other worlds than these

[Antiope]

I

am lingering for too long in this place. I should have moved on from the festival, which has little to offer me, but there is a part of me beneath the untamed and the savage that remembers how much I once enjoyed these sorts of events, though at one time I hadn’t understood them. There is a part of me, uncaged and free, that remembers planning them for my own people and loving to see how they enjoyed the result. Somehow, I wonder if there is any part of me that is actually left like that.

I weave around bodies like a river cuts around a stone and pause before a booth when something catches my eye. The table is dressed in Solterran colors and modest decor, but laid out upon it on trays and plates are sun cakes, candied cactus and agave-smoked sugar cubes. The familiar treats bring a memory to the surface and I find myself looking for the dark skinned, sand-colored eyes of the man I had once met selling such goods in this very meadow so long ago. How long has it been?

He is not there, of course. The food laid out upon the table is no doubt a small sample of regular delicacies from the court of sun. They are still too sweet for my taste, but I have lingered so long at the table that I purchase a cake and take it with me. I cannot stomach it, there is some big wide emptiness in me that cannot be filled with food. Instead, when I find a young boy loitering among the tables of food looking like he could use an extra meal I smile and offer the cake to him. His eyes widen in excitement and as he prances away I can already see him shoving it into his mouth.

Perhaps, I think, loping along like a wild cat, I will make my way south instead. I wish to remember what the ocean sounds like when it lashes against the shore. It used to be that I never went to bed without the sound of the sea in my ears, and now It has been so long since I have heard it properly, or seen it even. This is just not where I am meant to be.

@Vreis speaks

antiope
—
« our souls speak as loud as
the thunder upon our heads »

♢