It has been days now and the glitter has not faded.
And it feels silly, to be so captivated by it. But she is still young and prone to admiring things that sparkle and perhaps even too young to know that it could be considered narcissism, to allow her attention to be so thoroughly arrested by the way she catches the light. It’s almost like bursting into flames, she thinks. It must be.
It’s like a dream.
She does not venture far, Clementia. It is strange to strike out on her own, without her sister glued to her side, but she is dizzy with her want for adventure. Just as their father had been once and she is every bit as careful as he had been, too. There is no folly of youth when you are made of glass, when your father reminds you of it every day.
The more she travels, the more she discovers that she is the strange one. Her sister, her father. She could walk for days and find no one else like them. Silly to think that she had once thought that they were the ordinary ones, that her mother was unique because her skin was warm and soft and it bent and folded when she caught it between her teeth.
And it is no different today as she travels alone to the river. The river, which reflects the light just like she does. Even with its choppy, wild surface, they both glint and glitter. She wonders, as she ventures carefully to the edge, if she belongs to the water. Not only because of the glittering but because of the steady stream of water that cuts their own rivers down the side of her slick glass barrel. (Does not know that one day, when she is older, they will be wings, only knows that the water seems to come from no real place and has dripped down her sides since she was a baby).
She hears the bees before she sees them, turns her face and blinks into the sun. She watches, captivated, as the bees tuck themselves up into the mane. She watches, enthralled, as honey leaks out. The stranger is sleeping, that much is obvious, but not much older than Clementia and perhaps this lends her a certain air of confidence as she edges closer.
“Do they hurt you?” she asks, the voice dreamy, the fine glass head tilted.
crack the shutters open wide
i wanna bathe you in the light of day
i wanna bathe you in the light of day
C L E M E N T I A
@[Pollen]