When did it become so hard to go from violent to soft, broken to repaired, lost to found? When did I forget how to really smile at the thought of home? I realize now, looking at Morrighan with her fat belly (I know that look well) how far I have risen, or fallen, from the mortal world. I want to step around my dragon's wings, laugh and race her home until our sides are dusted in sweat and our throats parched for the drink.
I want to be happy that's she's not glaring at me. I want to be something other than a god trying to fit into a world to fragile to hold me.
But I worry that I'll never be all the things I want to be again as I follow her as she turns. I smile like I'm not full of everything but the joy I should feel. My voice does not waiver as it should when I laugh and fold my war-toned body into a trot and then a canter. It fades anyway in the roar of Fable's wings as he launches like a weapon into the sky and heads towards his favorite turret in the court.
I will race you home, he says. And I know he only says it because I am still too strange to look at my friend and remember how to be mortal. I do not look at him but my heart soars at the reminder that I do not have to be so cold, and sharp, and broken.
I can just be home.
“I'm surprised there are any buildings left standing in Denocte.” I can hear the hope in my heart, the way my words are trying to stitch me back together into something like I once was. I can hear a story in them, a memory, a legend I know the art of. But I can hear the sea too; I can always hear the sea now.
When my body stretches long and low like a weapon, and we pick up our paces into a gallop, I try to hear only my heart as we race towards home like two friends instead of two bodies who have forgotten the way home.
