you would not believe your eyes
as ten million fireflies
lit up the world as i fell asleep
❖
We've snuck away from Denocte, Momma and I. Momma Morr is busy doing "important adult" things, so it's Momma Zahra I'm with tonight. I like to think of her as the fun Mom since Momma Morr gets so overprotective all the time. She actually scares me sometimes, so I try not to sneak out too often unless I'm with Momma Zahra since she says it's okay. After all, I don't ever mean to make my parents upset (or see the wrath of Momma Morr's fire).
Tonight we're in Dellmen - Doomean? I don't think I'll ever get it right. Still, it's a pretty place and I've found I like the smell of the forest and river. It's a shame we don't have this kind of scenery back home, but I can't imagine living by the sea. Coming by for a visit I think is good enough for me.
We've made it to the river and the sound of the rushing water is surprising to my eardrums. I look on with awe as I'm so used to the crashing of the waves by the sea. This water crashes across rocks- large ones at that. It also smells… fresh instead of salty. Like the lake water, but slightly different. I wonder what kind of taste it would have?
I'm about to go try it out, when I notice a speck of light float in front of my eyes. It lands right in the center of my nose, which makes me go cross-eyed. It's my blind spot, so I can't see it anymore and it makes me sad. Thankfully, it doesn't sit on my nose for long and I see it go by my right eye, so I turn to inspect it further. It's so pretty! It's like some kind of creature - oh, wait, it's a bug! I can see its little wings and legs now.
"Momma! Momma! Look! It's a bug with a light on its butt!" I exclaim, bouncing around with excitement towards Momma Zahra. She had been looking somewhere else, but this is clearly way more important.
When I do turn around, I realize that it isn't the only light-butt-bug. There are tons of them! As they fly all over and scatter, they remind me of little stars except they move and have wings and legs.
"Come on! Let's go catch some!" I say as I nudge Momma Zahra towards one cluster. I don't actually know how we'd catch them - maybe with our mouths? But I'm obsessed with them and whatever magic they possess to be lit up.
The Illuminated
“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
Each mile free of walls, and stone, and that mortal army of ants, lightens her step. It feels like home, this wildness, stretching out around them. The mountains rise like spires behind them and the forest and the grasses each whisper in the wind stories that only she remembers. Her steps are light-as-air as she races across the knee high grass.
Here, with freedom as endless as the horizon, Al'Zahra remembers what it is to be air, and ember, and magic.
The child (her child, she has to remember that), races long-legged with an awkwardness that hopefully eases with time. And even when she slows her running to spare Maeve's lungs, there is something immortal in holy in the elegance of her movements. The links in her chains ring like bells over the twilight meadows adding a certain otherness to the roar of the river as they approach.
Music reaches towards them with the wind, and the last feral restlessness in her blood settles like a full-bellied lion. Her muscles coil snakelike and her knees crack and start to remember all the ways in which to dance like a storm instead of a girl. She smiles and the muted light flashes off her teeth, turning them to small stars caught in this mortal flesh of hers.
Al'Zahra starts to dance, and hum, and the night hums with her.
“Fireflies.” She smiles at Maeve as the child races back to her side from wherever it was she had wondered. The way she says fireflies makes it sound like fire flies instead. And they do, landing on their noses and pooling in the creases of their spines like snow. “You do not catch them.” Her hooves whisper on the stone shore as she dances away from the foal and her neck curls almost coquettishly as she dissolves into the darkness speckled with the fallen stars.
The river roars in her ears like a thousand wildcats and the strum of a guitar plucks at her soul like it's nothing more than silver and frayed satin. “They must be wooed.” Al'Zahra dances, forgetting for a moment everything but the thrill of sinew, and darkness, and song.
And on her tongue, beneath her secret smile, the taste of freedom blossoms like an ancient flower.
you would not believe your eyes
as ten million fireflies
lit up the world as i fell asleep
❖
Momma calls them fire-flies, but it doesn't make sense to me. They don't look like the magic Momma Morr has- the kind that scares me half to death. They don't look destructive or angry. They don't flicker different colors.
"Are you sure?" I ask, my face scrunched up all confused-like. "They don't have fiery butts, just light butts." I feel confident that Momma might be mixing things up.
But then she tells me that you don't catch them either and it makes my eyes widen. "How do you wooooo them?" I say, putting more emphasis on the o's. I don't know what the word means, I've never heard it before. Did we need anything special to do it? Is it some kind of magic power?
When Momma starts dancing, I find myself getting distracted from all my questions. Maybe it didn't matter if I didn't know how to woo things because this was more fun to me. Momma Zahra has always been a really good dancer and I wonder if I'll ever be as good as her someday. I trot over to her side and try to copy her movements. It doesn't feel like it's going well because my legs just feel like awkward noodles that are bending in all different directions. I don't know what to do with my head, so I bob it up and down. While we're dancing, the fire-light-bugs circle us. One rests on her nose and there are a few that rest around my forelock. They tickle my skin, but don't seem phased by my dancing. Maybe they're having fun too.
"Am I doing it right?" I ask Momma, now feeling compelled to bounce in place. "Is this wooooing?" I hope it is because it's starting to be a fun game. Maybe I can teach Momma Morr how to woooo when we get back.
The Illuminated
“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
Between one step and the next, one exhale and the next, she turns her eyes to the forest darkness. Her ears prick towards it and her neck curls and arches like a wolf catching a bit of moon-song. Something in her soul cracks, and bleeds, and races through her in sharp shards of glass. Her soul strains towards the forest and that almost-most song like a desert-horse on the apex of a dune. The next step takes her away from the fireflies, and the music, and this pale mockery of fate. Her chains chime like a bell on the sea in a storm.
She's about to run, to dissolve into the darkness where that moon-song thrives and music is nothing more than a forgotten creation, when her daughter becomes a tangle of legs and too-many-words.“Of course I am sure.” She answers. And there are too many teeth in her smile when she turns her head from the forest and tries not to feel the sobbing ache of her soul.
She swallows her snarl.
“Almost.” Part of her, that straining part, had wanted to sing a denial instead of encouragement. “Move slower.” Her teeth tuck themselves back into her hollow smile as the music steadies and slows to something less jagged than before. Fireflies tuck themselves into her mane and perch on the loops of her chains. She becomes the moonlight and the moon-song the wolf in her is straining for.
The gaze she turns on her daughter is golden with the glow, bright enough to hide the sparks and embers of her bleeding soul. “Try again.” And this time her smile is almost soft, as she steps closer to the river and tells her heart that being chained is not the end.
you would not believe your eyes
as ten million fireflies
lit up the world as i fell asleep
❖
Momma says that she's sure about them being fireflies and I guess I have to believe her. She's my Momma after all. In some way the blinking lights on their butts remind me of fire. It's similar to how the flames will flicker about only they're a different color.
We are wooing - I guess? - but Momma says that I haven't quite gotten it yet. My smile turns into a frown as I stop to watch her. The fireflies cling to her like moths to a flame and I'm amazed by her talent. I wonder if I'll get as good as her.
She tells me to move slower, so I try to mimic what she's doing. My legs still wobble underneath me as it all feels so awkward. I am full of life and energy, so moving more slowly just makes me feel more restless. I suppose it makes more sense since the music slowed down too. "Like this?" I ask, feeling a little more confident that I'm doing it right this time. Some fireflies are already starting to land in my hair and it makes me smile again. I like that I've made some new friends, but I don't know if I can woo them enough to come home with me.
"Momma," I start to say, watching her get closer to the river. I'm curious what could be over there that's so interesting, but that's not what I ask her. "How did you get so good at this? Will I be as great as you?" I tilt my head as I look at her, still slowly dancing to the music around us. I can feel a new energy coming into me from all this and I close my eyes to enjoy the moment. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun. Momma Morr could be so boring.
The Illuminated
“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
She does not tell her daughter that the fireflies will die and are no more eternal than a falling star. But she thinks of it. She thinks about how it might feel, to watch a mortal heart learn for the first time both the blessings and curses of death. She wonders if it might soothe this restless itch, this violence without aim, that is rolling around in her heart filling all the places were the fire used to live.
Her tongue feels like a stone in her smile and she wants only to spit it out and watch it roll.
Instead she steps into the river and turns to watch the child (easier to this the instead of hers) move as awkwardly as before. The water feels cool as winter and it settles something broken and begging in her heart. “Me and my sisters were born knowing how to dance.” How strange it feels to her, to think of the time before the gods and of her sisters again.
How strange it is to feel nothing at the thought. Nothing at all.
There is only this world for her now. Only this cage she's desperate to break free off.
Another foot falls into the water. The current pulls at her hooves like gravity begging to pull her under and drop her into the bottom of the sea. “No.” She says because she does not know how to be kind, or motherly, or anything but a horse straining to run into the black woods like a wolf. Her ears flick again to the places where the fireflies have not gathered on the grass like flowers instead of living things waiting for death.
Her neck curls and her muscles quiver for the thrill.
“But you can practice more and perhaps you will become almost as good.” There is only one hoof on the shoreline now and a hundred stones waiting heavy on her tongue.
you would not believe your eyes
as ten million fireflies
lit up the world as i fell asleep
❖
It's interesting to me that Momma was born already knowing how to dance. I wonder if I was born already knowing something. Nothing comes to mind, but maybe I don't know what it is yet? Or I already know how and it doesn't seem like a special kind of knowing. I think I might strain my brain if I try to think on this too much. At the least, maybe Momma's born-already-knowing will pass on to me from something. Dancing seems a lot less dangerous than fire too, so I wouldn't say no to it.
For now I guess I'll just keep trying. I'm a little sad that she doesn't think I'll get as good as her. I guess if I wasn't born knowing, then maybe I can't? I'd still like to try though. Maybe I can prove her wrong.
I watch as she gets further and further into the river. It makes my heart start to race as I watch the current lapping angrily at her legs. She's much bigger and stronger than me, so I'm feeling too nervous to follow. Still, there is that natural urge to follow her being my Momma and all.
"Where are you going?" I ask, hoping she's not having us travel by the river from this point on. I don't know if I would be able to keep up (or if the river would simply take me, never to be seen again). I can already feel my legs shaking from the nerves and I clench my teeth.
I want to prove to her that I'm good enough, but I don't know. There is a feeling in my gut that if I try to jump in, I won't be strong enough to handle the current. I've never seen such a thing before since I'm so used to the sea. I know the tide can be angry during storms, so I only ever pass through when the waves are calm and soft. This is something more like Momma Morr's anger- a rush of rage but the opposite of her element.
The fireflies drift away from me and I stand frozen from fear and confusion. I'm not sure what to do.
The Illuminated
“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
There is a certain thrill in the feel of the hungry river tearing at her knees. It feels like hanging off the edge of a cliff or hanging between the wings of a sparrow and the gap-jaw of a cobra. She feels both dangerous and in-danger as she steps fully into the current. It bellows around her in white-froth and rocks kicked harshly against the fragile bones of her legs. Each note of that fresh-water roar cracks open another wound in her broken, ancient heart.
The wounds scream at the look in her daughter's eyes that shape themselves into chains. Her lungs flutter in her chest like she's drowning and golden lamp walls are rising up around her. She wonders if she'll ever breathe in the taste of freedom again.
Her heart shatters.
Another cage blooms in the wreckage of it and the river promises, as all violent things promise, to wipe it all away until the bars are rust in the bottom of the sea. Al'Zahra hums with the current and her chains make a brassy undercurrent to the fever in the notes of her wordless song. She takes another step into the current, pausing only once to look at the girl standing at the shoreline like a mortal thing waiting to die.
She know they'll all die in the end. But she will not (will not!) go as this dancer trapped in a world full of gods and bated magic. She'll go in the jaws of a lion, a wolf, with a sword to her heart. She'll go and worlds will rattle and dissolve in the wake of her death.
A court guard passes close to them, wondering perhaps at the mare wading too deep in the rabid river. It's to him that her feverish eyes turn, all lion rage and molten gold. She bares her teeth like she's more warrior than dancer, more Morrighan than anything else. “Take her home to Denocte.” And perhaps the soldier agrees because the look in her eyes, these weak mortal eyes, holds more holiness and sick hunger than a mortal mare's eyes should hold.
And this, this passing off her her daughter to anyone (anything) but herself is the kindest thing she can do.
Perhaps it is the kindest thing she has ever done.
But then, suddenly, there is no more kindness to be found. She does not wait for the solider to lead her daughter away (she does not wait for the heartbreak the girl will suffer to soften to anything but abandonment). Al'Zahra does not wait to see what the mortal world, the weak world, will make of her before she starts to run with the current.
The thrill of the current, the froth, the rock slipping out from under her hooves and dragging her into the current, is enough to fill each and every crack in her wild heart. She runs, and runs, and runs, until the current reaches the sea.
And even then, even when the horizon looks like a bound thing in her gaze, she does not stop running.
you would not believe your eyes
as ten million fireflies
lit up the world as i fell asleep
❖
I keep watching as Momma keeps walking and the sound of her hooves against the rocks is so loud. I'm afraid she'll slip and fall because I know I would if I tried to follow. I keep feeling that urge to but it feels like my feet are trapped in mud. It doesn't look safe, but maybe she's testing me? I want to be as brave and skilled as both Mommas, so maybe this is my chance to prove it?
I'm about to take a step in when a man walks over. I think he's from the Dawn Court and he looks like he's built for fighting, yet his expression says otherwise. He seems concerned and shares my confusion when Momma gives him orders to take me home.
"B-but…" I say, my voice barely a whisper as I'm struggling to speak. None of this makes any sense. I thought we were having fun with the fireflies and dancing and wooing? Where is Momma going and why can't I come with her? Why can't she take me home?
The guard nudges me forward and tries to comfort me as he notices tears starting to fall down my cheeks. I've lost my chance to say anything else because Momma is already long gone. So I leave with the man reluctantly as all the questions swim around my head.
I didn't realize this would be the last I'd ever see of her.
