“AND DEEP IN OUR SECRET HEARTS
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
WE WORRIED THAT WE WERE AN ACCIDENT,”
A million somethings, a million memories, rise inside her like a rain cloud rises above a mountain before it's caught in the currents there (like a cage, like a noose, like a glass shard pressed on her tongue). They all tremble like tides in her bones and in that black space behind her chewed-out star shine gaze. Each feather, spread wide at her sides like both a warning and a siren call to come closer, rustles and whispers as her sinew sets to shivering.
It would be hard then, to look at them and say which of them had risen out of the black-depth like a bruised ghost (and maybe one of them has risen and one has fallen into the darkness of this coil).
And she does not confirm or deny the thousands of thing she knows about falling, and being chewed out of the sky for a reason no one remembers.
She hardly notices the second red crow perched on his gruesome bone. And she hardly notices the salt-water running down his cheeks like sorrows instead of brine. All she can see the the steady pulse of his heart aching against his cheeks and the way his eyes shine, and shine, and shine like all the blood on her once battlefields. He is a song, a poem, a bit of religion she has forgotten the notes of. And when she crosses that last boundary between them, and presses her nose to to the tangle of his hair before he pulls away, she strains to remember.
It slips away, like all things do in this terrible and fallen form of hers, and she cannot hold on tight enough to keep it.
When she spots the necklace around his neck, swinging like a fresh guillotine in a hurricane, she shatters. She is made of constellations without lines to tie the stars together, comets fallen dead and gray to the earth, and stars flicking out of the last on their life between one blink and the next. She becomes three broken lines of pieces that have forgotten how to fit together. They battle between her bones and her own lips hum, and tremble, at the war she does not know how to sing of.
Words glitter like needles beneath her aching lips begging for song. For a moment she only stares at him, and his crows, and the mockery of her charm swinging, and swinging, swinging at the base of his throat. She wants to pluck it loose, and pluck him loose from the cosmos, and save him from the sea all at once. Warset leans towards him and away from him in increments, as if she's fluctuating on a storm-current at the precipice of a cliff side. As if she doesn't know if the falling should be up, or down, or not or not at all.
Her wings blot out the sun and nibbles at the edges of their shadows as she decides to step closer, and closer, and closer. She wonders if she can drive him back into the deep like the stars had driven back the red bull of the universe when time was nothing but newborn fire and blackness. And she wonders if he sees fury, or pity, or fear in her gaze when she looks at him.
She doesn't know, oh she doesn't know that he only sees himself. And perhaps if she did it would have been pity settling in her silver eyes like a black stone.
“Neither.” She says but she does not settle the massive expanse of her wings, or the pieces of eternity lighting embers in her gaze. “But if you'd prefer the real thing to a mockery, you only have to take it.” Stars, oh stars, do not know how to go gently into their sorrow, or their brightness, or their fear. They only know how to blaze, and devour, and upon dying how to turn a forest to cinders.
Warset smiles at his crows as if to say, I know, I know, I know.
And perhaps she does know how to be red, and magic, and illusion without the bones to break. Perhaps she knows all the things that live in the seawater racing down his cheeks like tears pretending to be rain. Maybe it's why she moves to touch him again, and to whisper like a star to the red bull, “If you do I promise you'll never fall in quite the same way again.”. She whispers like a constellation, and a galaxy, and a bit of blackness at the bottom of a moon. She sings, and coos, and bleats like a lost lamb at a wolf.
But when she looks at him the sound of her voice hardly seems to matter, not with a universe of tempting and challenging watching him wander though this black abyss between them.
The one that he has made.
@Caine
It would be hard then, to look at them and say which of them had risen out of the black-depth like a bruised ghost (and maybe one of them has risen and one has fallen into the darkness of this coil).
And she does not confirm or deny the thousands of thing she knows about falling, and being chewed out of the sky for a reason no one remembers.
She hardly notices the second red crow perched on his gruesome bone. And she hardly notices the salt-water running down his cheeks like sorrows instead of brine. All she can see the the steady pulse of his heart aching against his cheeks and the way his eyes shine, and shine, and shine like all the blood on her once battlefields. He is a song, a poem, a bit of religion she has forgotten the notes of. And when she crosses that last boundary between them, and presses her nose to to the tangle of his hair before he pulls away, she strains to remember.
It slips away, like all things do in this terrible and fallen form of hers, and she cannot hold on tight enough to keep it.
When she spots the necklace around his neck, swinging like a fresh guillotine in a hurricane, she shatters. She is made of constellations without lines to tie the stars together, comets fallen dead and gray to the earth, and stars flicking out of the last on their life between one blink and the next. She becomes three broken lines of pieces that have forgotten how to fit together. They battle between her bones and her own lips hum, and tremble, at the war she does not know how to sing of.
Words glitter like needles beneath her aching lips begging for song. For a moment she only stares at him, and his crows, and the mockery of her charm swinging, and swinging, swinging at the base of his throat. She wants to pluck it loose, and pluck him loose from the cosmos, and save him from the sea all at once. Warset leans towards him and away from him in increments, as if she's fluctuating on a storm-current at the precipice of a cliff side. As if she doesn't know if the falling should be up, or down, or not or not at all.
Her wings blot out the sun and nibbles at the edges of their shadows as she decides to step closer, and closer, and closer. She wonders if she can drive him back into the deep like the stars had driven back the red bull of the universe when time was nothing but newborn fire and blackness. And she wonders if he sees fury, or pity, or fear in her gaze when she looks at him.
She doesn't know, oh she doesn't know that he only sees himself. And perhaps if she did it would have been pity settling in her silver eyes like a black stone.
“Neither.” She says but she does not settle the massive expanse of her wings, or the pieces of eternity lighting embers in her gaze. “But if you'd prefer the real thing to a mockery, you only have to take it.” Stars, oh stars, do not know how to go gently into their sorrow, or their brightness, or their fear. They only know how to blaze, and devour, and upon dying how to turn a forest to cinders.
Warset smiles at his crows as if to say, I know, I know, I know.
And perhaps she does know how to be red, and magic, and illusion without the bones to break. Perhaps she knows all the things that live in the seawater racing down his cheeks like tears pretending to be rain. Maybe it's why she moves to touch him again, and to whisper like a star to the red bull, “If you do I promise you'll never fall in quite the same way again.”. She whispers like a constellation, and a galaxy, and a bit of blackness at the bottom of a moon. She sings, and coos, and bleats like a lost lamb at a wolf.
But when she looks at him the sound of her voice hardly seems to matter, not with a universe of tempting and challenging watching him wander though this black abyss between them.
The one that he has made.
@Caine
