Another flower, or leaf, or tree, or rabbit dies with each step, and the ground trembles like I am nothing more than an earthquake tearing it open. I can feel myself changing, growing, twisting -- but never blooming.
I am not sure I like what I am becoming.
S
he is running, but she does not feel it. Her hooves are carving moons into the frozen earth and her tail blade is tearing limbs from trees as she passes, and she does not feel any of it. She does not feel her heart, trembling as it tears apart and knits itself back together as more and more blood rushes through it. She does not feel her lungs, fluttering like butterflies clawing their way free of a cocoon. She does not feel how her muscles are stretching, and her bones breaking, and her horn spiraling further and further from her brow.
She does not feel the way her body grows with every stride like it’s trying too late to contain all of her magic, like it’s too small for her monster soul. She does not see the branches as anything other than diseased parts of the trees that need to be cut away.
But Isolt hears the stag’s breath, quick and heavy, as he pants. And she feels the thud of his hooves against the frost when he stretches his neck out and sails over a fallen pine. She feels the way his blood is calling out to her blood, how every bit of his body is begging to be unmade even when he is telling it to stay alive. She smiles.
And she nips her twin’s shoulder when she draws close enough, gentle as a winter kiss. “We are faster.” Stride by stride, step by step, second by second they are faster. The immortality blazes hot and bright as a wildfire in their veins, turning cells to tissues and drops of blood to gallons.
She laughs as her sister does, lets it carry them like the notes of a song through the forest. Inside of her chest there is a wolf howling the lyrics, and Isolt loses herself in the song of it as she chases after her sister chasing after the stag.
@danaë speaks
isolt
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