widows, ghosts and loves sit and sing
in the dark, arched marrow of me
in the dark, arched marrow of me
E
ach cell in her form, from the bone-cells to the blood-cells to the magic-cells, quivers and quickens like leaves in a storm wind. Locked in the jail-chambers of her heart a stag curls his lip at the wolf even as his herd of doe and fawns run fleet-footed away, away, away. Danaë wants to follow them, curl inside herself and run as swiftly as any sight-hound and wise doe until the darkness (and the darkness doubles in the places where her shoulder rests against her sister's). She wants the wind, and the tickle of tall-grass along her belly as she stretches low and runs until these made and magic bones of hers tremble with aching.
She wants, oh she wants, a hundred different things as the flowers and vines weave together the bones that reach for them like a dark sea to the ancient cliffs. When she licks her lips there is bitter magic on the taste of her blood running from her nose like rotten rain. And when she blinks there is lighting streaking across the black backs of her eyelids (and in her marrow there is the roaring bellow of thunder calling itself magic).
And yet---
And oh!
When the paw stretches out for her, and the daisy and ivy eyes blink in their empty bone sockets, and the tongue of poppies licks at too long teeth, she cannot help but feel the ache of her heart turn from sorrow and fall into love. Each drop of her blood falling to the earth becomes a gift of her heart, a watering hole of love in which the risen might slake their endless thirst.
Isolt says come, like the true-death and true-new-god that she is. It's right that the risen turn their eyes to the darkness first and wash the dirt from their eyes with the color of blood-red skin.
Danaë is no god, no true-thing. She is mother, and swan, and wolf, and stag, and doe, and fawn. Her blood is an ocean fat with algae, and sharks, and whales, and dragons older than the bones reaching towards them like petals to the dawn. She is mother, and lion, and gardener in the darkness doubled where nothing knows in which direction the roots should grow. And she is whispering, “live”, instead of come as she walks towards the two creatures struggling back into the world that was stolen from them.
Their thoughts run through her like salt in the tide, so tangled with her own that she is no longer just black-magic water but an ecosystem pulled out of the cosmic darkness. They want to run, and feed, and lust, and breathe (and breathe and breathe) until there are so fat with air they float away on the first whisper of winter wind.
The unicorn, if she can be called a unicorn anymore (surely she is no longer Danaë with everything living in her body like this), brushes her nose across the bone brows and the daisy eyes. She kisses the ivy tongues and exhales air into the mushroom lungs.
And everything she touches is bright with the red-shine of her blood.
Still she begs more of them to rise. She begs all of them to rise because she knows the wrath flashing moon silver in her sister's eyes will settle for nothing less (and even that, like her bloody kisses, is as it should be).
{ @Isolt "speaks" notes: <3
