from my rotting corpse
Before me stands a mortal, but I do not see the life of him. I see only the death: daisy eyes and pollen-spore heart. Roots curling down his cheeks like tears and ivy vines holding the pieces of him together. I can feel his death like the wind on my cheek.
Around her she cannot stop the earth from dying.
It starts with a sigh of the grass that turns brittle and black. A dandelion sheds its seeds too soon, dropping to the ground like hail (and Isolt counts them all, all of the seeds that will never be wished upon, all of the wishes that will never come true. And she thinks the dandelion lucky, that it will not have to carry the burden of them now.) Somewhere beneath her hooves a dead sparrow is stretching its wings.
There is a part of her that mourns them.
But the rest of her — the violent, made-in-magic parts that are truly Thana’s daughter, that are coming awake with a warning snarl — the rest of her only grins a coyote grin as it lays its teeth upon the throat of the world and demands submission. The rest of her is lording over her death-circle like the young god of it.
And the young god listens for their names, because their names are the last thing she will tuck between their teeth as she lays them into their graves.
“True,” her voice is a whisper above the wind. “That is a strange name.” But she collects it all the same, carving it across the surface of her heart like another scar to carry with her, another soldier to write into her army, another secret to share with her twin.
And more grass dies. And more dandelions collapse. And more wildflowers lose their color.
“I am Isolt,” and she does not tell her what her name means, or that she is only one half of the monster that will unmake him. She only smiles a too-bright smile that is all teeth and no joy, when she says, “I am from the forest.”
But it is the whisper of magic, of something dead, the whisper she had been following from her forest that reminds her it was not mortals she was hunting after. So she steps closer, lowering her horn to his chest — no, not his chest. To the amulet that he wears on a chain, to the whisper of death and magic she can feel coming from it.
The wolves of her heart set to howling, and drooling, and scratching at her throat after it. Isolt licks her teeth, and her mouth feels so full she needs to speak around them. “And what is this?”
Who is this, she should have asked.
@khier
"wilting // blooming"
