what can i do
when i break into stars
when i break into stars
I
t was a strange thing, watching the sun rise over the Arma mountains.There is always a moment, as the light creeps gently up the side of the cliffs, where it seems to hesitate right before the summit. The shadows lining it deepen to bruise-blue, the crisp line the morning light forms seems to waiver. When he was a boy, he liked to watch it and imagine the two gods, Oriens and Caligo, fighting overtop the mountain.
There was a time when Ipomoea would watch the sunrise like he was waiting for the sun to fulfill a promise. When he was a boy, watching the light finally cross the last rock each morning was like watching the sunrise for the first time. Feeling the sun wash over his face was like feeling the life fill him back up the same as the colors trickled slowly back into the world.
But that feels so long ago.
Now, there is more magic than blood in his veins, and Ipomoea does not need faith in the gods to know the sunrise will come anew each day. Now, he doesn’t need the morning to shake off the cold of the night. So when the black-draped mountains start to turn to lighter and lighter shades of blue, he does not even turn to watch.
The streets are shining with gemstones, moonstones and quartz and a thousand colors too brilliant to describe. Each step that he takes rings out sharply, bone against stone, the whisper of his wings over the pavement, the shush, shush, shush of his blood and magic in his ears. Between the stones a daisy blooms, blades of grass spring free. The sight of it makes something in his eyes soften, reminds him of another morning he spent in the Court, a time before the fires, the wars, before the magic in his blood turned to summer heat instead of a spring blush —
When the girl bumps into him in the dark-before-the-dawn shadows, he thinks, for a moment, that she is a unicorn. When he blinks her hair turns black, and her skin darkens to the color of the earth; a bow floats along beside her instead of a candied apple. And there, on her belly, instead of splashes of white he sees only blue, blue like the ocean, scales like sapphire gemstones shivering in the lantern-light.
But he blinks again and Isra is gone. And the girl before him smells more like the desert than the sea.
“Don’t,” he says, untangling his legs from her’s, reaching out by habit to steady her. “No harm done.” And he wonders how his words can still feel hard, can still sound hard, even when the smoke smells more like spice than burning buildings, even when the skies are clear and the storm is long since passed.
“Talon?” only now does he realize he never asked the shopkeep his name (and it makes him wonder how many times he’s been recognized by his own people, and never wondered at how many of them he could not say the same for.) But he tries to smile despite it, despite the way his magic grows thorns and wraps tight around his heart. “Do you know him, then? I suppose it’s good I found him towards the end of the night, otherwise I might have bought his entire cart.” He hopes his smile looks softer in the dark, that the shadows soften the lines of his face.
A half-beat of silence passes, and the street light falling softly across their brows makes their cheeks look all the more hollow in the night. “Were you on your way somewhere? Don’t let me keep you.”
But between the words is a whisper of stay, stay, as more and more daisies come up between the cracks in the pavement.
@aghavni "speaks" notes
