but you said, come here, my bird!
i will give you the dangerous black night
i will give you the dangerous black night
O
ne is beautiful. In the moonlight, it is painted metal-silver and sparks with the suggestion of a thousand stars, as if, etched in its grain, the granite may have been pulled from the night sky itself. It is smooth and unblemished save for the dust motes that settle idly in the glow of the moon. There is no warmth in her eyes. There is something like terror or despair or hatred or relief, like the expression of one who has lingered too long in the shadow of death and has seen its face – finally! Freed like a bluejay to flit and soar through the thick woods and on, on, into some unknown grey. It does not occur to him at first that her eyes may have hardened then softened, then curiously changed again in the timid fraction of a second; that the rustling of leaves or the tousling of the grasses that sounded like syllables, words, screams, may have gathered her voice along the way.
It does not occur to him until one, the stallion with the cleft throat, his eyes once full of valor and whim, has closed the gape in his neck so that it resembles nothing wider than a crack and his eyes have rolled to Erasmus with a look of scrutiny or agitation. When he looks back to the stardust mare, there is nothing left for him in her eyes. But still the wind whispers.
The thing that becomes Erasmus (or the thing that is, that has become, it isn't certain yet, but the skin feels more like a cage every day) listens deeper, harder, to the unsettled grasses and the howling winds, to the moon-whispers and earth-rumblings and all in between. It yearns for a hymn, a prayer, a chord rung in the tune of a name it no longer remembers. A song of stones.
But they do not sing for him. Not yet.
The shadows that cling to him like webs shiver, crawling down his spine in rivulets, climbing up his flesh in waves. He listens, listens, but each time their words toe the line of coherence the wind steals them again. First a dull purr, then a sorrowful gasp, then the relentless wail. He waits. He waits. He waits for their words to come together like a smooth silver chain and not the gulping gulches of a babbling brook – a part of him, the deep, true part, still waits for them to sing.
“You heard them too.” her voice cuts through the wind, the whispers. He sees her in the corner of his eye: bone and marrow-spotted, a twisted shell of a scarlet horn, eyes that surge like oceans with secrets, with promise, with knowing. When he tilts his head to acknowledge her, he does not turn his back to the statue of the starshine mare. The spine curves with the movement, a small gesture of feline courtesy. She reminds him of something rushing through red-opal reeds between the hollow quartz trees of another world. It is comforting to him, though he doubts that it is comforting to many.
A slow nod, and his expression pulls together darkly, as though he's stunned by something trivial. His eyes gaze past the mare-statue, just past, to the darkening dimples in the hills that resemble eyes, mouths, listening ears. “I can not discern between a whisper, or a scream, or a laugh.” His voice is low, soft, so that he may still listen, achingly, waiting for clarity. “I do not know if they speak to us or each other.”
@Danaë
