The way every once in a while,
it catches the light and starts smoking.
When I tried to think of what would make my sister proud, I was embarrassed to find that nothing immediately came to mind. There were so many treasured moments I had collected in her absence: meeting sun-king Orestes and our godfather Asterion, being gifted a sand dollar from the sun king, breaking into a secret garden in Denocte with Charlie, learning to throw knives with Castalla… but there was nothing that I felt particularly proud of. My life was just a series of events that happened to me; I was just along for the beautiful ride.
“Let’s walk and talk. I’m too excited to see you to stand still.” Indeed if her shoulder wasn’t pressed to mine I’d be prancing in place, not just in excitement but anxiety too-- but she didn’t need to know that. Instead I leaned into her touch, and garnered what I could from what went unspoken. The press of her flesh had always told me more than words… even the not-telling was telling, strange as it sounds.
I knew there were things that were hard to talk about. Trust me, I knew. And the knowing made it that much harder to ask. What I could not say I pressed silently into her skin with my teeth, grooming her like we used too, plaiting questions into her mane like I once did prayers. “What really happened there? What happened to you?
… What can I do?”
Later, long after the sun had set, I would slip out into the night and press my cheek to the side of the boat that carried my family across the sea and back again. I would wait patiently for its stories to come to me, for I was not yet strong enough to pull what I wanted from it with my magic. I had to stand there for a long time, letting the stories flow like water. And (funny enough) mostly the ship wanted to tell me about water, for it was very much in love. Occasionally it would mention the terrors I was listening for, but never directly: blooms of crimson in the sea, the wet thump of a body against the grain of the wood, the tides shifting slightly every time someone drowned, their lungs filling with seawater.
But that would all come later. In that moment she took my stilted small talk and ran with it and I tried to remember how weightless we once were. Splashing in the lake, tearing up the mountain. Our horns tap-taping messages no one else would every understand. Our own language. Conversations just as silly as what if our dogs never stopped growing. I smiled. Her laugh was not the same, but that was okay. I think. We had both grown so much. I truly believed we had all the time in the world to grow back together. “It would be terrifying, wouldn’t it.” There was a wicked glee in the statement, although at heart I was in complete agreement with my sister. Our wolves were menacing enough as it was.
And finally, as we began to walk in a meandering path toward home-- which, to be honest, I felt odd even calling home. So much had changed-- I began to tell her all the things I’ve done that would make her proud. There were not great acts of heroism or bravery, but perhaps enough small sparks, gathered together, would become a bright light. Mostly I just wanted to feel close to her again, and filling her in was the logical first step. “So a few months back I caught a thief in the night markets. He was just a boy, hardly older than us, and he tried to trick me with magic…”
We talked and talked and talked. The afternoon faded to evening to night to early morning, peachy-pink and beautifully fragile. And as I began to fall asleep, no longer able to resist the heavy pull of my eyelids, I think I began to really understand that old adage, and for the first time see it in a positive light: the more things change, the more things stay the same.
The way it will cleave and grow
like antlers.
A S P A R A
@Avesta closing this here but I am always always up for more twin threads <3
