06-08-2020, 02:19 PM
He’d been awake for hours.
Watching the distant shore glow as the waves crashed brilliant against the sand.
He’d thought about waking her, insisting that she watch it, too. Because they shared everything, the two of them, and had since they’d fought for space in their mother’s womb. But he’d decided to keep this for himself. All that breathless wonder.
He wonders if it makes him soft. To look at something and think it beautiful.
He wonders if their mother would be disappointed in him for wanting to sink his teeth into it just to see if any of it tasted as beautiful as it looked. But it is his secret, this softness.
It is the thumping of her tail that alerts him to the fact she’s awake. He does not startle at the sound of her voice, merely rolls his eyes at her request. Doesn’t move. He loves her dearly, his sister, but he is like their mother. He will not bend to anyone’s will. Not even hers.
He does not know enough about their father to know that he is like him, too.
He turns to look down at her, considering her question. Reaches down to nip at the crest of her neck. Like he might pull her up. But he doesn’t, just sinks his baby teeth gently into her flesh before he releases her. “Would you rather be dead?” he asks.
And it is then, ironically, that he lifts his head and spots the dead thing lurching toward them. His heart spasms with one stroke of fear as he nudges her. “Get up,” he says, urgent. And when she does not react quickly enough he says, “Tirza, get up now.” Like this is something he needs to protect her from.
These bleached, noisy bones. A deer that is certainly no longer a deer. He does not understand the magic and it is the unknown that frightens him. The eyes are wide when he looks past this cryptic gift to the figure in the shadows. And he does not recognize him for what he is, does not know that his own galaxies, Tirza’s galaxies, were born from his.
He flares his baby nostrils and shifts his baby feet. No match for either of them, the figure in the dark or this collection of bones hastily forced into the shape of the thing it once was, but he thinks maybe he can pretend.
G R A V I T A S
