ISOLT
They do not know yet that they could live again, a new life, that they do not need to be trapped to the memories of their death.
But I will show them.
The dust of the cave wall tastes like rust against her lips, like dried blood, like ancient death. She drags lines through it in place of kisses, blurs the painted warrior shapes because Isolt has never known how to add to a story, or how to make art, or how to paint a story —
she knows only how to end it.
In the lines she traces over the paintings feels like walking through the belly of the story itself (like a sword, like a dagger thrust beneath the ribs, ready to tear every gut and organ out.) She is walking among them as they chase after the beast painted in shadows, she is watching as their throats are torn open like second bleeding smiles. She is the beast who settles down to gnaw the marrow from their bones.
Her eyes slip closed as she watches. Hunger gnaws at her belly, calling out for their ancient deaths but all she can see is darkness, and the spears of those hunters reaching for her with retribution hanging from the tips of them.
She does not notice the other girl, not until she pulls away from the cavern painting. In another life she might have reminded her of Danaë — of a bone-white specter, the other half to a darker shadow, hovering on the precipice of death. As though waiting to lead her somewhere (but not to death, she knows — death is already here. She is already here.)
But today she only looks like the bones she has seen in the story in her mind, and her gold is the ichor of gods-blood dripping down their teeth. The scraping of her tail blade begins to sound like the hush, hush, hush her sister whispers to her at night when she cannot sleep.
Isolt does not wonder what the living were thinking when they painted the stories across the walls. To her there is no hidden meaning in the figures, only a warning: the warning all mortals must yield to, when their time has come. “Their death,” her voice whispers across the space separating them.
She turns back to the wall then, and the figures that race in circles upon circles across the room. The tip of her horn tap, tap, taps against each painted warrior as she follows them.
”Have you come to learn the story?” And in the hush, hush, hush of her blade still painting death after death on the ground in her wake, there is the promise that Isolt could teach her, too.
She could teach them all.
@aster !
"wilting // blooming"
"wilting // blooming"
