Isra does not see the school of fish and that one word between them. She does not see it at all. So she does not wonder if the letters are writ in sea silt and shells with drops of sea-foam and brackish water dripping from the bottom of them like ink. The shift of blue-green and silver-sided scales does not catch her eye when she looks away from the sea and to the sky, to a bird that soars and floats so lovely that she imagines it carries a little bit of Eik's soul (all the best parts, all the parts she looks at and calls 'mine').
Perhaps if she saw the fish and their hidden treasure she would have smiled and let all the parts of her creep out like snakes of moonlight. She would have watched them swim away through the waters and float like dragons across the sky and she wouldn't have dreamed of gathering back up the pieces of herself. Isra would have only blown them away like a million wishes and told them,
live now, here in the soul of his magic and protect it always from the sharks and the rot..
Perhaps she would have risen from this strange world between them, laid her horn across his brown like a crown and anointed him with her touch like a god.
Isra saw nothing and so she only blinks her eyes and walks between the inside of them and the outside of them and rests the hollow of her throat across his back.
“Magic,” She echoes and presses her chest to the cage of his ribs and begs whatever sea of power it is that lives in her to reach out and crash over Eik if only to blend them two of them together a little more (until they are not two or even one but everything).
Eik speaks again and she follows him back into the world inside of them. Each of his words seems a gemstone path across some lake deeper than the sea and she jumps from stone to stone as faithfully as a sleek hound. And when she realizes that she has followed him not to the place inside him but inside her Isra trembles and almost falls into that silver lake below her soul.
And when he retreats she's still there peering into the magic as deeply as the magic is peering into her. They inhale and then exhale and her heart shivers like a doe in a arrow path.
Oh! Isra whispers to the waters and the waters whisper to her and she's not sure who it is that speaks at all.
There you are. I have been waiting. They coo together and the water reaches up like roots to twine about her horn and beg her to swim and to drown.
Eik is the only thing that keeps her from sinking and she runs like feral thing over the gemstone path and across the shore and then into the world outside of them.
“The other thing?” She asks and shakes her head as if there is a fly buzzing at her ear and her lips and yelling at her,
listen closely, unicorn, listen closely now.
If only she saw the fish!
But he whispers in the world between them--
love-- and Isra unfolds and restitches as she has never done before. Her magic rises up like a torrent, catching on the currents of that word (love, love, love!) and it crashes over her, sinks into her and devours her. And Isra, in the sound of that word, is remade.
“Love.” She sighs and finds that way that it lingers on her tongue, like he title of an old book, a revelation.
“You are already teaching me.” She pulls away and rests her horn across his brow like she would have done sooner if she only saw.
“Eik.” She lifts her horn and presses her lips to the hollows above his eyes, his cheeks and then to that crease of his lips that sometimes seem so tense and other times as thin as paper. Isra almost says a million other things but the days peaks through and she sheds off her moonlight and her stardust and smiles back as him as playfully as a fawn.
The magic inside her still rushes over her in waves and in that space of silence between them it whispers things and ideas and wildness to her like a song. Isra listens.
The walkway at their hooves quivers and becomes a field of roses, pink and silken and heady. She looks down as the roses and then up at him, hoping to see wonder and that word
love, love, love writ in the last silver-tones of night in his gaze.
“Find me in the daylight then.” Her laughter floats out like bells and wind-chimes as she turns and runs through the flowers and then over the stones towards that streak of pink on the horizon.
This time she is the one that leaves him a trail but hers is made of flowers and glass and glitz.
ISRA WITH THE WILD MAGIC ;
"I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile.”
