a world where this woman did not rise from ash. Where she was not, somehow, the creative of soot and fire—as though a miasma of smoke had risen from plumes of ember to coalesce into something elegantly feral, and as dark as the pitch of night. Aehra’s lips pursed finely in answer to the short pop of laughter, a soft rejection of the Seaborne’s queries.
I’m quite plain, as you can see.
She would have to disagree. Plain, perhaps, but only in the way that an obscure night sky might be. There was no telling what lay beyond the black, unfurling fluff of clouds, and were Aehra a pinch braver, she might insist to pull back the fine layers of murk to find the stars underneath. For like the sea, the girl was unfathomably compelled by the allure of the moon, and hungered to know if it hid beneath this woman’s skin.
The Seaborne was too gentle for such starved curiosity, and she satiated her narrowed, disappointed eyes with a flash of her silver tail. Aehra’s chin lifted, the lithe taper of her neck ribboning into something judgmental. “Water,” she corrected, the music of her voice lilted with mild ire.
Perhaps she did come from the sky—perhaps she was a girl of both worlds. For though she had been christened by saltwater, Aehra knew that her island mothers were a juxtaposition of tidal depths and astral heavens. Jahra in her delicate fins and her lavender hide, which shone like seawater under the fall of a setting sun—Aelin and her resplendent wings, vast and blue, and her ivory skin.
And yet both of them loved their seafoam daughter, and had raised her beneath the God of blue, mysterious emptiness.
Water. She came from water.
“Where do I come from? I’ve already told you.” Her words might have been too cross, but it was a subject that was inconsequential to Aehra. She knew enough of her own history; it was the freshness of this new land, these new people, that she wanted to unravel.
Aehra backpedaled with disarming swiftness, dismissing the stranger’s queries with a brusqueness that would no doubt bereave the loveliness of her mothers.
“You should not call yourself plain, or else other people will, too. Better to let them assume that you are fire, or a starless sky, or anything but plain.” A huff left her gray lips, and the girl’s opaline eyes shone with a discontent that leveled her youth.
Her tongue clucked beyond the cage of her teeth, a leg lifting reflexively as her skin shivered, rejecting the tickle of a too-long blade of grass.
At last, she conceded. “I come from too many worlds. Some I haven’t been to—but they were my mothers’ homes, and so they’re mine, too.”
Pinning the other mare beneath close scrutiny, she made another offering. “I am Aehra.”
I’m quite plain, as you can see.
She would have to disagree. Plain, perhaps, but only in the way that an obscure night sky might be. There was no telling what lay beyond the black, unfurling fluff of clouds, and were Aehra a pinch braver, she might insist to pull back the fine layers of murk to find the stars underneath. For like the sea, the girl was unfathomably compelled by the allure of the moon, and hungered to know if it hid beneath this woman’s skin.
The Seaborne was too gentle for such starved curiosity, and she satiated her narrowed, disappointed eyes with a flash of her silver tail. Aehra’s chin lifted, the lithe taper of her neck ribboning into something judgmental. “Water,” she corrected, the music of her voice lilted with mild ire.
Perhaps she did come from the sky—perhaps she was a girl of both worlds. For though she had been christened by saltwater, Aehra knew that her island mothers were a juxtaposition of tidal depths and astral heavens. Jahra in her delicate fins and her lavender hide, which shone like seawater under the fall of a setting sun—Aelin and her resplendent wings, vast and blue, and her ivory skin.
And yet both of them loved their seafoam daughter, and had raised her beneath the God of blue, mysterious emptiness.
Water. She came from water.
“Where do I come from? I’ve already told you.” Her words might have been too cross, but it was a subject that was inconsequential to Aehra. She knew enough of her own history; it was the freshness of this new land, these new people, that she wanted to unravel.
Aehra backpedaled with disarming swiftness, dismissing the stranger’s queries with a brusqueness that would no doubt bereave the loveliness of her mothers.
“You should not call yourself plain, or else other people will, too. Better to let them assume that you are fire, or a starless sky, or anything but plain.” A huff left her gray lips, and the girl’s opaline eyes shone with a discontent that leveled her youth.
Her tongue clucked beyond the cage of her teeth, a leg lifting reflexively as her skin shivered, rejecting the tickle of a too-long blade of grass.
At last, she conceded. “I come from too many worlds. Some I haven’t been to—but they were my mothers’ homes, and so they’re mine, too.”
Pinning the other mare beneath close scrutiny, she made another offering. “I am Aehra.”
