have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, / i have measured out my life with coffee spoons; / i know the voices dying with a dying fall / beneath the music from a farther room.
N
ight falls like a sigh.
In the jewelbox streets of the sleeping market, silhouetted by a block of delicate pale light, I walk quietly amongst the revelers of the court.
A few of them recognize me, and before they can sweep into startled bows I am already in one—your majesty! they call, to which, rising, I ask eagerly how they have found the Festival. Lovely, just lovely, they croon, nightingales each. Smiling, I excuse myself with the demurity of an accompanist.
Perhaps it is the deliberate slowness with which our nights fall that keeps me tethered, a furtive lover, to Solterra’s side. A sky so freckled with stars that we make not paintings but maps of them. A moon so virtuously pale that, were she a maiden, would hold a face to send kingdoms to war.
There can never be a moon as lovely as ours. It must be a different moon from that of other courts—a brighter cousin to Denocte’s, a rose-cheeked sister to Terrastella’s.
I have never been past the reaches of Day. Is it a crime, then, to think your land the fairest when you’ve never wondered what awaited you past that bright horizon?
(Is it a crime, then, to love one thing so much, there is no room left for another?)
§
Velvet night, and the hum of water against a sandy shore.
Blinking away the brightness of the moon I settle against the leafy base of a fig tree, before reaching towards the outline of a fig hanging off from a slender branch. It shivers off as if awaiting my touch, syrup oozing out from its green stem. Slowly, as if in a trance, I toss the fruit up, catching it when it comes down.
The priestess’s fruit trees are local legend, but I have brought none with me to see if they are true.
A cool wind sweeps across the sand, shaking down a rain of dark, gauzy leaves. I bring the fig to my mouth, before tipping my head back to stare hollowly up at the stars. Moonlight washes my throat in virtuous, lonely silver.
I bite down to astonishing sweetness.
so excited to thread <3
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
