Isra looks at Michael but their eyes do not meet. She is somewhere else, across an ocean he cannot see through the thick, dark pine and alpine chill around them. She looks like rage. She looks like volcanoes, and earthquakes, and the roar of a dead star.
He wonders how long he will have her, with her heart on a pyre, always burning, and her body on a pike, always raging, raging, raging. He wonders how long it will be before he looks at Isra and he does not see a unicorn at all, just a god, as angry and as vengeful as the rest of them. It makes him sad, in some deep and endless way that he doesn't understand. He wonders how long any of them will have her.
In fact it makes him very, very sad--the way his soul heaves as if he is falling says more than he ever has, in this life or any other.
It certainly says more than he does, when Michael opens his mouth and only "Then I will," comes out. He always would have, reaching toward the heat of her burning star, sloughing his skin in the light of it. He will go. Though he is begging her why, why me, why me, he will go. Through the dark, and the fog, and the heart of winter. Through her hatred and her rage and her vengeful magic. Through his heart, sobbing harder every second. He will go.
Follow me, she says, and he does: up the steep slope of the mountain, amid the clattering stones and the tall black pine, until dirt gives way to rock gives way to ice and Isra stops. Michael pulls the soft blue of his scarf back around his face to keep out the cold. Its tassels lick his cheeks, his brow. The sound of it hums along with the mountain.
She says there was strife, here. Fire. A wall to hide behind, or be buried under. He cannot help but feel like that: all dead walls, scorched earth, the crackling of fire or maybe of ice. He thinks he sees now. Isra does not often say things out of turn - each word is carefully chosen, consciously or not, so that it stings like a fist or rolls in like the sea. Isra's cheek is on him, warm and brown, and all he can see is the curl of her horn.
He lays his telekineses against the other one, like a palm.
He says a quick prayer, to someone. Not Caligo. Maybe the god of his homeland. Maybe the many gods of his many homelands at once. Maybe Isra. He doesn't know. She cries. A part of him breaks that he didn't even know he had--he supposes he doesn't have it, after all, if it is this broken.
"Has it been?" he asks. He remembers fighting in the dark, dark so thick it fills his lungs, his blood--everything. Through blood and bone they had willed the sun to rise again. It had not felt so much like salvation to him, either.
"So you will burn your memory, then. To the ground. Maybe more."
So be it.
He wonders how long he will have her, with her heart on a pyre, always burning, and her body on a pike, always raging, raging, raging. He wonders how long it will be before he looks at Isra and he does not see a unicorn at all, just a god, as angry and as vengeful as the rest of them. It makes him sad, in some deep and endless way that he doesn't understand. He wonders how long any of them will have her.
In fact it makes him very, very sad--the way his soul heaves as if he is falling says more than he ever has, in this life or any other.
It certainly says more than he does, when Michael opens his mouth and only "Then I will," comes out. He always would have, reaching toward the heat of her burning star, sloughing his skin in the light of it. He will go. Though he is begging her why, why me, why me, he will go. Through the dark, and the fog, and the heart of winter. Through her hatred and her rage and her vengeful magic. Through his heart, sobbing harder every second. He will go.
Follow me, she says, and he does: up the steep slope of the mountain, amid the clattering stones and the tall black pine, until dirt gives way to rock gives way to ice and Isra stops. Michael pulls the soft blue of his scarf back around his face to keep out the cold. Its tassels lick his cheeks, his brow. The sound of it hums along with the mountain.
She says there was strife, here. Fire. A wall to hide behind, or be buried under. He cannot help but feel like that: all dead walls, scorched earth, the crackling of fire or maybe of ice. He thinks he sees now. Isra does not often say things out of turn - each word is carefully chosen, consciously or not, so that it stings like a fist or rolls in like the sea. Isra's cheek is on him, warm and brown, and all he can see is the curl of her horn.
He lays his telekineses against the other one, like a palm.
He says a quick prayer, to someone. Not Caligo. Maybe the god of his homeland. Maybe the many gods of his many homelands at once. Maybe Isra. He doesn't know. She cries. A part of him breaks that he didn't even know he had--he supposes he doesn't have it, after all, if it is this broken.
"Has it been?" he asks. He remembers fighting in the dark, dark so thick it fills his lungs, his blood--everything. Through blood and bone they had willed the sun to rise again. It had not felt so much like salvation to him, either.
"So you will burn your memory, then. To the ground. Maybe more."
So be it.
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us."
@isra <3
