She remembers, as she watches the glitz of a false galaxy fall on her cheeks, a story the library keeper had told her once. The fire had been a warm halo at her back and a silken pillow a reminder that there still were gentle things left in the world for no reason other than comfort and beauty. Outside the moon was a low-red sickle, like a wound in the sky, and a dragon had curled up in her hollow darkness. And inside Danaë had listened, as she always listens to the keeper, to the tale of a star chewed out from the sky.
He had told her of the ways the blood of that chewed out star still walks among them in silver-eyed mortals. She had listened raptly as she learned about their blood so diluted that it might be water and dusty silver instead of molten silver. And she had wondered of the ways a watered down star, or galaxies, or dregs a moon might be better off dead.
At least if they were dead they could have become a garden, or a roving sculpture of art with a spore heart, instead of a story in a book remembered only by the keeper and her.
She’s thinking about how death can be beautiful watered in the belly of a star, and how a comet might still be beautiful with a waterfall tail of orchids and ferns long after its fire has burned out. Surely, she thinks, orchids and ferns will still allow it to fly.
And if the comet could not fly, or blaze, or do anything but rest inside her mind and slumber, she would not love it any less.
She would not love him any less.
He steps away, just as she hoped he would. It is always so dangerous, so foolish, to brush the tear from a unicorn and seem like a hero defeating some grand monster. But when casts a small universe above her head like a gifted crown, she wonders how he can see a maiden when on her tongue there still lingers the taste of his heart. Danaë tries to feel regret when she watches him go, knowing with an immortal’s knowing, that someday he would run with her even if he dreamed of flight.
Surely, she thinks, wings of cypress saplings and laupaku leaves would still be able to fly.
Her tailblade aches when it falls forgotten to the marble and every rose, every stem, falls to the floor like the tears of every frozen statue left to rot in a marble hallway of wealth.
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