Are in the dark together,—near,
Danaë cannot hear the whisper of magic early evening’s story-teller told her to look for on the beach. If there is a whisper of Caligo caught in the conch shells littering the shore she cannot hear it beneath the roar of the waves and the howl of the wind. Echoes of that story are still lingering in her heart like the distant drums of war telling her that she must hurry, hurry, hurry. The sand still does not whisper when her walk grows faster, and faster, and faster until she is streaking across the shore (and it feels more like through than on).
In the bellies of dead clam shells she can only see the glitter of pearls and dead caught stars bursting through the sand. Children make wishes on each of them as they press their lips in salted kisses to the dead sea creatures. The roaring sea and the howling wind carry away the words of the wishes so that she cannot catch them as she wanders between the clusters of children. But for each wish that lingers where the roar meets the howl she grows a ghost pipe in the pearl belly of a child’s treasure. In each claw of a crab that’s already started to rot she grows an orchid that blooms towards the moon instead of dappled forest light. In a tree forgotten by both the forest and the sea a redwood seedling grows by inches instead of eons.
None of the small lives in the barrel of death catch her interest as she stalks the shoreline. She’s too lost in trying to catch the whispers in the sand, in the shells, in the moonlight gathering cool as star-water on her cheeks. One ear curls towards the children playing in her wake, straining to hear a whisper of the beauty, of the secret, she cannot understand.
Danaë strains so hard that it starts to feel like hunger, and need, and wrath.
And maybe that’s why, when she stops to lay her cheek against the weathered ribcage of a whale, nothing grows from the bones she rests her cheek again. Even when her hound races away from her game of gulls to lay her sandy nose against Danaë’s hock, not even a single moon-white rose grows.
There is only hunger, only the roar of the sea and the howl of the wind, when she turns to look at the horse that joins her.
@any!
