in the garden
i will die
i will die
W
hatever spark is smoldering in the desert woman’s chest, it struggles to live in his own.Once, the feeling of something as hungry as a fire living between his lungs had scared him; once, when he was only a boy who had known nothing but the sand and the sun burning him, had been afraid it might consume him. So he had again and again and again thrown fistfuls of sand onto that last ember, had drowned it with the waters from the Rapax, had broken it apart (or so he’d thought) into pieces to be carried away in the waves.
But still it burns.
And it burns.
And the hole it leaves in his chest burns with it as it sinks down into his marrow. Until he can no longer deny that it is there, it has always been there, waiting for a breath to fan it into a flame. He stares at the closed eye of the elder teryr and wonders now, is this it?
But in the darkness of the cave the pit fighter is creeping forward like a wildcat about to attack. So Ipomoea watches her like he watches the teryr, and when she steps forward to pluck the feather from its side, he steps forward in kind.
He is not sure which feather it is that he grasps between his teeth. Only that he can feel the spine of it coming free when he pulls, and can taste the desert sand on his tongue from when it had scraped lazily against the canyon walls. And it is the dust that sinks now like embers down his throat when he turns and steps light as a coyote into the darkness of the caverns.
He does not turn back to see the eyelid lifting as slowly as the sun lifts over the horizon. And when he hears the rustling of wings (both before and behind him) he only quickens his steps. The sand in his blood begins to tremble when the dust beneath his hooves rises, and rises, and rises. Until a flock of mourning doves are stirring in his wake on wings of whispering sand, turning back to stand guard against the creature struggling to wake behind them.
Like a lion snapping at sparrows while the hyena sneaks off with its kill, he thinks as he retraces his steps through the cavern.
Somewhere in the darkness that lies behind him he can hear the beast’s growl of frustration; but ahead of him there is the whisper of footsteps and wings and the gradual lightening of the corridor. So he runs (the way he never got to run when he was growing up in the tribe). And when he reaches the light at the entrance of the cave he does not stop to see that the feather between his teeth is barred with a russet color that is nearly bright as blood.
He does not stop to ask her where she is going. But he takes to the narrow path that cuts into the side of the canyon walls, and he does not look back when he sees all of the sand doves flying out from the cave to follow him.
@amaunet "speaks" notes
