The way every once in a while,
it catches the light and starts smoking.
“If you need to ask, then you’ll never know,” she said with a shiver. I snorted wearily. I did not like when others spoke in riddles and ambiguity. I personally always tried to be myself without mystery, plain and simple; it seemed a vanity to pretend to be anything more. That is not to say the unicorn spoke with any sense of vanity-- quite the opposite. She had the easy way of being my father did, wearing the world on his shoulders like a weight long accustomed to, yet the intensity of my mother who had no reservations in making the world bend to her.
When I glanced behind the twins, I saw my reflection in half a dozen mirrors leaned in to watch the scene unfold. My expression in each was different: one me was wary, one wide-eyed in awe. One had her horn lowered as though ready to leap through the glass and pierce through the heart of the nearest girl. I saw I was sometimes a weapon, sometimes a target, always me. Always me.
I had never liked dahlias. They were too perfect, too symmetrical. They seemed to me unnatural, although- of course- they were anything but. And as the dahlias unfurled in perfect little whirls, their perfect patterns deepening and thickening, I felt something unraveling in me that did not want to be unravelled. It felt a little like a dream in which the earth crumbles away beneath you, and there is nothing you can do but fall.
I’m quite sure I did not like these girls and the way they spoke like they knew something I did not. And yet, as someone who knew in her heart there was always much to learn, I was drawn to them. I wanted to know what they knew. I wanted to move through the world as they did, like it belonged to me. Like I had power, power that extended beyond talking to poor things who had no one else to listen to-- which most of the time did not feel like a power at all.
I wanted to be a unicorn, and not a mare. I wanted to be worth perfect dahlias and sleep-smelling lavender.
But sunflowers were beautiful too, and wheat humble but noble in its own way.
The way they leaned against each other made me ache for my sister the way I always do when I’m without her. And for a moment I thought cruelly what these sisters might be like if one was taken from the other. Would they be shattered the way I would if my sister was gone, truly gone? Or would they proceed with the ease of wild seeds who know the only way is forward and up?
“Someday we will show you why.”
There was tension in my wolf. Although we were not quite touching I could feel it in my mind, electric. He was ready to spring, to shed his fur and become wraith. not now, I pressed into the clay that bound us, like a hand on the back of his neck, not yet. He huffed, wordless.
“I look forward to it,” my mouth formed a grin that was not a grin. It was a challenge, perhaps reckless- but what other way was there to be? I was young, and I felt keenly the weight of all my years before me. I could afford recklessness, even before these not-girls who walked with all the confidence of Death himself. “What are your names?” So I know what to call you, when we meet again. I blinked, calm and serene as still water.
And if my heart was racing, I was very careful that it would not show on my face.
The way it will cleave and grow
like antlers.
A S P A R A
@Isolt @Danaë <3
