There is no one in this world, or in any world, that could see me like this without consequence. Death is not nipping at my heels, not today, but I can feel the heavy gaze of it looking out from the distant shadows. His gaze is not shuttered when he looks at me anymore. There is no promise or warning in his eyes when my lashes flutter closed over the sight of him.
In death’s gaze there is only wrath. In two years I have already stolen so much from him. And he knows, just as I know (and just as my wolf knows) I will steal far more from him before he takes him.
Perhaps I should be afraid, when my eyes blink twice upon the image of him (that dark shadow smeared on the black night forest). Perhaps I should let my gaze linger there before I turn it to my sister, just enough to see if he’s turning away or coming closer. But when Aspara demands me to stay, and she demands so little of me ever, it is impossible to look at anything but her.
How had I ever looked away? How could I?
Thinking on it now, as she washes my wounds with the sea, all my reasons seem as corporal as the mist rolling in from the tide. I cannot hold them but they linger on my tongue with notes of blood, and brine, and a sorrow more salted than the sea. As much as I wish it would, her hum does not wash away the taste.
Had I been anything else, anyone else, I might have pressed my bloody nose back into her knee and begged for forgiveness. But mother did not ask for any and nor will I. In that alone, perhaps, we are alike more than I would like to admit.
Foras lifts his head from my hip as he senses the closeness of his brother. In his belly a rumbling purr begins both a welcome and a begging hurry, hurry, hurry. His fur is still more winter than softness and where he rested frost had bloomed and I try not to shiver from the coldness of it. I know that if he realizes that my wolf will not forgive himself for causing me any pain at all. Still, I understand that it is in the nature of monsters, the nature of us, to cause pain.
I’m still looking at her, my sister who I will never look away from again, when she pauses her humming song to ask the question I was waiting for. And I think it says more about her ability to keep me still (stiller than my parents ever could) than it does me, because I stumble over the thought.
My thoughts had been heavy with the image of stars woven into silk, gardens etched into mirrors, and jasmine smoke spiraling up to the guardian mountains of our home. But when I blink away the dreamstuff of her song, I do not hesitate when I say, “a unicorn of the sea who thought himself master of it.” I know she’ll understand all the things I am not saying.
The sea, that greedy sea carrying away my blood, does not belong to any male. It belongs, it has always belonged (and will be inherited) by us.
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