[P] through their veins in ice and fire [winter]

[Isra]

"And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.”

 Once the press of bodies in winter would have made her long for shadows and summer brine. How far she's come, that she moves between the crowds and brushes shoulders with them like nothing more than another spire of life filling Denocte. Isra is full of wonder to behold the market. She does not think there will ever come a time when there is not some new magic hiding in the streets of her city 

Tonight it is the lanterns waiting coiled and bright around the bonfires that feel like fresh magic. Stars dance between them, bright eyed and more mystical than she can ever hope to be. Jasmine and cedar rise up like dragons of spice offering themselves up to all the secrets of the universe. Music rings out, bloated with the sound of a flute and a soft voice. Her heart beats in time to a the low bass of a drum and she feels, for a moment, like everything in her skin is wild and loose upon the night sky. 

Dragons twirl above her head and sometimes one brushes close enough to make her hair sweep away from the hollow curl of her horn. Fable, where he's slumbering on the castle turrets, dreams of being as fast as these small dragons. He dreams of making art out of each beat of his wings until he can shape the clouds with a curl of his neck and a wave of salted water. Each of his thoughts runs in the back of her mind, like the pages of a book turned by a storm. It makes the world around her seem more surreal, more magical. 

Isra joins the dancers, pressing her shoulders against theirs. Tonight she moves not like a queen, but like another wild star fallen from the black sky. Tonight she moves like there is no war beating in her chest like that low drum beating beating beyond the fires. Stones glimmer like stars in each place she steps until the firelight is a kaleidoscope of red across her dark coat. It feels like freedom, losing herself in the crowd with nothing upon her brow but a pillar of bone. 

Until her lungs feel like fire she dances. Until her bones feel like rust in her skin she twines like smoke between the crowd. Only then, only when she feels like she's about to collapse, does she take herself from the thick press of bodies around the fire.

Back in the shadows, she lifts her head to the sky just as the lanterns catch on a winter breeze and take flight. Isra smiles at the mist curling from her lips like dragon's breath. A step echoes on the stone beside her. She turns towards the sound just as the first fat snowflake falls across her nose. 

And still that drum is beating beyond the fires and the lanterns are still rising like an army of light into the black night.

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@morrighan // <3

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