isolt.I do not know what it means to be a child. I do not know what it is like to grow slowly, or cautiously, to not feel my bones breaking as they stretch. I have never known the innocence of a newly-born thing, or of something lost in the woods.
But I know magic. And I know blood. And I know the way his is calling, calling, calling —
But I know magic. And I know blood. And I know the way his is calling, calling, calling —
Isolt is not a child. Not in the sense that any thing made in magic can be a child.She is still counting how many days it has been since her birth, since she shared a womb with her sister and their mother whispered to them that the world would bow at their feet. And she is still surprised to see leaves sprouting along every slender edge of the branches overtop them, when all she has known was their winter-bareness.
But she does not need to learn what magic looks or sounds or feels like. That she was born with, that her bones learned as they were being formed.
Her mother had told her stories of the world she came from, that world of magic-gone-wrong and hunger-that-does-not-end. She had told her the story of how she was made to hunt those that lived there, how that hunt ran now in Isolt’s own blood. And mother-monster had promised that one day, she would learn the source of all her hunger.
Isolt had wondered how it could ever matter why she was hungry, when it only ever seemed important that she was always hungry. But now, oh now she knows.
Now she can feel the boy’s blood running hot and fast in his veins, can see the delicate swell of it along his jaw (ripened like a grape, she thinks; so ready to burst.) That song her mother told her about is there, singing softly but there, and all she has to do is reach out with her horn and take it —
She is drooling as she steps closer, and closer, and closer.
“Prey,” her whisper is so soft, so quiet, barely a sigh, that she is not sure that he hears her. Still she presses closer. The distance between them grows smaller and smaller, the shadows of the trees are forgotten now as she drags her tailblade through the moonlight.
She is almost close enough to lunge now, and she traces the curve of his jaw in her mind, looking for the best place to detach the bottom of it. He is talking still, and she could almost whine as the frustration rises higher and higher inside of her lungs.
Her ears flicker back against her skull. “Then tell me, can a cheetah outrun his death?”
Can you outrun me? her eyes whisper from the darkness. And slowly, slowly, her horn begins to lower.
i wonder what i look like
in your eyes
