11-07-2021, 10:16 AM
Deep in her memories, locked away in a chest a certain blackness rattles and shakes. It wants her to recall, that something, to remember what life it was exactly that she didn't want to live. But she only remembers that brine sting of the sea in dreams and what came before that in flashes that are too quick to grasp. They flutter past her eyelids quick as dragonfly wings, shining in the way that blood shines under the moonlight.
(When she had been little (fresh from the woods, the wound on her chest not yet healed), she had whispered in her sleep about twin unicorns and a forest.)
A squirrel scurries past her feet she forgets what forgotten thing she was trying to remember in the first place.
(There is the smell of brine, and sea-rot, and tide-water. She remembers the taste of it as she swallows the air.)
Blue finds silver. There is a war in his eyes, she can pick out the darkness of it as well as she might find a sunflower in a field of dead grass. “Very little,” she admits freely. “My mother lived there once, a long time ago.” And she does not delve further to answer his question.
Her heart flickers like fireflies when he comes closer. Already she is leaning back again, away from the way his lips shape the word free. What does a man know of freedom, of sacrifice, of love? But then again, what does a child know? Had she known he was a god of many faces made mortal she would have told him that he knows even less than he thinks.
“I think it is different for everyone, I take whatever freedom I can find,” Even death. She doesn't say it but it's there in the sorrow stain that eats away the blue of her eyes. Let this skin of hers fade away, wither and die and leave only that soul behind.
It's her soul that carries the stories, not the flesh.
At his words, she felt her heart contract in her chest, youthful emotions swelling in her, emotions that did not feel youthful at all. She understand the humor in his joke, but her face remains passive. “As long as we are keeping lips locked, will you tell me a secret? Something nobody else knows?” She whispers as she widens the space between them and shrinks as much as a horse might be able to. Happily would she pull herself down to the size of a speck of dust so that she might forever disappear in the air. Her expression betrays no profound fear or trouble as she watches him carefully. She blinks passively, her mouth pressed into a thin line before it reorients itself it a smirk.
@bolder