“AND DEEP IN OUR SECRET HEARTS
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
If words could be castles, or constellations, or gardens, she thinks that each of his would be the only thing heavy enough and real enough to hold even a ounce of weight. Her own would be the silver holding together the stained glass windows. Or maybe her own would only be worn threads of fabric woven into a bright curtain blowing in the turret window.
Or maybe, oh maybe, her voice would be the light in the lighthouse crown making all the froth in the sea seem like stars racing across the horizon towards a world no mortal eye can fathom.
Her feathers, her form, the look in her eyes, screams both save me and run away at this Dune-of-the-desert who holds in his eyes a million hard truths she is not ancient enough to remember learning the tales of. Still when he calls the blood-and-metal scented flower yours, she smiles the secret smile of a newborn star fat with the hope of a wish, and whispers against his shoulder. “I have never known anything with such a name before. Forever I will treasure it.” And she will because stars are jealous things who keep their constellation patterns no matter the shift of the moon and planets.
Surely, she thinks, this treasure is no less a constellation and a tale than all the bits of her heart left behind in the cage she had been spit out of. Warset wants to pull it from her mane to watch the cogs of it catch the dying light and the flames. She wants to look at it because a metal flower is easier to fathom than this stallion.
Especially when, oh especially when, his words sink into her heart like stones.
She blinks. The gold-leaf, and the blood, and the horse-flowers race like wolves across the black back of her eyelids. Her heart strains to join them, to remember the places she knows are a memory instead of a story. “Oh,” she says like a sigh, like the sound a girl makes when she's kissed for the first time. Oh, and nothing else, because the night is settling lower and lower around them. Her body is purring and her wings feel like prowling things separate from her when she snaps them out and in, out and in, out and in.
Warset wants to fly away or run away. She wants to crash into him and into the places where the bonfires chase back the night like rabid hounds a hare. “I believe you.” And she does, down to her star-heart and her girl-heart she does.
But she does not know which heart it is that trembles like a broken-winged sparrow in her chest when she turns her eyes to him and to the horizon and the wall beckoning her to remember how it feels to be hungry, and feral, and full to the brim with rage. Her blood runs swift through the frail edge of her jaw, her heart trembles again (and again, and again). “Tell me a story, Dune. Tell me all the ways in which I can learn how mortality is more than pain, and hope without reason, and better than the cosmic expanse.”
She presses her cheek to his, her thready and swift pulse to his and demands of him softer than the crowns of the bonfires. “Tell me how I can learn to love this place more than I loved a dream that I cannot truly remember.” And when she looks around him into the blue-black of almost night and a leopard purrs in her soul she knows it's too late.
Too late. Too late.
@Dune
Or maybe, oh maybe, her voice would be the light in the lighthouse crown making all the froth in the sea seem like stars racing across the horizon towards a world no mortal eye can fathom.
Her feathers, her form, the look in her eyes, screams both save me and run away at this Dune-of-the-desert who holds in his eyes a million hard truths she is not ancient enough to remember learning the tales of. Still when he calls the blood-and-metal scented flower yours, she smiles the secret smile of a newborn star fat with the hope of a wish, and whispers against his shoulder. “I have never known anything with such a name before. Forever I will treasure it.” And she will because stars are jealous things who keep their constellation patterns no matter the shift of the moon and planets.
Surely, she thinks, this treasure is no less a constellation and a tale than all the bits of her heart left behind in the cage she had been spit out of. Warset wants to pull it from her mane to watch the cogs of it catch the dying light and the flames. She wants to look at it because a metal flower is easier to fathom than this stallion.
Especially when, oh especially when, his words sink into her heart like stones.
She blinks. The gold-leaf, and the blood, and the horse-flowers race like wolves across the black back of her eyelids. Her heart strains to join them, to remember the places she knows are a memory instead of a story. “Oh,” she says like a sigh, like the sound a girl makes when she's kissed for the first time. Oh, and nothing else, because the night is settling lower and lower around them. Her body is purring and her wings feel like prowling things separate from her when she snaps them out and in, out and in, out and in.
Warset wants to fly away or run away. She wants to crash into him and into the places where the bonfires chase back the night like rabid hounds a hare. “I believe you.” And she does, down to her star-heart and her girl-heart she does.
But she does not know which heart it is that trembles like a broken-winged sparrow in her chest when she turns her eyes to him and to the horizon and the wall beckoning her to remember how it feels to be hungry, and feral, and full to the brim with rage. Her blood runs swift through the frail edge of her jaw, her heart trembles again (and again, and again). “Tell me a story, Dune. Tell me all the ways in which I can learn how mortality is more than pain, and hope without reason, and better than the cosmic expanse.”
She presses her cheek to his, her thready and swift pulse to his and demands of him softer than the crowns of the bonfires. “Tell me how I can learn to love this place more than I loved a dream that I cannot truly remember.” And when she looks around him into the blue-black of almost night and a leopard purrs in her soul she knows it's too late.
Too late. Too late.
@
