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Q
Qe sera sera, little graveyard girl, the words a soft melody in the tilting of her head, haunting every dogged stop that she takes through the markets. There are some here, so few, who would remember the little Pegasus with a tilted smile and sparkling eyes as the lover – the sweet dove tricked, the girl wronged, and perhaps some other choice names – of an executioner. El Toro, her memories provide fondly, sadly, softly, almost as soft as the sigh of pale wings against paler sides. Little golden horns lead the way when bodies press too tightly – they are not her sisters, her lovers, her teachers; they are not the feeling of home. And she presses forward through the night, the frost-kissed air is dry like her pillowcases. Juniper does not mourn him.
Memories – the past, the future, is there a difference when time is a loop and not straight? – flood her system with every nook and cranny she passes. It had been warm then, and it is not warm now. Not when skins shiver for a scrap of heat and affection.
The people gather in the night, those less fortunate, those who do not (or cannot) go home, pleading without ever making a sound for something more. Doleful eyes find them, soft, prayerful eyes find them, and Juniper thinks that they will not find solace and salvation under Caligo’s sky. Not when they, the children of Solis, so scorned the others for years, went to war, gave them a queen and took her away. Caligo holds no love for Solterra, but neither does Juniper love their god. Only Vespera (goddess divine, eternal light and night and dusk and everything in between) runs freely through her day. From morning hymnals to evening prayers. From battlefield songs and wartime talks. She was a Valkyrie, a Hierophant beside the rest ready to go to war for her people when Raum rose and fell. In those times she found him – El Toro – walking among the tombstones time and again.
He is not gone, not truly, not ever.
Now, spring-green eyes turn again, dancing through the crowd as she danced through the sky (was that yesterday, weeks ago? When had her wings last touched the clouds for praise and adoration and thanks? Oh too long, too long, and her soul cries for the heavens and the brush of the Tinea once more.), and land at last on a woman in the final throes of her dance. It was very much like dying, she thinks, with the heartbeats making the woman’s drum, guiding her feet and those ruthless eyes as they sweep through the faces of those hungry for her touch, for her time. Juniper does not know if she wants both, perhaps one, and which one she is unsure of. So she follows her as Fever descends her throne of attention, shadows her as only another dancer might – light and sweet and swift. They are thieves stealing everything but the other’s heart.
At last, when Fever pauses, when she turns, Juniper’s lips tip upward in a faint smile. She looks like she’s waited forever, she looks like she could wait forevermore. An angel. A saint. Something not quite of this world, perhaps half in the next and half in the past. Yet she stands, tall and strong, streamlined and proud. Her wings puff slightly, prettily, and even the sands of Solterra cannot hide the shine and sheen of her coat. Juniper is no beggar-girl, no forgotten-child. ”Hello dancer,” she coos soft into the frozen night, and her words are holy and her eyes are a caress, an invitation. Would Fever dance with her as she danced for them, or would she do so much more?
