Darkness has always been a friend of mine. Normally it follows me like a hound nipping at my heels and baying for the blood it knows will fall in the wake of me. Sometimes I miss the light that used to chase it back each time my sister laid her lips at my cheek and told me to be kind.. But sometimes, as my thoughts and my rage wander in that strange realm between dream and waking,and pain, I only want to sink deeper and deeper into the black.
Sometimes I want to be ink and oil and everything that chokes as it drowns.
I know, somewhere outside the black, there is blood scattered across the sand like bloody pearls. I can taste it on my lips when I think hard about the muscles in my tongue and my throat (and I know I shouldn’t have to remember how to swallow, something is wrong). The tide is lapping at my hocks like a cool, wet wolf’s tongue. Seaweed is tangling in my tail and curling like my mother’s chain around my curled up knees.
The sea is trying to either drag me out of the black or drag me in deep into the dark of it. I’m never sure with the sea, never.
I try to blink. I try to whisper an assurance to the wolf towering viciously protective over my body. I try to do anything, anything, but fade deeper into the black. There are piles of sand behind my eyes and each cuts and stings each time my lashes flutter. If I still remembered how to cry, or feel anything but hunger and rage, I would have.
I would have cried in the same way I rage in the black of my weakness. In the wake of war the only thing agony does is make me furious. And it’s in the wake of the clarion call of this new war I have found that I lay my lips in the sea with the last remnants of my energy. The tide catches my whispering, soon, as it races back out to sea. And hope it finds a way to curl like a noose around the sea-stallion’s neck.
Soon. After I am free from this darkness and pain. Soon.
I had been restless all that day. I was not a particularly destructive creature (at least, not intentionally destructive- but I was terribly clumsy, and destruction did follow me) but was in such a mood I felt like smashing something, breaking the tall ceramic vases in the courtyard or stomping cracks into the precious stone walkways. I had tried to channel this into throwing knives, but I could not still myself enough for that.
I had the constant sense of something looming, some wave rising. And every time I thought the suspense had peaked, it only rose higher. By sunset I was pure electricity, nerves stretched tight to the point of tearing.
It was Furfur that broke through my stormy thoughts with a whine that almost broke me. Like glass, shattering in response to a note of the exactly right frequency. And it was Furfur that led me, wordless, to the shore. We ran, towards what exactly we were not sure- but even unknowing, we knew it was urgent. Something had been brewing all day.
I came sliding to a stop in the sand with a gasp when I saw her. At first I just stared, wide-eyed, uncomprehending. There was so much blood on the ground. It couldn’t be my sister’s. She was lying there motionless, but that couldn’t be her blood, it couldn’t- she was untouchable.
And then the calm came, the great calm that seized me in moments of need. I felt my emotions drain away, and stillness took their place.
Without looking away from my sister, I turned my mind to Furfur. “Get me fresh rosinweed. From the prairie- you remember the one, yes? And hot water, from the court.” By that point in my life I had shadowed just about every trade and profession in night court; some for a few hours, others a few days, but nothing had particularly caught my interest. But I was a good student, and although I was not passionate about any of it I retained most of what I learned from each mentor. Moira had been particularly helpful in sharing her knowledge of healing plants, and I had passed on what I learned to Furfur.
(I was always a strange girl, decent at anything I applied myself but never great at anything. My strengths were generic and modest, my weaknesses many and varied. But I must say... I think if anyone could teach a demon-wolf how to heal, it was me.)
My wolf slunk quickly and silently into the night. “Avesta,” I breathed into her cheek. She smelled like salt and blood- but not of death, not of death. “Oh sister, wake up.” Around that time in my life, something had changed in me; I did not do a lot of crying. A year earlier I would have been a sniffling, wet-eyed mess. I was wide-eyed, and a little frantic, but mostly calm. In fact if there was anything that threatened my serenity, it was not fear or sorrow but rage. I pushed it away for now, but I knew in my heart it was something that must eventually be obliged.
No one would ever hurt Avesta and get away with it. I was patient, I could wait a very long time- so long everyone might even think I had forgotten. But I would not forget. I carried things, it was my nature.
And some day, one way or another, I would have my vengeance.
Climbing from the darkness is easier than climbing from the sea. Each time my lashes flutter, light to dark to light, there is more than black water and salted weeds filling my vision. It does not hurt, not in the way that water in the lungs hurts, as I scrap my way back into the world where my sister lives bright, and innocent, and everything good I have forgotten how to be.
I see her, of course I see her. But when I feel her, touch to touch and that strange soul-sea where we are the tide, I think that for the first time my sister, my Apsara, understands me. I feel like a painting lit by the moonlight whispering to her.
I have never looked in her eyes and saw all the things living in my bones, and gaze, and blood, reflected back at me. But I do now. I do now! My tongue is a fat, dry thing in my mouth when I try to tell her the words (the praise, the love), but nothing comes out but a moan. Perhaps though, when Foras settles like a demon come to heel at my hip, and gazes both at and through her, she will see all the words I cannot form there.
Later I will press my shoulder to hers, my hip to hers, and I will give her all the stories I haven’t shared yet.
Later I will go to war not without her but side-by-side with her.
Now though, I raise my head like a lamb instead of a unicorn. I quiver when she whispers into my cheek like a silken pillow shivering out all my secrets for only a kiss from her. Somewhere, where I am still in the black, I wonder what she hears in my skin, my bones, my tide-blood where the sea roars.
Does she know, when she whispers wake up into my skin like I whisper into the trees and painting, that she is the only thing I will ever allow to animate me. And like another demon-wolf brought to heel I tuck my legs beneath me and try to come alive for her. I do not succeed but I try.
“Only for you Aspara.” I bleat like a lion turned lamb. “Only for you.” I can only hear blood and only feel heat when I lay my lips against her knee. That too is a comfort.
Avesta was born first; just moments before me, but I have been following her ever since. It might seem like I’ve been trying to catch up, but I’m not- I realize the impossibility of that. In my eyes, my sister is a goddess. I well believe she could summon the sickle moon down from the sky and wield it like the reaper’s blade, with nothing more than the demanding tilt of her horn and a meaningful look.
And like a god she can be reckless, so I follow to pick her up when she falls, as she has done for me a hundred times. Because in this world there is nobody we can trust completely except each other (and our great wolves). There is and always has been a thread between us... a bond deeper than blood, older than time, stronger than distance. It waxes and wanes as we age, lunate in nature. The thinnest I felt it was when I stayed in Novus, and she sailed away. Not for the great physical separation between us but for our fundamental differences in the choice of which way to move forward. She was going outward, pressing onward; I was stalwart, looking in.
That evening as I brushed her long, blood-splattered mane from the sticky mess of her neck, I felt our bond snap us together again swift and sudden as though it had never been otherwise. She moaned and my heart leapt into my throat. Foras looked at me (so similar to his brother! But different in his own way, as me and my sister; each person their own) and as I looked back with steady eyes I realized it was not my heart in my throat but a ball fury. Pure fury, pulsing, barely contained.
She struggled to her feet and I growled in warning, wolfish. “Stay put, for once.” I nuzzled her cheek, a tender contrast to the assertion of my voice. Only when she spoke did I sigh, and allow myself a tense smile. The fury in my throat still trembled, but for now it was partially sated by her stirring and the sound of her voice.
“Coming.” Furfur’s voice broke into my mind as he began to run back to us. I began to wash the blood from my sister, cupping the sea and pouring it over the wounds as gently as I could; I knew it would sting. If I were Isra I would have a story. It would keep my sister still, her mind occupied. And if I were Eik I would fill her mind with the sensations of physical comfort: pressing against a warm rock on a cold morning in Solterra, dipping into the lake on a hot summer afternoon.
I was not my parents. I hummed softly as I worked, some peasant song I picked up from the weavers. I liked to watch them work, there was something mesmerizing about the steady, rhythmic back and forth of the loom. They tried to teach me once, but I didn’t have the patience for it. I learned their songs instead; or the songs took to me.
The cleaning was almost done, and Furfur was close. I only had one question, and after it I would not dwell on the matter any more-- at least for the moment. I would turn my focus wholeheartedly to the healing. “Who did this?” My gaze glanced between Avesta, Foras, and the ocean which reached again and again for my sister and drew back crimson. Greedy, the waves struck me as greedy. How much would it take from us, if we let it? How much would it give?
There is no one in this world, or in any world, that could see me like this without consequence. Death is not nipping at my heels, not today, but I can feel the heavy gaze of it looking out from the distant shadows. His gaze is not shuttered when he looks at me anymore. There is no promise or warning in his eyes when my lashes flutter closed over the sight of him.
In death’s gaze there is only wrath. In two years I have already stolen so much from him. And he knows, just as I know (and just as my wolf knows) I will steal far more from him before he takes him.
Perhaps I should be afraid, when my eyes blink twice upon the image of him (that dark shadow smeared on the black night forest). Perhaps I should let my gaze linger there before I turn it to my sister, just enough to see if he’s turning away or coming closer. But when Aspara demands me to stay, and she demands so little of me ever, it is impossible to look at anything but her.
How had I ever looked away? How could I?
Thinking on it now, as she washes my wounds with the sea, all my reasons seem as corporal as the mist rolling in from the tide. I cannot hold them but they linger on my tongue with notes of blood, and brine, and a sorrow more salted than the sea. As much as I wish it would, her hum does not wash away the taste.
Had I been anything else, anyone else, I might have pressed my bloody nose back into her knee and begged for forgiveness. But mother did not ask for any and nor will I. In that alone, perhaps, we are alike more than I would like to admit.
Foras lifts his head from my hip as he senses the closeness of his brother. In his belly a rumbling purr begins both a welcome and a begging hurry, hurry, hurry. His fur is still more winter than softness and where he rested frost had bloomed and I try not to shiver from the coldness of it. I know that if he realizes that my wolf will not forgive himself for causing me any pain at all. Still, I understand that it is in the nature of monsters, the nature of us, to cause pain.
I’m still looking at her, my sister who I will never look away from again, when she pauses her humming song to ask the question I was waiting for. And I think it says more about her ability to keep me still (stiller than my parents ever could) than it does me, because I stumble over the thought.
My thoughts had been heavy with the image of stars woven into silk, gardens etched into mirrors, and jasmine smoke spiraling up to the guardian mountains of our home. But when I blink away the dreamstuff of her song, I do not hesitate when I say, “a unicorn of the sea who thought himself master of it.” I know she’ll understand all the things I am not saying.
The sea, that greedy sea carrying away my blood, does not belong to any male. It belongs, it has always belonged (and will be inherited) by us.
I would not ever want Avesta to ask my forgiveness. I did not want her apologies, spoken or not; our regrets were not made for laying bare, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I felt godlike enough to be able to keep my sister still, to turn her eyes from death and the sea. It felt holy just to wash the blood from her skin, and in better times to walk beside her.
“A unicorn of the sea who thought himself master of it.”
I made a sound of distaste. A hissing through my teeth, like a cottonmouth. It was the first time I sounded more like a snake than a wolf, and not much (if at all) a unicorn. “What a fool,” I murmured with a quiet little laugh that flirted with hysteria. Fool on many fronts: fool for thinking himself a master of anything, let alone the sea, and fool for laying touch to my sister. There was nothing else for him, no future but ruin. I knew it as sure as I knew my name.
And just as I understood all the things she was not saying, I knew she would understand all the promises I did not speak. The lengths I would go, unstoppable, for her.
Furfur rejoined us then. I offered my sister a severe nod, an unspoken agreement that this would not be forgotten, this would not ever be forgotten until it was laid to rest, and then I returned to the mending.
My wolf had taken a small ceramic kettle (I’ve no idea where he found it) and put the rosinweed in the hot water to carry it to us. This was good, as I needed the plants to soak and soften. I took the leggy plant and separated the roots from the thick stems. For a second I faltered- I needed to grind the roots but I had no mortar. The solution was easy enough: I put the roots between my teeth, chewed them to a pulp, then spit it out and gently pressed the mash into my sister’s wounds. The soaked leaves I used as a kind of bandage, pressed over the poultice to keep it close to her skin. In all honesty I was winging this last part. I had some hope that the leaves, when they dried, would stick like a bandage... Really I just had not thought so far ahead as covering the wound. I was far from a field medic.
“It should help with the pain and the bleeding,” I offered quietly as I worked. My self-doubt wavered- I reckoned rosinweed was not the best analgesic to use, but it should be good enough for now. Already the bleeding had slowed, if only for the pressure I applied to the wound. The shoreline reached for us restlessly, and each time it drew back it was with waters that were more and more clear.
I looked up and into the sea, which I found complacent in the events that had unfolded. What had it done but watch with greed, and welcome back with open arms the unicorn who shed my sister’s blood? I shook my head and returned my gaze to my sister, letting the anger come and go like the tides. “Rest now, and later I’ll take you to a proper healer.”
Watching her makes me wonder when I started to care so much about how a wound is made instead of healed. Apsara is magic, has always been magic, with every step she takes to care for me. She makes me feel like a creature made of poison and she one made of every antidote to every inch of me. I am glad, furiously glad, that war did not touch a single inch of her perfect soul.
And right there, as she chews a poultice with her teeth, I swear to every old god and ever new god that I will conquer every world that would ever bring war to my sister’s heart. Each and every one of them.
Foras is breathing in my ear and quieting me with the sound of his winter mountains and his adoration. My heart stutters to pick up the sound of his as he lays protectively around me. Through our bond I can see how he waivers between watching the sea and the woods where death lingers. He knows both are waiting for me (and by association him too). Neither of his will go gently now that I’ve freshly promised my soul to Aspara and nothing else.
I wonder how many pieces of me will be left when I’m done giving them all away.
The wound stings when the poultice warms between the bandage and my skin. Pain however, is no stranger to me, and I do not let Aspara see how the healing is always just as worse as the injury (and it makes me wonder which of us is better at pain). My teeth ache as I swallow down the hiss of pain before it can find life. I hope my eyes do not give me away, when I blink slow and weary at her. “I’ll stay and rest only if you stay with me.”
When I rest my cheek against her leg she is as warm as she has ever been. There is only the sun of father’s desert in her and none of the bitter winter sea that fills me. Nothing in the world calms me as much as my sister’s warmth does.
I silently make my pledge again, and again, and again, as my lashes flutter and close.
Before I fall into the exhaustion of a wounded thing protected by wolves I ask, “Will you tell me a story that is nothing like mother’s?” But before she can begin I am--
It is hard to live with yourself when you keep anger always just out of reach, when you choose, time and again, to set rage aside for another day. It simmers and builds and comes back twice as strong.
That day was just the start of things. But I knew, oh I knew even then, it was only a matter of time until the walls of self control would break.
But I told myself it could break a different day, and I poured myself into my sister.
Avesta hid her pain well but not completely, not from me; I may not have been there during the war with all its wounds and all its growths, but I remembered the first time she fell. We had been running through the woods and she tripped on a fallen branch. She did not wail or sob, her pain was discreet as she rose up thin and leggy and determined to not let pain (or, for that matter, any other damn thing!) get the best of her. “Of course I’ll stay,” I blink back at her brave, weary eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.” And I settled down next to her, shifting so her cheek could rest on my shoulder.
I have learned a lot from trees, and it bleeds through into every aspect of me. I think when others look at me, they see someone very still. Very steady. But the truth is that I’ve always been more comfortable in motion. At work with the cleaning and the healing of the wound, I felt myself shine through all the cracks others saw. When I hummed, my inner silence reached its ponderous roots deep into the earth. And when I chewed the roots of the rosinweed, my magic relaxed and spread out across the sand and waves, over the craggy roots of mangrove and shaggy lumps of beachgrass.
This time I did not just receive all the stories of the world but I gave them mine. I mixed it with love’s bleeding edge; a promise, a pledge. And I began to tell a story that was different from our mother’s. “Beneath the stones that make up the foundation of the court, there are three skeletons...”
I continued long after Avesta fell asleep, and then Furfur, and finally Foras. Meanwhile the sea watched us, and listened, and waited.
