It said only one thing, over and over, a repetition of inescapable anguish
What death a unicorn sees is not, in the black essence of it, the same sorrowful dirge the rest of the world sees in sonnets of sorrows. The death of unicorns’ is a bright thing, a rosebud thing, a pale sickle moon of a thing. Danaë does not see the black silence of the forest where trees bend backward like spines shaped into mountains instead of tombs. She does not see the gloaming and dappled moonlight, she only sees silver shards pointing towards the heart of the forest like pillars of a church she has always prayed in.
Each time Isolt presses an ear to her ribcage that trapped heart stumbles, and stutters, and grows bright as a moon in the midnight. Danaë, if asked, would gladly tear her own insides out to give Isolt whatever is it she is looking for.
And deep down, where she is a heart like Ipomoea’s and nothing else, she knows that someday it might come to that.
But tonight her sister is pulling away before Danaë can tear herself asunder because the earth has started speaking in the language of hunters instead of the song of the bones. It trembles in currents of loam shifting over the river-bed of skulls, and tibias, and jaw-bones shattered around granite. Each tremble feels like a knife cutting into her skin, over and over again, because it wants magic and not unicorns. Her steps falter and her knees feel like spores and roots in her legs instead of bones. And she knows, when she taps wait, wait, wait against her sister’s hip that all the unicorn things in her belong to something else, something so much stranger than the dreamer's face she looks at each morning in the pond.
A head is the first time to rise from the trembling earth. Danae can see the weeds lolling like a tongue between the char-teeth when the jaw opens towards them in a silent snarl. Her stuttering heart takes up the sound of that snarl, and that silent clicking jaw, until the bramblebear’s spine rises from the dirt upon its bed of ribs. And there, in the middle of the dirty bones, a yellow spore blooms bright as a forgotten sun.
She does not ask her twin to help; she knows she does not need to say the words.
Wisteria blooms where eyes had once been. Holly shapes itself into a liver and raspberries into a spleen. A paw woven together with tradescantia dapples the chewed-up dirt when the risen bear moves towards them. Danaë still can hear the roar in her heart when she steps close enough to the bear to lay her cheek to the shoulder stitched together with clematis.
Perhaps that’s why, when she lifts her head into the gloaming darkness that scream that comes out is more bear than unicorn, more roar than sorrowful song. And together, the bear and the unicorn that would gladly tear out her heart, look towards Isolt like she’s god instead of sister.
Command us how to hunt, their look in the singing forest says, we are starved.
We have been dead for so very, very long.
Each time Isolt presses an ear to her ribcage that trapped heart stumbles, and stutters, and grows bright as a moon in the midnight. Danaë, if asked, would gladly tear her own insides out to give Isolt whatever is it she is looking for.
And deep down, where she is a heart like Ipomoea’s and nothing else, she knows that someday it might come to that.
But tonight her sister is pulling away before Danaë can tear herself asunder because the earth has started speaking in the language of hunters instead of the song of the bones. It trembles in currents of loam shifting over the river-bed of skulls, and tibias, and jaw-bones shattered around granite. Each tremble feels like a knife cutting into her skin, over and over again, because it wants magic and not unicorns. Her steps falter and her knees feel like spores and roots in her legs instead of bones. And she knows, when she taps wait, wait, wait against her sister’s hip that all the unicorn things in her belong to something else, something so much stranger than the dreamer's face she looks at each morning in the pond.
A head is the first time to rise from the trembling earth. Danae can see the weeds lolling like a tongue between the char-teeth when the jaw opens towards them in a silent snarl. Her stuttering heart takes up the sound of that snarl, and that silent clicking jaw, until the bramblebear’s spine rises from the dirt upon its bed of ribs. And there, in the middle of the dirty bones, a yellow spore blooms bright as a forgotten sun.
She does not ask her twin to help; she knows she does not need to say the words.
Wisteria blooms where eyes had once been. Holly shapes itself into a liver and raspberries into a spleen. A paw woven together with tradescantia dapples the chewed-up dirt when the risen bear moves towards them. Danaë still can hear the roar in her heart when she steps close enough to the bear to lay her cheek to the shoulder stitched together with clematis.
Perhaps that’s why, when she lifts her head into the gloaming darkness that scream that comes out is more bear than unicorn, more roar than sorrowful song. And together, the bear and the unicorn that would gladly tear out her heart, look towards Isolt like she’s god instead of sister.
Command us how to hunt, their look in the singing forest says, we are starved.
We have been dead for so very, very long.
