“AND DEEP IN OUR SECRET HEARTS
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
Darkness has always felt like a cold thing, a glacial thing, a sea that freezes just where it kisses the shore. The coldness of him, of this darkness, soothes the weeping edges of her old-fire heart when he presses into the hollow of her form between wing and neck. She leans into the touch as she had leaned into the constellation lines and the notes of song that had draped around them all like cloaks. Against his neck, and his ear, and the hollow of his crown, she paints those same tender tomes of tales in breaths across his skin (and perhaps it is jealousy that makes her touch him in all the same places the darkness hard).
“The darkness was never warm. It felt like being wrapped in ice, even when you are a fire that does not know how to do anything but consume. But I was warm enough, bright enough, that neither the darkness nor I ever froze or burned out.” She whispers in between those kisses of her lips (dark skin that is warm instead of cold, fire banked instead of frosted).
Warset wonders if she still feels like fire. Or does she only feel like blood, and bone, and salted tears cold enough to hold in them a promise of winter?
It is a strange thing (and a stranger feeling) to navigate the lines between the sorrow she feels when it brushes against an ember of something slower, something slower. The liquor of his breath, where it trails across her skin like leaves and vines, makes her feel lightheaded with the smell of it. She thinks of flying, and singing, and shaking the stardust from her skin like rain before she laid down in a pillow of darkness to dream. Her lungs and her heart start to hum a song to him, one fragile enough that is almost nothing more than a wavering stutter of the air in her throat.
And she wonders if the mother felt like this, when she tore the holes out of her sides and spit them out. Did it feel like a fever dream? Did it soothe the flame or feed it?
Is there a moment in which she is ever not wondering out how she might learn to survive in this tiny world with it's frail and far constellations?
He pulls away and his hair catches in her mask and pulls it from her face. It falls into the grave of glass and wine. She does not miss it when it's gone, it is only another torn off thing to be forgotten and not-quite lamented. His story holds her now, as she listens and tries to learn all the ways in which she might learn how to do more than wonder, or cry, or wish on the dead light of her sisters. She blinks when he falls silent. She considers.
Warset does not know enough about how the mothers and the children in his stories care for their tears and their wounds to know that the soothing goes one way instead of two. And she does not know, when she follows him as he pulls away with a step and brushes her lips to the places on his face where tears would have gathered, that the giving of the kiss is wrong. But it soothes her anyway, that mortal brush of dark skin to dark skin and fire to winter black. She smiles and suddenly her tears feel like diamonds instead of stones of sorrow hanging from her cheek. The quicksilver of her eyes steadies as if it's asking is this how I believe, over and over again until she blinks leopard slow.
“The night is soon enough for the shadows to return.” She side-steps the cloak hanging between them like a dream with no slumber in sight. The ruby moon on her neck swings in a metronome warning and her diamonds catch and gathering the brightness of his gaze.
Twilight settles lower, and lower, on the horizon and the lilac turns into bruise-blue.
In her skin a leopard stretches, and purrs, and drags claw-tracks against Warset's stuttering heart.
And still, even still, she presses her head into the hollow between his wings and his neck, returning the touch that made her wondering turn to wanting. There she is not brave enough to blink because the night, oh the night she has learned to dread, is soon enough for the darkness to return.
@Caine
“The darkness was never warm. It felt like being wrapped in ice, even when you are a fire that does not know how to do anything but consume. But I was warm enough, bright enough, that neither the darkness nor I ever froze or burned out.” She whispers in between those kisses of her lips (dark skin that is warm instead of cold, fire banked instead of frosted).
Warset wonders if she still feels like fire. Or does she only feel like blood, and bone, and salted tears cold enough to hold in them a promise of winter?
It is a strange thing (and a stranger feeling) to navigate the lines between the sorrow she feels when it brushes against an ember of something slower, something slower. The liquor of his breath, where it trails across her skin like leaves and vines, makes her feel lightheaded with the smell of it. She thinks of flying, and singing, and shaking the stardust from her skin like rain before she laid down in a pillow of darkness to dream. Her lungs and her heart start to hum a song to him, one fragile enough that is almost nothing more than a wavering stutter of the air in her throat.
And she wonders if the mother felt like this, when she tore the holes out of her sides and spit them out. Did it feel like a fever dream? Did it soothe the flame or feed it?
Is there a moment in which she is ever not wondering out how she might learn to survive in this tiny world with it's frail and far constellations?
He pulls away and his hair catches in her mask and pulls it from her face. It falls into the grave of glass and wine. She does not miss it when it's gone, it is only another torn off thing to be forgotten and not-quite lamented. His story holds her now, as she listens and tries to learn all the ways in which she might learn how to do more than wonder, or cry, or wish on the dead light of her sisters. She blinks when he falls silent. She considers.
Warset does not know enough about how the mothers and the children in his stories care for their tears and their wounds to know that the soothing goes one way instead of two. And she does not know, when she follows him as he pulls away with a step and brushes her lips to the places on his face where tears would have gathered, that the giving of the kiss is wrong. But it soothes her anyway, that mortal brush of dark skin to dark skin and fire to winter black. She smiles and suddenly her tears feel like diamonds instead of stones of sorrow hanging from her cheek. The quicksilver of her eyes steadies as if it's asking is this how I believe, over and over again until she blinks leopard slow.
“The night is soon enough for the shadows to return.” She side-steps the cloak hanging between them like a dream with no slumber in sight. The ruby moon on her neck swings in a metronome warning and her diamonds catch and gathering the brightness of his gaze.
Twilight settles lower, and lower, on the horizon and the lilac turns into bruise-blue.
In her skin a leopard stretches, and purrs, and drags claw-tracks against Warset's stuttering heart.
And still, even still, she presses her head into the hollow between his wings and his neck, returning the touch that made her wondering turn to wanting. There she is not brave enough to blink because the night, oh the night she has learned to dread, is soon enough for the darkness to return.
@Caine
