“AND DEEP IN OUR SECRET HEARTS
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
It is because of the endlessly aching hole in her heart, the one the other stars of her constellations had filled, that she finds herself walking in the sunlight and counting the moonstone beneath her hooves like wishes and prayers instead of stone. Each is nameless, and cold, and bell-chime loud as she walks over them. And each says nothing when she wipes the dust and split wine off them like each is a tear instead of a wound given by mortal things. But she names them anyway when the clouds shift overhead and set them to glittering.
There is no song in her chest, no vibration of marrow and blood, as she wanders between the vendors with sweat on their brows and greed in their smiles. There is nothing but sorrow when she stops to let a mare drape a mask of diamonds, blood-red rubies, and black feathers across her brown.
It suits you. The woman said with her own muddied shed-star eyes shining too-bright in the noon. Warset had not known to question it, not with the sorrow of a lost-star, a cast-out star, a star-that-will-never-go-home, filling up her heart like blood had filled her leopard stomach.
And perhaps if she had known the magic on their holidays where the veils between this world in the next grew frail-- perhaps she would have offered more than a quiet nod and a too-quick step away when the mare's eyes fell gluttonous to the cosmic darkness of her wings.
But she does not know, she never knows, and so she continues on through the crowds (another specter, another ghost too fragile to hold, another bruised bit of marble too old to carve) with only the moonstones to keep her company. Until, of course, she sees him draped in the shadows that had kept the light of one star from bleeding into another.
Her breath, soot and smoke and cedar, flutters in her chest like a song. The wings at her side unfurl, pushing the crowd and their mortal ghosts, back, back, back from this bit of darkness she remembers. She follows him through the markets, a bit of marble chasing the shadows, until the spell (whatever spell this memory has cast over her) shatters as he drops his glass of wine.
It is a decidedly mortal thing to do and watching it cracks the wound in her soul open again.
Warset follows him anyway, with quicksilver tears gathering in the corner of her eyes like dew, to the place where the crowd dissolves into silence. Her wings settle, dejected, back to her sides as she watches him carry his corpse of glass into the darkness. Into the silence she says, soft as a willow in the still of a storm, “Is it as easy as this, to cast off shadows like silk?” This time, when she steps closer, she does not reach for him.
He's too made black stone and dirt tonight-- a man with drops of wine on his wings instead of the sea. And the sight of it makes her want to shatter.
@Caine
There is no song in her chest, no vibration of marrow and blood, as she wanders between the vendors with sweat on their brows and greed in their smiles. There is nothing but sorrow when she stops to let a mare drape a mask of diamonds, blood-red rubies, and black feathers across her brown.
It suits you. The woman said with her own muddied shed-star eyes shining too-bright in the noon. Warset had not known to question it, not with the sorrow of a lost-star, a cast-out star, a star-that-will-never-go-home, filling up her heart like blood had filled her leopard stomach.
And perhaps if she had known the magic on their holidays where the veils between this world in the next grew frail-- perhaps she would have offered more than a quiet nod and a too-quick step away when the mare's eyes fell gluttonous to the cosmic darkness of her wings.
But she does not know, she never knows, and so she continues on through the crowds (another specter, another ghost too fragile to hold, another bruised bit of marble too old to carve) with only the moonstones to keep her company. Until, of course, she sees him draped in the shadows that had kept the light of one star from bleeding into another.
Her breath, soot and smoke and cedar, flutters in her chest like a song. The wings at her side unfurl, pushing the crowd and their mortal ghosts, back, back, back from this bit of darkness she remembers. She follows him through the markets, a bit of marble chasing the shadows, until the spell (whatever spell this memory has cast over her) shatters as he drops his glass of wine.
It is a decidedly mortal thing to do and watching it cracks the wound in her soul open again.
Warset follows him anyway, with quicksilver tears gathering in the corner of her eyes like dew, to the place where the crowd dissolves into silence. Her wings settle, dejected, back to her sides as she watches him carry his corpse of glass into the darkness. Into the silence she says, soft as a willow in the still of a storm, “Is it as easy as this, to cast off shadows like silk?” This time, when she steps closer, she does not reach for him.
He's too made black stone and dirt tonight-- a man with drops of wine on his wings instead of the sea. And the sight of it makes her want to shatter.
@Caine
