“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”
Last time he saw the swamp, the cliffs, the vineyard, the sparkling city, it had been snowing. Michael had gone to the coast for the winter, as he is often pulled to do, pulled along by the chains of nostalgia that invariably sends him right back to the sea again and again. Michael suspects he is not alone in this. There is not a world he imagines where old men don't stare out at the waves capped in foam and the blue-gray of the ocean and feel bitter, almost acidic longing.
And, more than that, last time he attended a festival it was exactly a year ago, in the streets and then the woods of his own city. He vaguely remembers it as the first time he looked at Isra and felt fear creeping in at the edges like radio static.
The far more salient memory is following a sad girl into a corn maze with a stranger-- he remembers the twist in his heart (jealousy?) and a bottomless need to see her smile, to see her live, and laugh, and---
To see her; that's all Michael wants. That's all he ever wants, he thinks.
And he does-- see her, I mean. Looks up from the thin road that snakes its way from the city toward the orchard to find her: bright as the changing leaves, and sometimes as brittle as one, too.
"Another festival," he says, conversationally, though he's already picking up baskets for each of them and holding the larger one out for her to take. "Please come pick apples with me. I'll tell you a secret if you do."
Michael smiles, like all warm autumn things: leaves that crunch underfoot, apple cider, yellow straw, will blankets and a fire crackling in the hearth.
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
One year ago, he followed her into a maze with a strange man from another court. One year ago, she met a ghost who inspired her to be more. One year ago, he left her without a whisper of goodbye.
Autumn is as sweet as it is bitter, just as Terrastella still tries to shatter her, taking battering rams to her walls, every time she comes back. But her love of the cliffs and the smell of the sea salt air is greater than the cringing of her heart, the twinge of her skin as it withdraws, trying to pull her away with every inch that covers her. She cannot be pulled off the course she chooses, a stubborn, oafish woman with too much heart and not enough thoughts to accompany them.
Too many memories buzz around for her to focus and choose just one, so she lets them hum and focuses on the tapping of her feet as she moves along the winding path. At the end, an orchard awaits. Moira misses the taste of apple pies baked with her family's recipe, and she can't seem to find the right orchard, the right apple, the right taste in all of Denocte. Perhaps it has something to do with the experience of picking your own apples - the Estate has its own orchard she could run through and gather fruits from for her mother. When she was younger, Gizelle would always bake her sweets, enough to keep her kind, keep her soft despite the rest of the family's displeasure. Those moments when she'd spread flour on her mother's nose instead of the counters kept her alive.
Now, she goes towards a new orchard, a new apple pie on the horizon.
Then, instead of the sound of her own feet, Michael's voice comes like the rustle of leaves and the feel of smooth pumpkin pie on her tongue. Unbidden, unwanted, and welcome all the same. She looks over to him with wide, golden eyes. Tilted head and thoughtful lips, she pauses before nodding. "This time, I follow you."
The afternoon is cool and crisp. It will be a cold night, fine for huddling near the bonfires and sipping fresh, warm cider.
Somewhere in the apple orchard, a nest falls to the ground. The three chicks within have barely begun to grow soft brown feathers in awkward little patches around the shoulders. One of them proudly sports a terrible teenage hairdo; at the very top of his head an off-center clump of white feathers. They all call out, loud and urgent, for their mother.
For a long time, the cries echo in the seaside air. Mother never returns and the chicks grow quiet, hungry and tired. Not resigned to their fate, just… too tired to fight, for the moment. Their calls grow quieter, marked by long silences between the shrill chirps.
Will Moira and Michael hear the baby birds? Will they help them, or leave the chicks to their fate?
ere they are: Michael holds out the basket and Moira takes it and it feels strangely final, like something in a machine that clunks unexpectedly into place. She pulls it close to her chest so that it hangs at an angle. Michael smiles at her like it is easy, like he is not all broken glass. Like he has missed her his whole five hundred years of life and just now realized it.
It has not even been long since he's seen her. Since he returned Michael spends much of his time trailing Moira, following her to this shop or that, to buy pigment or a new brush or fine fabric. Michael will always ask how she is, and if she's eaten, and Michael will always brush the hair away from her face and touch her cheek with his muzzle and feel more real and present than he has ever quite managed before.
Michael does not say much, but he says enough, and he's there, which is more than he can say for most people. And so, for most of fall, Moira becomes his small little world-- as if she were not, already.
--Which brings us back to the orchard, to the baskets, to the red and gold of their skin and the blush that rises to his cheeks when and nods and walks his way. He thinks he will never tire of seeing her for the first time in a day. He holds his breath for a second, then turns to walk into the trees.
"How have you been?" he asks, "You look well."
And for now that is all. Michael lapses into a surprisingly comfortable silence, during which he is trying to remember how to breathe without gasping, or laughing, or some awful combination of the two, pulling a branch down to pluck a fat, golden apple from the first tree. He follows it with another, then another, then turns back to Moira.
She is much the same as he always remembers her, bright against the gray-green of the swamp, the same color of the next apple he pulls, so gold it's almost orange and so red that in places it looks almost plum-colored. He smiles to himself and hopes she doesn't see.
"What are you going to do with yours?" he asks after a pause, "I'm partial to apples themselves, if I'm honest."
I am soft again.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.
At first, it is strange to have a shadow that burns so brightly. Moira Tonnerre has known only her own company and that of sadness for so long. Aspara would seek to pull her from her thoughts, and she would wear a smile for her dear niece when they went about for sweets and cocoa, or into the mountains to let the wind rake over their skin and feel the bark of the ancient trees strip them bare. Maeve would sneak into her library, nestled into the little alcove full of blankets and pillows where Moira would read to her and Elli of great tales beautiful and wild.
In the end, the heroine always wins.
They are too young for anything but this rendition of the truth, and Moira hasn’t the heart to tell them of the great sorrows waiting in the future. There, in those stolen moments, she finds she can smile.
Neerja would press into her skin and pull a rumble from her chest, a kiss from her mouth. She would snarl her displeasure when Moira never really opened as a flower should, blooming into the essence of the tiger as companions were meant to do.
Some hated their bonded.
Moira loves hers so much that she cannot bare to let the tigress feel her pain. So it was hidden like the rest of her.
When Michael returns and their tiff turns stale, she grows accustomed to the man again. His warmth is always near, always just beside or behind her. A guardian. A shield. A reminder that he is real. That he is here.
Gently he tucks strands away from her eyes, peering into those depthless gold holes with his own beautiful blue eyes. In his, she finds the sky. In hers, does he find hell?
Whatever he sees, he does not tell her.
Instead, Michael presses chaste kisses to her brow, brushes his cheek sensuously, teasingly along her own when he whispers into her ear. Moira feels her face heat when he’s near and is thankful all over again that she is already red, already bloody and beautiful and dangerous.
She pretends not to see the blush on his cheek. She pretends not to smile and only lets herself beam when it’s his golden backside that she sees. And it is an eyeful. And she is shameless in the way she stares appreciatively. Adoringly.
Moira reminds herself to breathe when he looks back, when he asks her how she is.
“Should you really ask that when you’re always here?” And there is no mirth to color her words, only mild amusement when she pulls a strand of his beautiful white tail, teasingly shaking her head. “I am well now, Michael. Better now that you are here.” How else could she be when color and light return to her life every time he walks into the room? Everything narrows until it is just him.
It’s always just Michael.
But Moira hasn’t told him that.
She hasn’t told any other horse.
They are slow to gather their apples, reaching to find those that would let their teeth press into crisp flesh and tear it like a gaping wound. Sweet, rich juice would flow and Moira knows it will be delicious.
She plucks red apples from the taller branches, sometimes bracing herself against the trunk to look higher and higher.
Flight still eludes her.
With a thoughtful hum at his words, she thinks again of her family. “My mother used to love to bake. Pies, I suppose. Antiope and Morr and the little ones could use some sweetness in their lives.” Wicked delight and that age old insecurity curl in the pit of her stomach. One is an adder ready to strike, the other a cobra with hood flared wide. Both demand to win, but she could no more choose a victor than she could discern the future in a crystal ball. Instead, she turns to her companion, almost vulnerable, almost soft. “Do you think they’d accept?” Does he hear the note of unease that threads through her voice like a fire? In her ashen song, there is always ruination.
After a heartbeat, Moira shakes her head. She does not look at him when her thoughts continue to bud from her lips with lives of their own. “And Aspera and Avesta, of course. I’ll make monsters out of them all so we can scour the world and find every delicious sweet.” There lies fantasy and truth. A future that is as possible as it is unlikely. Still, she looks to him now when she pulls an apple from a bough on high. Its red skin mirrors the red of her lips and the red of her ankles. Gold searches for blue in an endless sea of green. “Would you come...If i went?”
Would he follow her still if she left Denocte?
Moira has broached their future so few times. When she was upset and he returned. When she was drunk perhaps. When the moon was so full it demanded she not lie and he not lie…
Now she does. She does, she does, she does, and it sings to her as a broken bird. And then a broken bird sings louder.
Faint and fleeting and pleading the chirps demand an answer.
“Do you hear that? Something is hurting, Michael… We cannot leave them.” Turning, her shoulder presses to his as she seeks to guide them further into the trees, closer to the source of pain and possibilities.
