You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
After all that time alone, one would think she would long for the dance, for the flesh; for the swirl of colour and music—the way they become one; lute in bright yellow, tambourine in mellow purple, impressionist and wild in their brushstrokes—and she is. Longing, that is. She wants to slip amongst them, to spin and shiver against skin and silk. To feel that throb like a conjoint heartbeat, fast and heavy. Surely alive—and that’s all that would really matter, in the end. That assurance. And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
That promise.
But she just can’t show it, that longing and that needfulness. She is, as he rightly makes out, a caged thing. Yoked to her own restraint and irascibility. Moored, now, to the way she feels unsure in her skin. In this world. In life. How she feels one foot in and one foot out—not yet free of the remains of the betrayer’s arcane magic. Consigned to the restive wandering—how many steps had she taken? How many sleepless nights because sleep was something Zakariah had left out of his design, made it inessential.
She is still trapped.
So Cyrra continues to wrap her wings tightly around her body, leaning against the stone railing and peering down into the abyss, tattooed with hearth-fires and string-lights, inked in a world she longs to be brought back into. And when he speaks her lips cock in a half-smile, again. She takes another sip, and looks back to him, content, she supposes (for now), in their verbal dance. “Ahhhhhh,” she tut-tuts, her tongue cupping the roof of her mouth with each percussion, “well. I wouldn’t be too worried, you’ll find most fail at that.”
True. An incredibly isolating truth, at that.
‘I think I came here looking for ghosts.’ And at this, entirely without thinking, she laughs. The kind of laugh that comes after sharing an inside joke—except it’s only inside of her and explanations always ruin the fun, don’t they? She sniffs, blinks what might be a stray tear from her eye and shakes her head with a sigh, “I came here running from them.” She could have also said, ‘you found one!’ but she’d rather not look into that mirror right now. She shifts her weight, head tilting ever so slightly—oddly, against the rigidity of her bronze neckpiece—“any ghosts in particular? Or are you the undiscriminating type?”
(There’s the wine.)
She collects herself. Pulls it all back together again—she’s good at that—and raises her glass, facing the impending doom of a glass far more than half empty. “Nor do I,” it had changed. A lot. And not just in the way it opened for the festival, but in ways she couldn’t yet fathom—like a puzzle with its pieces scattered wide. She hadn’t gotten up the courage yet to ask what had happened since the entombment of the Arete; to put all of that back together. It was, invariably, going to be a lot to process. “There’s no harm in trying.” She tilts her head back and finished the glass. Annihilation.
They’d better get drinking.
They’ve a mighty dune to climb.
@Noam
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
