A hundred constellations, each full of a hundred stars, are dead below the breadth of her wings. All their bones are glimmering in the low-light of the nearly black moon. Warset can see, in that gloaming light, all the echoes of the wishes gone stone cold in their diamond bellies. And each of those wishes, looks like a scar (like a million scars) drawing her a map to some place she’s been starving to reach.
She flies, and flies, and flies.
The sky above her head has turned dark with midnight but here her body, her curse, has no noose-right grasp on the hour. Here the sun does not turn her to a girl and the moon does not turn her to a predator. Here is almost, almost, another broken mirror image of all the things she used to be.
Where her reflection catches in the mirror dragons curl around feathers and moons. When her silver eyes shine against the glass arrows, pillars of galaxy-smoke, and arrows, and harpsichords swing in the shine like weapons wielded instead of lost. And when the shadow of her wings, and the moonlight ray of her eyes, catch on the unicorn running she only sees blood enough to drown an entire mortal world.
Like she had once followed the clarion call of war through the deep space Warset angles her wings to follow the galloping unicorn.
Her heart thunders to the sound of hooves cracking open all the bellies of her sisters. The never-ending ache in her heart blooms into a wound as she slows to look at all the stones of wishes laid bare that the unicorn had not noticed. Warset can see a wish of love, of wealth, and one for a happiness she has never been able to understand. Each wish, she thinks, belongs to a mortal.
No immortal thing, no star, no universe would wish for so frail and fragile a thing.
Warset is still thinking of wishes when the unicorn stops at the base of a universe-corpse and she lands upon the wide top of it to peer downward at her (and she does not know how like a blackbird singing to a monster she seems). Briefly her eyes flicker to the holographic image of her caught and reflected between the mirrors and she wonders at the frailty of that pegasus standing on the bellies of her sisters.
“Why did you stop?” The blackbird sings to the bloody unicorn, but she is not foolish enough to curl her wings back to her sides as she leans over the edge. The are too many dead wishes in the unicorn’s wake for her to forget the nature of galloping and bloody things.
She flies, and flies, and flies.
The sky above her head has turned dark with midnight but here her body, her curse, has no noose-right grasp on the hour. Here the sun does not turn her to a girl and the moon does not turn her to a predator. Here is almost, almost, another broken mirror image of all the things she used to be.
Where her reflection catches in the mirror dragons curl around feathers and moons. When her silver eyes shine against the glass arrows, pillars of galaxy-smoke, and arrows, and harpsichords swing in the shine like weapons wielded instead of lost. And when the shadow of her wings, and the moonlight ray of her eyes, catch on the unicorn running she only sees blood enough to drown an entire mortal world.
Like she had once followed the clarion call of war through the deep space Warset angles her wings to follow the galloping unicorn.
Her heart thunders to the sound of hooves cracking open all the bellies of her sisters. The never-ending ache in her heart blooms into a wound as she slows to look at all the stones of wishes laid bare that the unicorn had not noticed. Warset can see a wish of love, of wealth, and one for a happiness she has never been able to understand. Each wish, she thinks, belongs to a mortal.
No immortal thing, no star, no universe would wish for so frail and fragile a thing.
Warset is still thinking of wishes when the unicorn stops at the base of a universe-corpse and she lands upon the wide top of it to peer downward at her (and she does not know how like a blackbird singing to a monster she seems). Briefly her eyes flicker to the holographic image of her caught and reflected between the mirrors and she wonders at the frailty of that pegasus standing on the bellies of her sisters.
“Why did you stop?” The blackbird sings to the bloody unicorn, but she is not foolish enough to curl her wings back to her sides as she leans over the edge. The are too many dead wishes in the unicorn’s wake for her to forget the nature of galloping and bloody things.
It all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end.
