[P] a grave to hold you

[Isolt]

There are bones to be found laying along its shore, when the oceans dry up and turn to deserts. I want to know what the sea looks like, when it’s broken apart and spilled like blood in a forest. I want to hear how loudly the sea-gods scream when the mangroves laugh and grow twisted and bloated on their salt tears.

All gods are jealous gods.

---

There is war in the other unicorn’s laughter, and a battlefield in the frozen space that separates them. In it she can feel the snow groaning, and cracking, and splitting apart like bones tossed in a fire. Dead things are turning over in their graves when she traces flower patterns overtop them with the blade of her tail.

And all the while Isolt is smiling, with all the teeth of a wolf chasing after a dragon shining bright and hungry in her mouth.

It is not a kind smile.

There is the thrill of the hunt crawling like disease down the hollow curls of her horn when she angles towards the girl who looks so much like a winter sea. And there is a long moment in which Isolt wonders if it is blood or saltwater filling her veins. The sleeping-meadow around them is quiet, so quiet —  already she can hear the notes of a dead-sea-song rising like a wave between them, all its drowned voices singing beneath bracken tide pools.

She does not know the notes of that song. Her’s has always been of the forest, of unmarked graves and seed turning to rot and roots growing through empty joints like nooses dragging them down. But when she lifts her head and points her horn at the lonely winter sky (the unicorn’s only way of peace), she thinks —

“I do not forget.” Her blood is humming like a storm-cloud over the water, grown fat and heavy with brine. Lightning cracks sharp and bright behind her eyes. “I remember the face of every dead thing in my forest, and where to find them. I know their bones like my own.”

But they were all asleep now. And the unicorn’s blood felt very much alive, leaping along the curve of her jaw. Isolt licks her lips, swallows down the storm threatening to drown them both in fury.

And still, she can not stop the thunder from rolling through her belly like famine when she curls her tail towards the other girl’s legs. “But perhaps you could teach me what dead things below the sea look like.”

She thinks she could learn many songs, if she cut the notes of them free.

Isolt is not the reaper hurrying along after death. She is a goddess as much as she is a mortal, and she does not wait on anyone.

---

@avesta
”wilting // blooming“

❁