You can tell, you can tell, you can absolutely tell
I’m pushing everything about me up one hell of a hill
I’m pushing everything about me up one hell of a hill
When you look close enough, the desert is teeming with life; snakes in the sand, ground squirrels nesting amongst the clusters of rocks, a sky teeming with vultures and falcons… all the way down to the beetles crawling into the flesh of the dead to lay their eggs and propagate the next generation, the desert was anything but lonely. To the untrained eye-- or the one on the cusp of death, as so many are when they stumble into this vast unknown-- it probably looked like the end of the road, barren and soulless and devoid of the touch of any god save for the cruelest.
The sky wasn’t empty either, but it probably looked that way to someone with no wings, someone tethered to the earth. It was just so far away, so far and so hard, at times, and the horizon line was a staunch divide between where one could go and where one couldn’t.
Once, for her, the sky had been filled with gold, and thunderous laughter, and love. But now it was poison, a siren’s song, constantly calling her to come gambol amongst the clouds until the magic fried her brain and she ended up crashing broken-necked back to earth. It had happened more than once.
The only god Sabrina had ever kept was the connection between her and her sister; the only time she’d ever worshipped was on palatial golden sheets, touched by love, and shivering in a strong embrace. Now her days of veneration were ashen memories and her god was lost in this vast continent of pretenders and strange magic.
This counterfeit ghost had almost shocked her back to her godfearing days. But not only was he a living, breathing creature, but his eyes were also the wrong color. A play off molten gold, like motes of light in a warm fireplace. Hot honey in her throat. Not the green and sharp of rosestems. He speaks and he’s much more eloquent than Puck ever hoped to be. There’s no snide secrecy in his tone, no hidden joke, a simple question and some sort of poetry.
“Here I am,” she says simply, an acknowledgement, an acceptance. Here she was. Trekking, once again, into the hardest parts of the world on an endless quest with a dying trail and only an iron will prodding her in the ass to move her along.
Was she lost? In more ways than one. “I don’t know my destination.” A mistruth? Something hard to articulate. Forward. “Guess I can’t be lost if I don’t know where I’m going.”
Sabrina never went looking for company but maybe she could enjoy his; just as soon as the thought popped into her head, she quashed it, feeling queasy, torn somewhere between he’s a pile of ash scattered to the winds and you are a living, breathing creature and when you said forever you meant forever. “I’m looking for someone,” she said, after clearing her throat. “She’s a mare, four years younger than I am, with a opalescent coat, pink eyes, magenta hair and a ruby horn. Like mine, but… better,” she finished lamely, remembering the useless, golden bauble soldered in the center of her forehead.
