warset
—« when all of our dust and ice deteriorates into the cosmos »
D
eep in the belly of the cosmos there are gryphons with wings dusted in twilight wishes instead of snow. On their heads there was a dusting of light instead of fur, blackholes instead of black spots. Warset remembers, in brief flashes that blind like lightning in the night, the feel of their wings against her own and the feel of their teeth as they groomed star-blood and space gore from her skin. She remembers their names in a language this form, these dark and fragile lips and these bone teeth made for grass and root, cannot form. Even in her thoughts she cannot form them. But she tries anyway, as she wanders the pathways to the alpine zone of the mountains. Over and over again she tries-- until the air grows thin enough to choke, and suffocate with miles and miles of horizon spread out before her.
And what some see as the suffering of the form, of lung and heart and courage, she sees as the vicious hope of coming home.
Her wings sprinkle remnants of star-dust and leopard fur to the wind brushing spring-chill against her cheeks. Here in the noon-time, where she can feel the blinding brightness of the sun but not feel it (it’s too carried away by the coming storm winds to reach her), her entire body aches for flight, and fury, and a way to climb high enough that her weak mortal form turns to ice, and frost, and dust around her star-bones.
Every inch of her begs for a flight that she denies it. Not yet, she says to the star-marrow and the star-soul, not yet, not yet, not yet. They whisper back, as things caught in the net of a girl whisper, but soon. Warset, even with thoughts of a black stallion and dune-dust stallion, cannot find it in her fresh-from captivity heart the will to deny them.
Perhaps it’s what has her standing on the apex of the mountain where the air is icy enough to turn her light to sludge and her organs to glaciers. Perhaps it’s all those whispers of soon, that make her smile at the snow gryphon when he lands at her side with a mouth full of snarling hunger.
And perhaps it’s the wanting of freedom that has her turning to the mare in the distance with a look that says join me, instead of save me.
