drowning never felt so much like flying as it does right now
Jasmine and winter, lonely temples and sea-spice, and something very distant, something from her first home, are the only things to perfume her, to romance him, to ease Michael closer. They are twining branches, twisting around another and pulled apart in a violent wind storm, forever to dance side by side, forever growing the same way, yet they are never quite the same. Reassurances fall as sea-water from pink lips, and they are not enough to assuage the knowledge that lays in its grave within. The entertainer's words leave ash on her tongue, leave eyes glistening, so much so that the phoenix looks away.She is but a pile of ashes and embers.
Softly glowing.
Gently burning.
Something quiet now, waiting.
Always does the Tonnerre girl wait. Soon, all her life will be the past and she will still be waiting for the future. Nothing matters, it does not matter as someone sets another glass upon their table. All she sees is the white of his lashes and blue of his eyes, the cream of his skin as it shimmers under flickering lights. Baubles held aloft reflect that light back to him, and her head tilts curiously.
They stare, a round of questions always echoing in the caverns yawning between them, an infinite loop as two serpents twisting and twisting and twisting. His threads are tangled with her threads and Isra's threads and the tapestry as it is sewn into something bigger. Why, why, why does it always beat back to the waters? The heartbeat of the world is not the sky, not the earth, but the sea. She wishes she could answer him honestly with courage, with a sparkle in her eye and a smile on her mouth. For the first time, Moira wants to unspool herself from the sewing machine, unhook herself from the needles. Could she, she would be a threadbare rug, tattered with her words before him, with everything hung on the strings of her heart.
She cannot.
The Emissary cannot. The phoenix cannot. The Tonnerre in her cannot.
With his gentle hands holding her as a ghost, with his soft eyes imploring, with his begging lips, he is an angel and she not even a demon enough to tempt and tamper with him. She is dust. She is ash. She is nothing.
"Everything," as though she is a lie. As though she is a sinner. As though she is a saint. Moira's voice is low and sweet, scratchy, husky as it licks at Michael's ears. Her eyes blaze and burn, begging that he understand she cannot. Imploring he does not make her say everything of her becoming and undoing. Because she would. Great ancestors above, Moira Tonnerre would tell him then with her belly still tingling and warm, with butterflies dancing in clouds within her head. All of it would be his to revel in, spoils of a war they cannot help but to lose in the end. "What are you doing to me?" she asks, barely a whisper into the corner of his mouth.
