Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
Danaë does not know much about fire-- why it is a hollow hunger without end, why the smoke spirals up instead of into the ground that is starving of want of carbon. Mortals are lingering around the flame, diving through the circles of them like frail hawks between clouds. Their thrilling avaravice for danger, and cleansing, and whatever else it is they are seeking, echoes in her ears like the wailing of the trees in the hurricane winds.
And so she watches them, each bloody eye as intent as the eyes of a predator pack of rabid beasts, dissolve into the base chaos of mortals. Each time one singes the tip of their nose in the flames she images growing a morning glory from the black wound on their lips. Every time a horse bellows in victory she imagines etching out the sorrows of the dead-wood into the canvas of their brittle, mortal cheeks. Every time a horse tosses copper, and metal, and whatever else they call magic, into the flame she imagines tossing them into the fire to burn.
She wonders who would leap with her then, when it’s not sorrowful wood burning but ignorant moral skin.
Without her sister she is too cautious to stray to close with her heart wandering between the laments of dead-wood and the wrath of a unicorn made. In the darkness, just beyond the kiss of fire-light, she paces with her head slung low like a dragon and her tail lashing tracks into the damp, dawn earth like a lion before a hyena pack. Beneath her hooves buried voles, and rabbits, and mice devoured by owls, tremble as roots bloom between the sockets of their long gone eyes. Her soul flickers between unicorn wrath, and dead-prey lament, and something darker and needier than both.
On the edge she waivers and with each blink she becomes something else. In the fire poppies, and jasmine, and nightshade bloom and burn in the knots of the dry wood. Her eyes gather the red-light, and blue-light, and amethyst-light, until her gaze is glowing with a hundred different shades of blood.
With that bloody kaleidoscope gaze, she finally steps closer to the fire. She plummets off the cliff-edge of kindness into the black yawning jaw of the earth in which dead things tremble with those vine stitching their broken, dirt-fat, jaws back together. Danaë walks closer, and closer, on her graveyard of things trying so desperately to feel the heat of that fire.
And when she stops, with her horn tossed violently into the smoke, her eyes blaze in the ways of unicorns and lions. Every inch of her body screams in the immortal challenge of a monster, and a mother, and a wolf with dead cubs in her womb, that for each inch of sorrow the wood had to suffer that a drop of mortal blood will be spilled in payment.
And so she watches them, each bloody eye as intent as the eyes of a predator pack of rabid beasts, dissolve into the base chaos of mortals. Each time one singes the tip of their nose in the flames she images growing a morning glory from the black wound on their lips. Every time a horse bellows in victory she imagines etching out the sorrows of the dead-wood into the canvas of their brittle, mortal cheeks. Every time a horse tosses copper, and metal, and whatever else they call magic, into the flame she imagines tossing them into the fire to burn.
She wonders who would leap with her then, when it’s not sorrowful wood burning but ignorant moral skin.
Without her sister she is too cautious to stray to close with her heart wandering between the laments of dead-wood and the wrath of a unicorn made. In the darkness, just beyond the kiss of fire-light, she paces with her head slung low like a dragon and her tail lashing tracks into the damp, dawn earth like a lion before a hyena pack. Beneath her hooves buried voles, and rabbits, and mice devoured by owls, tremble as roots bloom between the sockets of their long gone eyes. Her soul flickers between unicorn wrath, and dead-prey lament, and something darker and needier than both.
On the edge she waivers and with each blink she becomes something else. In the fire poppies, and jasmine, and nightshade bloom and burn in the knots of the dry wood. Her eyes gather the red-light, and blue-light, and amethyst-light, until her gaze is glowing with a hundred different shades of blood.
With that bloody kaleidoscope gaze, she finally steps closer to the fire. She plummets off the cliff-edge of kindness into the black yawning jaw of the earth in which dead things tremble with those vine stitching their broken, dirt-fat, jaws back together. Danaë walks closer, and closer, on her graveyard of things trying so desperately to feel the heat of that fire.
And when she stops, with her horn tossed violently into the smoke, her eyes blaze in the ways of unicorns and lions. Every inch of her body screams in the immortal challenge of a monster, and a mother, and a wolf with dead cubs in her womb, that for each inch of sorrow the wood had to suffer that a drop of mortal blood will be spilled in payment.
