and i must pour forth a river of words
or i shall suffocate.
or i shall suffocate.
T
he night felt cool against her skin, when she left the glow of the lantern-light and took to the forest. The trees closed in around her like so many hungry things, waiting things, watching things — each dark knot scarring their pale trunks was an eye, each firefly darting between the trees a witness.She wondered what they thought of her, the girl who made her own way to the river by following the sound of its voice, rather than the trail all the others followed.
But oh, oh, oh —
Tonight —
tonight she did not care what they might think.
Tonight the very air felt alive, like something living working its way into her lungs. It was a wonder she felt like herself at all still, with the magic humming so loudly in her veins she shone in the starlight, like she was just another ghost haunting the forest. She could feel it, the way the world was stretched thin — the way she was stretched thin alongside it.
There was another world tonight, brimming just below the surface of this one. And there was another Maret, one draped in sunlight instead of diamond dust, ready to rise.
It was the light that called to her (it always did). It was the way the river glowed beneath the weight of all those fireflies, the way the other horses danced through the water like they were nothing but flames drawing moths to them. The way they drew her to them, the way the line between moth and flame was blurred so that Maret was not sure which of them she would rather be. She, too, was compelled to jump into beautiful things even if they set her aflame (perhaps because they set her aflame. This feeling, this fire racing in her veins instead of frost — this was something immortal, she knew. And she only hoped that after tonight she would remember it long enough to write it all down.)
But first, she wanted to live out the story.
She had not been at the river for long before the girl with the high and sweet smile came to her. Maret watches her through the fireflies, and lets her own smile shine like the stars in turn. Something about her words feels like a lie — but she pretends to not notice. It was more interesting that way, pretending to not know something (to not be herself). Sometimes, it felt easier to imagine herself as someone smarter, taller, older, prettier — anyone other than herself.
"Of course not," she says with a flip of her hair and a look that says I know I am (even when she knows, she’s not.) And just like that, the game begins.
The fireflies feel like sunlight when she leads the other girl through them, brushing their wings like silk against her skin. The flutes whisper like a lullaby in her ears, the river singing along to its melody when she steps into it. "But you can’t just catch them, they’ll fly away if you try—
"You have to convince them to come to you."
For a moment, ankle-deep in the water and surrounded by specks of gold, Maret thinks she knows what it might feel like to be the sun.
And then, she begins to dance.
{ @Elena "speaks" notes: <3 }
