[P] my fellow passerine;

[Nicnevin]

HERE IS THE HOUR THAT HAS FORGOTTEN THE MINUTE
though the minnow remembers the stream.

The air crackles. Even burns.

Not in the way that the salt burnt my lungs when first I set hoof on Novus’s soil. It doesn’t burn like that. It burns like the tug of a rope pulled taught, nearly at its limits, fraying in the middle. It burns like something that is about to burn – the fraught second before the fire starts, spark put to dry wood. It’s difficult to explain, but I can feel the tension run across my skin, pricking and pulling. I remember exactly enough about being the wind to know that the feeling is violent, but-

Violence can be beautiful, when committed properly.

The water pours rivulets down my skin, traces and taints and darkens every inch of my form. It plasters the wild tangle of my mane to my skin, and I think, only vaguely, only absently, that it will almost certainly be impossible to deal with later. But that really isn’t important. The only important things are the rain, those sharp cracks of light that seem to split open the sky, the low rumble of the wind growling, and the boy beside of me. Yes, he tells me, although I already know the answer – like it came from somewhere inside of me, innate as breathing – and he laughs, and somehow I hear the sound distinctly over the howl of the storm.

Run! he says, suddenly, the bright gold gleam of his eyes on me for only a moment before he leaps into motion, and I am following him before I can think about it, before I can even bother to think twice. I think I might be laughing, and I think that my laughter is as close of a mimicry as I can make it of the wind I once was – just as wild and just as light and just as fleeting. The world stumbles and crashes again in a splash of blinding light, and he leaps into the air to follow it, a dark silhouette against an even darker sky, trailing gold dust like flecks of glittering metal in the wake of his wings. I nearly hesitate, when he does. My wings are powerful, and expansive, and I know that they are all but aching for better use, but I am so unaccustomed to flying in anything but tranquility, and I am so unused to such great heights, such powerful wind, the tempestuous rage of this wonderfully fleeting world-

But I don’t hesitate. My wings outstretch, charcoal feathers buffeted by the wind, and I leap, spiraling up and up into the storm in his wake. Higher up, the wind is wilder (and colder, made colder still by the pelt of rain), and-

When I was the wind, I did not recognize my own strength. It only seemed natural. Same when I was a sword; slicing things open, and doing it apathetically, only seemed natural. It only seems natural to flit from place to place as a firefly, to stretch thoughtlessly up towards the sun as a vine, to pool and run down to the forest floor as a single drop of dew. When I was the wind, I did not recognize how I could tear. I did not recognize what destructive capacity I had in me. I simply was. I never thought about the way that I had teeth, without even intending it.

But now the wind is all around me, and I am nearly helpless to it. I don’t feel the sense of danger I’m sure I should, even when all my vision is illuminated by white light and I smell electricity in the air; I’m sure I should, but I have this young body, and this young heart, and this young mind, and every other me, every other part of my soul that has ever existed falls into place inside of me in the face of all this beauty.

(But the part of me that was a sword – that part lingers.)

I circle him in the air, seeking another glimpse of those lion’s eyes of his, and, once I find them, I smile broadly. (I think that I might be smiling like a sword smiles, in the only way a sword knows how; a smile with a sharp edge.) I let the part of me that is full-wild and full-rampant rise to the surface, the part of me that is Nicnevin, composed of herself and so many others, and I nearly laugh, but the sound never makes it out of my lips. It is hard to hear, over the pelt of rain and the scream of light and the wail of wind, but I ask, suddenly, “So, strangeling boy – do you know how to dance?”

I do.

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@Leonidas || <3 <3 <3 || "elegy," gregory orr

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