“AND DEEP IN OUR SECRET HEARTS
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
There is a memory that blooms in her, one from this flesh, of another horse that had looked at her like this---
Like she is nothing but a chewed out bit of light pretending to be flesh, and bone, and sorrow. Like she is a predator pretending to be a girl. Like she is a mistake that has not yet learned all the ways, all the curves, all the dark swirls of quicksilver and feathers, in which she is wrong.
Warset wonders if his wings, the incandescent or the sea-drowned ones, know the poetry of the sun or of the moon. She wonders if he can read the notes of almost-forgotten sounds in the flash of her teeth as her lips hum in laughter she does not know how to make. Her wings snap, and billow, and sing like the sails of a siren anointed ship on the horizon. They do not know how to go gently, not yet, not like his bloody spectral crows.
And they speak where she stumbles like a lost lamb over this language of mortals. A feather whispers to him in satin notes that say come closer. Another coos and sings like a siren of drowning, and salt-water bloating lungs into lanterns heavy with wishes and ghosts.
Her entire form, from the delicate curled tips of her ears to the fragile bones of her hocks, trembles when he lays his lips against the shell of her ear and exhales like a wolf. “I would beg it of you.” She exhales back, like a lion and a doe. He still smells like the sea, this nameless man who feels like a dead comet, and she can taste the salt on his skin when she presses her nose into him in turn. “Take a piece of me if you can hold it.” Because she is so full of pieces, each sharper than the last, and when she shifts to lean a bit of her weight against him she can still feel blood in the bottom of her belly.
In another life, one in the blackness with the cosmos running like water between her wings, she might have wondered if they looked like horses or two comet-tails tangled together. In other life she might have known enough of the song of his soul to give it a name. She might have plucked a song from his lips as easily as she might pluck a feather from his space-black wings now.
Which would cause him pain? Which?
What could she take from him, in the same way he takes the memory of this flesh from her? What can she do, but pull away and blink the salt from her quicksilver gaze and shake the crystals of brine from her eyelashes? What can she do but inhale, and exhale, because these mortal lungs demand that she remember how to do something as simple as breathe?
From one moment to the next. Breathe.
Warset tries not to think of all the ways in which he feels like a stone washed up from the black bottom of the sea when she drags her nose along the bottom of his chin. And she tries not to memorize the flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat so close to her teeth. “There.” A whisper, frail and thin and full of almost-music, as she pushes his gaze into the glaring sun and the moon hiding behind it. And she does not ask him the same, because she already knows.
His wings had not spoken back to her. All he has given her is magic, and brine, and the language of mortal men who have forgotten the color of light.
@Caine
Like she is nothing but a chewed out bit of light pretending to be flesh, and bone, and sorrow. Like she is a predator pretending to be a girl. Like she is a mistake that has not yet learned all the ways, all the curves, all the dark swirls of quicksilver and feathers, in which she is wrong.
Warset wonders if his wings, the incandescent or the sea-drowned ones, know the poetry of the sun or of the moon. She wonders if he can read the notes of almost-forgotten sounds in the flash of her teeth as her lips hum in laughter she does not know how to make. Her wings snap, and billow, and sing like the sails of a siren anointed ship on the horizon. They do not know how to go gently, not yet, not like his bloody spectral crows.
And they speak where she stumbles like a lost lamb over this language of mortals. A feather whispers to him in satin notes that say come closer. Another coos and sings like a siren of drowning, and salt-water bloating lungs into lanterns heavy with wishes and ghosts.
Her entire form, from the delicate curled tips of her ears to the fragile bones of her hocks, trembles when he lays his lips against the shell of her ear and exhales like a wolf. “I would beg it of you.” She exhales back, like a lion and a doe. He still smells like the sea, this nameless man who feels like a dead comet, and she can taste the salt on his skin when she presses her nose into him in turn. “Take a piece of me if you can hold it.” Because she is so full of pieces, each sharper than the last, and when she shifts to lean a bit of her weight against him she can still feel blood in the bottom of her belly.
In another life, one in the blackness with the cosmos running like water between her wings, she might have wondered if they looked like horses or two comet-tails tangled together. In other life she might have known enough of the song of his soul to give it a name. She might have plucked a song from his lips as easily as she might pluck a feather from his space-black wings now.
Which would cause him pain? Which?
What could she take from him, in the same way he takes the memory of this flesh from her? What can she do, but pull away and blink the salt from her quicksilver gaze and shake the crystals of brine from her eyelashes? What can she do but inhale, and exhale, because these mortal lungs demand that she remember how to do something as simple as breathe?
From one moment to the next. Breathe.
Warset tries not to think of all the ways in which he feels like a stone washed up from the black bottom of the sea when she drags her nose along the bottom of his chin. And she tries not to memorize the flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat so close to her teeth. “There.” A whisper, frail and thin and full of almost-music, as she pushes his gaze into the glaring sun and the moon hiding behind it. And she does not ask him the same, because she already knows.
His wings had not spoken back to her. All he has given her is magic, and brine, and the language of mortal men who have forgotten the color of light.
@Caine
