Cardinal shadows gathered like loose honeycomb fabric around the girl's ankles. The day, soft and moribund, fell all around her; weeping lilac-milk tears into the darkness that haunted every cavern and wrinkle like the bloodhound that it was. Sabine was not afraid of the dark, but sometimes she wondered whether she ought to be. For eventide was imbued with an organic violence that both dazzled and dizzied her; elevating her senses to an existential high that chased away the sadness clinging to her bones like pine resin. It seemed to her a miracle that the sunlight's butcher did not seek to add her own scalp to its collection, but time and again it passed her by, leaving only the fleeting stain of his bloodshed doused across her marbled flesh.
Sabine moved with birdlike grace across the steppe, caught low in the throes of her malaise. She was not a girl without peace; she woke each dawn to hum the song of swallows overhead and faithfully carried the weight of the sun upon her back, but, still, there was a great sadness living in the machinery of her heart - rusting the cogs until they could dance no more. Her mother, her father; what had become of the two greatest creatures she had ever known? For does not every child see their guardians through only glass made from gold? Time had shifted into a dimension she could neither resist or understand, and into the heavy night she moved, bearing a satchel filled with a thousand different ways to say 'Papa, I miss you.'
Were moon-song and honey enough to heal all of Denocte, even now when so much has happened, she would not have come to the lakeside. Kept swathed within the realm of Denocte, cradled by the singing of books and humming of words, Moira would have found herself content in the arms of a nation she's learned to care for as she had not her own placement within the Estate. Beloved as she'd been, the winged child was never truly accepted for her differences, for her quirks, for everything that shaped her into the Healer she's become.
So she answers when the wind whispers like a lover, serpentine sunlight twining through trees and grasses to lead her on a merry trail as it begins to fall from its highest peak. A small forest, a short plain, more wooded trees rise up about as sleeping giants. So long have they lain, unbothered by the world. Moira wonders, briefly, if they would ever wake for these gods - did they make even the spirits within the Ent's wooden bodies, or perhaps they came from a different plane as Moira had. Time was a fickle thing, and worlds seemed to be as fragile as reality. All it would take is one well placed blow and all could be shattered in another's life.
A shiver that has nothing to do with the weather slips down her spine, skeletal hands taking hold, pushing ice into the phoenix' blood as it goes its course within. Honeyed eyes follow the sloping ground that leads her to a pair of small feet; how they dance and flow as though in the sky. Not that she, herself, would know what it is to fly (and she would never tell you of the dreams she once had where she would soar and soar and soar for days). Were it peace upon her face, serenity in her smile, perhaps then Moira could have let the child continue on unattended to. Ah, but that is not what she finds; instead, pale lips quiver and draw down in a frown, brow is furrowed so delicately like a baby caterpillar just learning to crawl, and summer storms threaten flash floods in vibrant cerulean eyes.
The horns are of little consequence when she compares it to the sorrow shifting under Sabine's skin. So Moira clears her throat, wings tuck tight at her sides, hair wrapped carefully in its braids and buns alike. Carmine mouth hints at a smile, attempts it as she's practiced so many times in a mirror. When at last confirmation comes that she's been seen, her presence now known and leaving little to surprise, the phoenix speaks up in that smoky, ashy voice of hers that would be completely unremarkable save for the fact one would expect chiming bells to peal from her throat when she sings. "Such sadness on the young is not a look suited for a miracle."Offering a smile, Moira steps closer, movements slower than the blooming of daisies under sunlight. She is liquid fire streaming over the steppe beside the girl, the sunset and sunrise in one soul burning so bright, so high, that it's a wonder she has not combusted. Oh, but the ashes in her words leave you knowing why - they forced water down her throat to smother the flames, to subdue the infernos that could threaten the world. "I once knew a girl who was sad, and every time I looked in a reflection pool she stared back at me. Don't let your heart be weary long, young one -- I'm Moira, Moira Tonnerre of Denocte, previously the Tonnerre Estate. One of our esteemed healers at your service miss..."Trailing off she waits, waits with the patience of the stars as they wink and blink in the sky, forever burning until they simply disappear after years of isolation and mourful song.
She missed the way it raised angels from the earth in the hemlock and the yarrow and the clover. It spoke to the Great Mother in soft riddles; keeping her from dying a slow death beneath an unconquerable sun. Sabine was, still, a child, but even children could understand the cyclical nature which flourished above, beneath and within themselves; especially those as kaleidoscopic as she. As twilight faded into obscurity, the yearling settled herself into the nook of a gentle incline, shifting her weight backward as a looping fatigue wound its way around her skull. It had been a long day within a short life, and if Sabine was to tell her truth, she would have prayed for it to end.
Alas, the death of this day was not yet nigh.
There was a flare of summer-orange staining the brow of the hill that rose languidly behind Sabine, but it did not catch her eye until the flare had grown legs and eyes and a voice that burned like a cigarette amongst straw. It caught her off-guard, this creature forged from a hundred embers shot down by the sun, and as the stranger's words rolled like a string of dark pearls into the night, Sabi found herself paralysed by surprise. Bolting emotions dashed across her fragile roseate features; an amalgamation of frustration and disappointment. Had her fathers lessons fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes? Had she learned nothing from the hours they had spent rehearsing all the ways in which she might die by the hand of those who read her weakness with ease? Even now, with hundreds of miles between them, she was forsaking the only man kind enough to love her.
Nevertheless, it seemed she had been lucky tonight. The woman's voice seemed to hang in the air, daring to endure longer than the laws of this world allowed; oh, how the darkness seemed to blanch from such gilded valour. Sabine studied her silently behind eyes that resembled ancient glaciers, echoing the smile that had been gifted to her by this beautiful siren. She had never seen anything quite like it.
"Salutations, Miss Tonnerre," she paused (shy, aching, unsure) "I am Sabine," a second pause, longer this time, "... just Sabine."
Her tongue scraped like sandpaper against her teeth and her cheeks flushed with scarlet embarrassment; she had never been good at this. Moira's awareness of her melancholy only deepened the flood of shame that purged her veins, and desperately she scrambled to recover.
"Denocte, you say? You are a long way from home, ma'am."
from books and words come fantasy, and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.
A bashful smile plays on the corners of rosewood lips, shock quickly covered echoes in glacial eyes that quickly glance over Moira and find her harmless. What harm could a woman such as she wish upon a child, after all? No - Moira is a healer, a doctor: her duty is to her patient's and the well-being of all mankind. To harm one, unless knocking on death's door, is unthinkable, unspeakable. Golden eyes would betray that, the gentility that scrapes along her spine, that sings within the smoothness of her movements.
Such easy confidence is in those steps that bring the phoenix nearer and nearer, a beacon before night, a torch in the dark, a smile when all hope is lost and the world is darkest. Someday they will be corpses for carrion birds that circle high above, someday they will be flowerbeds nourishing daffodils and daisies, but today they are the song of the woods that whistles around them. Today they are a woman and child on such uneven ground that Moira settles near enough to the girl that she can feel the other's skin radiating heat, but is too far to touch her, to pose a threat. Ah, and that chirping voice that weaves into the tapestry between them, it is uncertain, a warbler's song in the morning, still finding out who it is.
"What a lovely name," she says at last, breaking the silence that stretched so far, so thin. An icy surface shatters when she picks a dandelion and offers it to the roseate girl that is a ghost of who she will someday be. "Make a wish and I'll tell you a story, Sabine." For there is life that dances within her honey eyes now, mischief curling the edge of carmine lips, and magic in the air that sparkles and twines about them. Oh, Isra may tell stories that bring the nation to its knees, but Moira knows the song of a sorrow-laden heart when she hears it.
She knows the words of darkened nights and the sound of silence that can be more deafening than the roar of any crowd. There are dark caverns in her that still ache with the need to be known, to be heard. And those caverns are teeming with beasts, pooling with monsters that raise their head and roar to whatever starry skies she paints tonight. Scaled things slither in those pits as she settles deeper into the mossy bed beneath her, wings tucking neatly against her sides. Perhaps they both need a story of something warmer, something brighter.
Maybe they're both looking for home in all the wrong places tonight. So she picks her own dandelion and blows, watching the seeds spread into the air, lifted up on some woodland breeze and carried to where faeries will plant them and new dreamers can start the cycle anew. What Moira wishes for, only her heart ever knows.
If Sabine had known of the healing artistry within Moira's hands she might have faltered farther than she already had. If she had seen her talents written upon crisp paper she might have looked back up to the phoenix with eyes that knew only of her own inadequacy.
There was once a time when a small sparrow-boned girl had watched the swift knowing hands of her country's craftsmen, and wondered whether she too could create form out of something so crude. It had taken one sweltering summer afternoon, two overpriced chisels that had cost her every penny in her already malnourished purse, and (most crucially) three blunt wounds on her legs harvested by her incompetent efforts, for Sabi to realise that craftsmanship was not her forte. Nevertheless, the experience had not dampened her enthusiasm for unearthing ingenuity within herself. Weeks later the flower-child would find herself in a similar predicament: this time the victim was an innocent oil canvas. It's surface, once brimming with potential and yearning for the touch of artistic genius, lay bruised and violated by a hand that knew less of creative prowess than a beetle in a dung pile. This pattern of events fell into a steady rhythm involving: singing, archery, dancing, and even healing.
When at last her mother intervened, winter's first snow had fallen.
Just who are you trying to impress?
Now, those words did not seem like words at all but a mantra branded into her brain. It was the first time Sabine had ever considered the notion that her self-worth might rely on the conviction of others, that these others might be watching her failures with derision and ribbed disappointment between their teeth.
Sabine never tried again.
"Make a wish and I'll tell you a story, Sabine."
It occurred to her, as she stood watching her companion with a gaze that was as curious as it was lost, that nobody had ever told her a story before. Her mother's bitterness had been too wide to fit into the elfin composition of a tale and her father's tongue was more a coat of armour than it would ever be a storyteller. By word of mouth she knew Isra, Acton's friend (and now queen), to be the great narrator of the sea and the open sky, but Sabine had always been looking too long at Acton when she could have been listening to Isra.
So now, she closes her sapphire gaze and leans into the breeze until her body sways with the warm undulating air. And though she has not known Moira for longer than a fragmented moment, something in the darkness tells her (strong and true) that it would be okay. When she opens her eyes again, her wish is made; it lingers in the space above them until it is called on by a force they will never see. Sabine watches it pass on into a realm she has only dreamt of and feels the sundering of her ribcage as a piece of her heart breaks loose, following her wish on into another life. There is a sad smile on her lips and an eternal wound bleeding from her chest, but she turns back to Moira all the same, hoping that tomorrow will bring the happiness she has forever sought.
A whisper breaches the air between them, holding onto something that didn't yet exist: "I would like that very much."
why do you cry, little lion-girl; why do you sigh, little soldier girl?
Wishes are stars in the heavens, petals on a flower, the breath of a girl as she blows her dandelion heart into the mystery of the world. They fall forever and may never be found, but some - oh some~ - are so resplendent and shining and worthy that even the gods and their ancestors cannot ignore a girl's wish dying on hopeful lips. Moira wonders how many wishes she made growing up, how many sparks flew from her heart until it was a roaring fury in the world left to devour and consume the woodwork that so tried to confine her. There once were so few.
Now there are so many.
The lion hearted girl looks to the phoenix, hope and the beginnings of trust playing with her hair, her smile, her quivering voice that floats like moon-songs upon the wind. Moira smiles then, smiles more radiantly than the sun seeking them out, more brilliant than any sunset will ever - could ever - be in the short time they exist. And she is a phoenix, she is something bright and mythical and ethereal before the brave soldier girl who asks at last for a story.
What story can a phoenix tell when all her feathers are burning so?
It begins as a humming in her heart, fingers walking down her spine, a thrumming in her veins. It is a hive of bees buzzing and buzzing and begging to go out, to hunt for the perfect tale to sooth and comfort and invite Sabine into all the wonderful adventures of life. But what story is so perfect to gain the trust and the heart of a child?
Moira Tonnerre reaches out, tucks a stray lock of hair behind Sabine's ear and nods. "I knew a girl when I was young who wore a painting as a smile. She lived in a gilded cage painted silver and gold, blue and royal, she lived in a lie so stunning that she did not know she was trapped," a pointed look, a sad admission. "There were many who did not like her for some reason or another, and there was always something so wrong. So hurt. So different. The girl did not know that it was okay to be other, to be strange and something old and something new. She did not know that to be herself would be the brightest and best gift of all. So she learned to sing and she learned to dance. They taught her to pretend to be normal and wear her painted smile," and what a smile it was, fake and glorious and fooling all who scorned and spit at her.
"Her mother had long since stopped combing her hair, her father did little to help comfort her. But there was a world of art and beauty and the tender caress of one who cares that waited. There was a future so bright it burned, so lovely it promised to last forever, and the girl wished for a million forever in the span of a second. For darkness cannot remain dark when so many fires begin to spark, ignited slowly and then quicker and quicker." But how does she confess what a broken dream feels like? How do flames turn from ice into fire and a million forevers? "And you know what that flaming girl did? She reached for that wish, she dared to dream and taste fate - once heaven fell onto her tongue it would never be enough. It would consume her, she knew, but how could anything that sweet ever turn into something so awful? Those dreams gave her wings, Sabine, and on hopeful winds she rose and rose and rose higher and higher into the sunset skies. If you look along the horizon, sometimes you can still see her dancing on mountaintops and trees, do you hear that laughter in the wind?"
Even the world stops to listen, leans in close just as the Pegasus does, letting the sigh and moan of the breeze sing to them as only it can. Every dandelion and leaf and branch shivers when that haunting laugh from Moira's own lips flutters out like a meteor shower, so brief and beautiful and unlike anything else.
"Her dreams set her free and her wishes led her exactly where she needed to be. The world is not so dark, not so sad, if you open your heart and your mind and your soul. You do not have to be so alone, little one. If ever you are in need, look to the stars and the setting sun and I will find you." In her smile is the promise of a friend, the reassurance that everything will be alright. It is not a healer who stares at the broken-hearted girl, who reaches out, inches closer to lie alongside her in comfort and comradery and a million dreams play out beneath closed eyes. When she opens them again, there are galaxies and worlds teeming with life and laughter in that honeyed gaze.
There is the promise of a better future that she will force from light and phoenix fury and the courage of dreamers like them.
She sees a sunflower tilting its head toward the sky. She sees a star biting between the clouds; blinding and blistering and brilliant. There is fire within her eyes, but it belongs to the woman - it is a blade forged in the fires of redemption. A bugle laments over them in the far-off rumble of thunder but they do not tremble, they do not flinch. Sabine feels her bones made strong in the shadow of a woman born from a handmade pyre. The ivory of her skeleton begins to scream of war and loss and fucking white-magma grief; she wants to rip her skin down like wallpaper so that the metal of her blood could taste the night air - it had hidden so long behind her fear and sinew.
And when Moira's tale weaves into the space between them, Sabine knows she is not quite there. Her heart throbs behind those brittle-bright eyes but her mind has drifted too high to hear the red in Moira's song. She is seeing gold and blood pouring from Acton's throat and her father staring at her the way a wolf would stare at a wounded calf. She wants the ground to swallow her whole, even with the new strength in the osseous matter keeping her flesh from sagging to the ground; for what use is bravery if you cannot stop the bad?
It is only when Moira utters her final words, that Sabine feels her feet touch the cool earth once more.
"If ever you are in need, look to the stars and the setting sun and I will find you."
The soft girl breathes, for what feels like the first time in months, because she knew, perhaps at last, she was not alone.
"Thank you, Miss Moira." It is all she can manage, it is all she can bear.
In the blink of an eye, she disappears into the dark.
![[Image: sabi1.png]](https://i.ibb.co/9ssqhhD/sabi1.png)
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