isolt.I have known hunger. It claws at me now, hollowing my belly no matter how much sweet-clover and spring-grass I fill it with. This hunger goes beyond that. This hunger keeps me awake at night, whispering inside of my bones like a beast whispers of war.
It hungers for the whole world.
It hungers for the whole world.
Her mother-monster taught her well. She taught her how to walk quietly, and to leave no hoof prints in the mud behind her like a ghost hurrying along after its body. She taught her how to slip like a knife in the spaces between the trees and their shadows, to cut straight to the heart and find all the places where the blood runs fastest and the darkness sinks deepest.
And like the twisted daughter-monster that she is, Isolt learned well. But her blood is singing louder than the memory of her lessons. And for as made in magic as she is, she is also a thing born from flesh. And every time the wild boy’s heart beats she can feel the sound of it echoing like a drum beat in her bones, calling to all the terrible and violent parts of her.
So she follows him. And the deeper into the swamp they go (and the more dead things that surround them and call her home, home, home) the less careful she becomes. She is a starving wolf in winter, with a belly full of hunger making her heart beat faster. The blade of her tail begins to tap along to its rhythm, as he leads her ever deeper into the swamp. And all the while Isolt wonders what a foolish thing he must be, to lead a unicorn like her into the darkness.
Didn’t his mother warn him of the monsters that liked to hide in the dark? She is smiling when she follows him into the clearing. The light does not shine on her the way it shines on him. She is drab and colored like mud and dried blood, but he — oh, he is as bright as the sun. But bright things never lived long, she knew. Like stars they always collapsed in upon themselves and died, and she would be there to drink the sunlight from his bones when he did.
“If I am the wolf, what does that make you?” she whispers to him from the edge of his clearing, where she begins to circle like a rabid thing. And perhaps she is, bloated as she is with a magic that wants and wants.
Her mouth starts to water. And as the wind starts to sing through the sharp curls of her horn, Isolt licks her teeth.
i wonder what i look like
in your eyes
