Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
Sometimes, to her, the entire world feels like a garden in a low-fog and a sickle moon. She can taste the brine in the air and the fermented sweetness of flowers gone to rot. Each step she walks is across a gravel-path made not with stones, or shells, or dirt packed down, but bones. And she can hear the crunch of skulls, and knee-caps, and teeth, beneath her hooves as she walks closer and closer towards the gate beyond which a million more gardens wait.
The world feels like an endless garden now, when the rage spirals back into her like a buckshot and the mare pulls back. Danaë feels like a seed caught on the wind instead of on a leaf upon the forest floor. All she had wanted to do is sink deep into the loam of the mare and plant down miles and miles of roots. For a moment she hangs there, between seed and wrath, and swings like a corpse on a noose by the sea.
She blinks and it is to the image of the mare unmade superimposed in the darkness. Another blink, another shape by which she might recreate the unicorn-who-lost-her-sea.
And when she opens her eyes there is still an ember of wrath in her bloody gaze. Every ounce of her fury at the celebration has been whittled like a spear onto this point by which the other unicorn speaks. Danaë watches only the darkness between her teeth instead of the smoke of the words when the wind pushes the fire towards them. It takes her longer than it should to form sound into a language that sounds different than wrath and ruin.
Her laughter surprises her for it is a sound her father has made (one that always made her mother look too long-- as if she could see the marrow of it if she looked hard enough). That bloody tear catches in her lips like a seed finally caught in the dirt. “You do not know enough of death if you are not afraid of it.” Danaë’s look turns to teeth, a dim echo of that wrath still clawing at her insides, before she too steps back.
It feels like tearing her own skin away from her sinew.
Everything in her is too raw, too hungry, too whittled down into the shape of her mother, to care for the story promised in the mortal’s words. The look in her eye, that ember in the blood, gives away the regality in her bones and her genes. She had not thought pride a trait of hers but she does not mind it so much when faced with too-brave mares in her parent’s city. It is a better feeling than the one left in the wake of the image of the mare unmade.
“If you touch me again, there is not a corner of this world in which you will be allowed to live.” The blade of her tail makes an echoing sound, like a church’s throat, when she lets it fall to the ground. Or maybe it is the echoing sound of a distant drum-of-war echoing in spirals across the horizon.
And she does not wait for the echoing sound of it to fade before she turns back towards the fire her plants are choking out.
The world feels like an endless garden now, when the rage spirals back into her like a buckshot and the mare pulls back. Danaë feels like a seed caught on the wind instead of on a leaf upon the forest floor. All she had wanted to do is sink deep into the loam of the mare and plant down miles and miles of roots. For a moment she hangs there, between seed and wrath, and swings like a corpse on a noose by the sea.
She blinks and it is to the image of the mare unmade superimposed in the darkness. Another blink, another shape by which she might recreate the unicorn-who-lost-her-sea.
And when she opens her eyes there is still an ember of wrath in her bloody gaze. Every ounce of her fury at the celebration has been whittled like a spear onto this point by which the other unicorn speaks. Danaë watches only the darkness between her teeth instead of the smoke of the words when the wind pushes the fire towards them. It takes her longer than it should to form sound into a language that sounds different than wrath and ruin.
Her laughter surprises her for it is a sound her father has made (one that always made her mother look too long-- as if she could see the marrow of it if she looked hard enough). That bloody tear catches in her lips like a seed finally caught in the dirt. “You do not know enough of death if you are not afraid of it.” Danaë’s look turns to teeth, a dim echo of that wrath still clawing at her insides, before she too steps back.
It feels like tearing her own skin away from her sinew.
Everything in her is too raw, too hungry, too whittled down into the shape of her mother, to care for the story promised in the mortal’s words. The look in her eye, that ember in the blood, gives away the regality in her bones and her genes. She had not thought pride a trait of hers but she does not mind it so much when faced with too-brave mares in her parent’s city. It is a better feeling than the one left in the wake of the image of the mare unmade.
“If you touch me again, there is not a corner of this world in which you will be allowed to live.” The blade of her tail makes an echoing sound, like a church’s throat, when she lets it fall to the ground. Or maybe it is the echoing sound of a distant drum-of-war echoing in spirals across the horizon.
And she does not wait for the echoing sound of it to fade before she turns back towards the fire her plants are choking out.
