ISOLT
There is magic in our blood, and tonight we are watering the garden with it.
Her magic, the furious beat of it igniting in her blood, has gone beyond hunger and slipped into famine. It lies there like a storm trapped beneath her skin, crashing again and again and again against her ribcage until every bone echoes with the song of it. She can feel it, its violence, its rage, gnawing at her ribs.
She can feel the way the dead things — her lovely, terrible dead things — tremble in response.
And she smiles.
Somewhere a half-rotten heart is fluttering, trying to beat again through the dirt and the roots and the decay wrapped around it. And Isolt can feel her’s trembling when it matches the pace of the creature stretching out to greet her. And when she sighs, she feels less like a unicorn standing in the garden and more like one of the monsters crawling free from the frozen earth. Her sister whispers live over them like a prayer, and Isolt who is one of them feels every cell in her body burning at the sound of it.
It is her own paws they use to claw their way free from the earth. And it is her lungs that ache when they lift their root-and-bone heads and take their first undying breath. And when they turn to look at the two unicorns it is her eyes they use to see, and she is looking up at herself from the ground. They want, and want, and want for a thousand things that were stolen from them the moment the breath in their lungs first collapsed — and for the moment, Isolt wants nothing more than to run, and feed, and lust, and breathe (and breathe and breathe) with them.
Everything in her settles with a sigh, as her sister’s blood and the rotten creatures settle like a stone inside of her (and oh, her hunger feels like only a memory beneath the weight of them.)
She runs her muzzle down their spines as they arch against her, until her lips are red and black with the blood and the death of them. Wisteria petals woven between their vertebrae catch in her teeth, and their ivy wilts as it winds its way up her legs. In the snow-white garden they are brighter than the holly and the winter-blooming flowers, a spot of color in a deathless world.
And her sister’s blood covers everything red, red, red, and it does not stop.
Maybe that is why she finally lifts her eyes from the dead things and remembers that she is not supposed to be one of them (not yet). Her legs feel heavier than they should when she stands and stumbles to her sister’s side, like they are held together by roots and vines still anchored to the earth. Her lungs tremble like twin flowers begging to bloom.
The other unicorn’s cheeks are as red as her own, beneath all the blood. “Danaë,” she wipes the blood-tears from her sister’s eyes, and presses their cheeks together.
And when she closes her eyes, all she sees are daisy eyes and rot-specked teeth gleaming, smiling at them from the darkness.
@danaë ❁
"wilting // blooming"
"wilting // blooming"
