little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.
the Indian's axed your scalp.
She might have doubted it (or feared it, with her people’s superstitions) had she not met Mateo, and listened to him sing, and watched the way it turned the ordinary world to brief and brilliant streams of color.
So it is not as strange as it would have been, to watch those vines curl and open flowers along the slender tendons of his ankles and the curve of his knee. Though Solterra is not known for its plant life, and she is not known for her botanical knowledge, she notes the way the flowers bloom along the vine, different colors, different numbers of petals. They perfume the air with scents sweet, and sharp, and drowsy.
And then she steps away, and she shuts her slack-jawed mouth so that her teeth click softly together. “I never thought of them as having much of an understanding at all,” she says baldly, then, realizing it sounds like an insult, adds “there aren’t many but cacti where I’m from.” And now, she thinks, she will always wonder what they’re doing, if they have thoughts like she does, and wants, or fears -
Elif shakes her head, takes another tentative step forward, so that they are both standing fully in starlight. When she breathes in she wonders at how heavily-laden the air is, with thick-growing plants and salt-smelling sea and the trace of creatures she can’t put a name to. Whatever his scent is is mostly lost, below the cover of the island.
“Elif,” she says, smiling back. “Are you - searching - too?”
@Ipomoea
