And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
The quiet feels like an eden of moonlight instead of flowers. The fireflies have finally returned to the garden, lulled in perhaps by the lack of spectral music this deep into the night. Around her head they dance in patterns of constellations she remembers learning the stories off. In them she can see a sword driving through the darkness towards a dragon’s belly and a bow pulled taunt and true. Several other patterns of them dance through the empty spirals of her horn as if they are seeking pollen and vine instead of night.
Danaë closes her eyes as the insects and shadows gather around her in designs that flowers, and moss, and sunlight never will. In that blackness she slips into Hati’s mind, seeing the cracks in the forest as he does and wondering even as she stands still as marble in the garden how no one has noticed the worlds waiting there before. Her heart trembles at the thought and struggles to recall how to sing like a lark instead of roar like a hunting wendigo.
It is Andras that rouses her from the realm of waiting and hungry worlds. It is the look in his eyes that reminds her that the fireflies have only just returned to Delumine’s heart. And for a moment, as she blinks back the last remains of the forest cracks she can see him looking at her not through the flowers and quiet eden of the garden but through one of those cracks where wanting and rabid things wait.
Danaë thinks it would suit him.
In the distance Hati snarls at an obsidian grave rising through the dirt and his antlers scrap the moss from a spruce as he runs. “I will,” she says in a whisper, unsure if she’s saying I will to Andras or to the moonlight as it starts to fill with sound, and song, and a universe of fireflies instead of a constellation.
She tries to remember how her father seemed when the court came to call. She tries to remember how to be a flower instead of spore when she dips her head back towards him in greeting. But her horn still angles towards his heart before it runs back through the moonlight. Her mouth still does not move into a smile. When she blinks back another stab of forest worlds behind her eyes, she does not sound as gentle as she had wanted to when she says, “Who are you Andras?”
Because she can still see him, in the echo of her eyelids, looking out at her from between two white-as-bone birch trees.
Danaë closes her eyes as the insects and shadows gather around her in designs that flowers, and moss, and sunlight never will. In that blackness she slips into Hati’s mind, seeing the cracks in the forest as he does and wondering even as she stands still as marble in the garden how no one has noticed the worlds waiting there before. Her heart trembles at the thought and struggles to recall how to sing like a lark instead of roar like a hunting wendigo.
It is Andras that rouses her from the realm of waiting and hungry worlds. It is the look in his eyes that reminds her that the fireflies have only just returned to Delumine’s heart. And for a moment, as she blinks back the last remains of the forest cracks she can see him looking at her not through the flowers and quiet eden of the garden but through one of those cracks where wanting and rabid things wait.
Danaë thinks it would suit him.
In the distance Hati snarls at an obsidian grave rising through the dirt and his antlers scrap the moss from a spruce as he runs. “I will,” she says in a whisper, unsure if she’s saying I will to Andras or to the moonlight as it starts to fill with sound, and song, and a universe of fireflies instead of a constellation.
She tries to remember how her father seemed when the court came to call. She tries to remember how to be a flower instead of spore when she dips her head back towards him in greeting. But her horn still angles towards his heart before it runs back through the moonlight. Her mouth still does not move into a smile. When she blinks back another stab of forest worlds behind her eyes, she does not sound as gentle as she had wanted to when she says, “Who are you Andras?”
Because she can still see him, in the echo of her eyelids, looking out at her from between two white-as-bone birch trees.
