07-04-2019, 12:02 AM
Bedtime had always been an interesting time in the Keav and Bastille household. It always took a minute to be able to settle the girls down and get them together on their little beds of sand the their father had created for them. It was only then, when they were quiet that their mother with her eyes as blue as the deep ocean and her reckless smile that Astana so mirrors would gift onto them a bedtime story. They would then be plunged into a world made up of pirates on the open ocean, Keav telling them how their ancestors traveled to the tiny island where Keav was born. Or she tells stories about star horses and how they float up above in the night sky. Astana, for her part, loved when her father would occasionally lea the story about dragons and golden horses. But she loved too hearing stories of the dreamer king and his kingdom that seems like so long ago. Astana loved stories. “Is that the end?” She would always ask when it was over. “That’s the end of this story, yes.” Her mama would say with a kiss on her tiny forehead. “But I don't want it to be over,” she pleaded one night. “Sometimes,” her mama said, “You have to let one story end for a new one to begin.” The star girl wanders because what else was there to do in a land where she has no where to go. Oh the beauty of having no direction, of having no sense of either duty or responsibility. Astana was free to roam as she pleased. This is her first winter, but not quite her first time seeing know. Her mother had often taken the girls to the mountaintops where they could see patches of the alabaster flakes. Her knees are high as she moves across the land, as if she were a princess of a mystical realm. When she is really just a silly girl that has strayed too far from home, from her parents, her twin sister, and their beloved desert sands. Cupped ears atop her head press forward with the sound of rushing water. It calls to mind the stories of the pirates, and how her mother used to speak of the ocean, and how sometimes, after she would be gone a full day and night, she would return with smell of salt and sea etched in her pearlescent skin. Maybe what she was hearing was that very ocean! Oh, to be young again—and yet, I do so pity them. She emerges from the tree line thinking maybe she will see the grandeur of the white caps her mother always talked about, the infinite blue. So unlike their desert home, and yet, so much alike as well. “The dunes, out there, in the ocean, they move, Astana,” her mother had told her. But, her dreams of seeing the ocean are washed away as she sees it is only a river. Well, at a time like this, there was really only one thing for a little girl to do. She lowers that pretty little head of hers and a frown finds her face and for just a moment she lets herself pout, before flinging herself headfirst into the river. The water only rises to her knees, but all in all, this was not the brightest of decisions in winter and as quick as she was in, she dashes out with a sharp inhale of cold, frosty air. “Cold, cold, cold,” she says as she dances back and forth. Her head lowers, as if her little tufts of warm breath could unthaw her freezing legs. “I don't think I like this whole winter business very much.” |