'we broke and let all the smoke fill us up inside and none of the fire had air to burn'
It's not until the chaos after the meeting that she just....breathes.
The air taste like stardust, ash and salt. Isra chews on it like dust chews on on a ray of sunshine, drawing out patterns with the dark in the brightness, breaking up the ray with decay. Around her is sweat and brine, skin and blood, suffering and prayers. It's easy to forget her fresh crown of sorrows, to let it be trampled about the hooves of horses that are no different than she with far less of a stain on their souls.
It's easy to let the chaos take her, to be lost in neither the here nor there and sway between bodies like a pearl-filled clam between the tides and the shore. She's not strong enough to dig in, not yet-- not with the sea lingering about her hooves and pulling her down into the darkness of memories. And so she lets the crowd take her away, ebbing against the hardness of them all like flotsam against the cliffs. She's lets them take her back to the shadows, back to where she once starved and stole and looked at a sunshine boy as the moon looks to the horizon for a hope of just once glimpse of gold.
But then a mare breaks the silence, crashes into her ebb and flow and Isra smiles for the passion and fire in her words that she imagines she can see running like a ghost down the other mare's skin. Perhaps it's the weakness of a silver-dreaming girl to smile at gold-dust and wonder of things so much more alive than she.
For a moment it's hard to make words from the brightness of the Noctiilucent's lips, harder still to bury the itch of her skin that remembers how to both burn and freeze and sting all at once. For a moment she thinks in sunshine and hears only the trembling sighs of trees and the soft kisses of moonlight. For a moment the chaos teases at the edges of her vision like a siren, a tide to bring her back, back, back to the sea where the night might seem so very far away when she is back below the waves.
“Oh.” The word comes out like a sigh, both heavy and hopeful and dark enough to drown out every star in the sky. “We all know something of sorrow I fear, especially now in the wreckage of the sea and storms.” It stings to think that the sea betrayed her, took away her once golden skin to leave her with only more darkness and suffering to replace all the glitz and scars of her old body.
“You are kind,” Isra offers a touch of her nose, forgetting for a moment that siren call of the chaos and the sea that is still sweeping back out to shore. She imagines she must smell of blood and brine and her voice must sound like rust. It's easy to skip over the 'beautiful' part as nothing more than a slip of the tongue (her soul is too dark and stained to be lovely). “but I am not brave at all. I am only foolish and hopeful enough to share my dreams and hope that they might bring something better to someone else.” It's easy now to step away from the chaos around them, to offer the mare comfort and that soft ring of her chain that promises freedom when she closes all the space between them.
“Thank you.” It's harder to swallow down the phantom sting of winter-fire across her spine than it is to leave the call of the salted sea. “For your friendship and loyalty I will offer you the same and a promise that you will never burn and you will always be free to hide in towers of sorrow or dance beneath the moonlight. And if you ever want to share your story I will always listen.” Isra swallows down the memories. She smiles and tries so very hard to remember that she's not starving, forgotten in the corners of the court.
Isra tries so very hard to drag up a story of a queen from her soul, to pretend she wears a warrior crown made of coral reefs and shark teeth. She tries to look as wild and lovely and brave as Noctiilucent seems to think she is. “And if tonight was your very last night in this world what would you do, knowing you want to stay in the dark no longer?” Oh how her crown turns to dust in her imagination, swept away again on a sea of dreaming and wondering instead of order and purpose.
@Noctiilucent
