BUT I BITE AT IT AS AT A MYSTERY
nostalgia for the impending present / and I'll never catch hold of it.
I know that I am not supposed to speak of my home to outsiders.
I know it, because I remember how they killed me, and I remember burning starlings, and I know of our heir, our most precious thing, stolen away from us. I know that they seek things from us that we cannot give, and that they misunderstand us, and that I risk endangering my home by letting them know of us. Still, since I have been here, I have found myself struggling to keep the secrecy which should bind me like a noose. I think, as I examine Leonidas’s face, my stare settling on his bright golden eyes, that it is because outsiders are so much nicer than I have ever expected.
He asks me how many lives I’ve lived, a hint of awkwardness in his voice. I find myself answering in spite of myself.
“Oh,” I say, more easily than I expect, “so many that I’ve lost count, I think. Some of them are barely memorable.” Others are like a brand – but that, I think, is the way of them. Some lives were more important and dear to me than others; some were longer, and some shorter, and some of greater and lesser consequence, though, in the very broad scheme of things, I don’t think that any of them were very consequential at all. I shake my head, then, my lips twisting up into a sheepish smile, and I add, almost shyly, “But, ah, I'm...sure that must sound rather strange to you.” After all, outsiders do not believe what we do of life and death, and I know that they will not believe me simply because I say that I have experienced death before.
(They will say: people have believed many things and been wrong before.)
When he suggests that we skate, I feel my expression light up, a bright smile curving from edge-to-edge of my dark lips. “Oh – I’d love to.” He might just be saying it to please me, but, if he is, I’m not about to question it. (However, I do hope that, with some coaxing, he might enjoy it, too; he seems so uncomfortable here, out in the crowds and the noise.) As we begin to walk towards the ice, he asks me if I’ve ever skated before, his voice crackling in a way that he clearly finds embarrassing and I find rather endearing. “I’ve never done it; have you? I suppose that I should be grateful to have wings…” I test them out, flapping their wide pinions at my side considerately, and I hope that they will prove adequate to catch me if I fall.
(I am sure that I will fall.)
I prod the ice tentatively with one hoof, feeling the slip of it beneath me, and then I toss a grin back over my shoulder at the woods-wild boy at my side.
@
"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
