i know it hurts sometimes; perse

[perse]

i wanted pomegranates— i wanted darkness— i wanted him. She is so much more than them. They are made of moments, quivering and circling each other with damnation hot on their lips and in their souls. Their love is an anchor, dragging them down from the river they so cherished into the brackish weeds below, impossibly tangled. Their love is a lightning strike that does not bring them back, but sets things aflame, consuming indiscriminatingly. She is the result of that love, of a consummation years in the making and a magic that made bodies do things they should not, but she is so much more. She does not carry her mothers on her back like a weight; she has shed them, rolled them from her skin like a bead of water on an oilskin. They are a memory, a blur of gold and silver, a hazy embrace, a soft word. She is so much more of them because she was chosen, she was picked by Him to live as His queen. (Sometimes her crown is fire, sometimes ice. Sometimes thorns.) And she loves Him (she must love Him), in a different way than they do – there is no coyness about it, her love is less love and more worship, for gods do not love as mortals do. (And she is despairingly mortal.) But He had turned her loose from the lair, set her unto the land with a promise to return that goes unfulfilled. And she is devout and she does not question Him. (Not often, at least, though there is a mare made of fractures who asks questions Perse cannot quite answer.) She bears a mark, as her mother does. His mark, though hers is not on her hip, but rather, hidden under a swathe of silver mane that pools on her crest like quicksilver. She wishes every day that it was more obvious, that she was never doubted for a moment to be His. She has not found either of her mothers, or her brother. Has not felt particularly compelled to, not when they are a faint memory, like a dream she can only barely recall. But she hears their voices, in the distance, and watches a streak of silver leave. Like water, she flows in to take Cordis’s place. Unlike Cordis, she does not tremble in the mare’s presence, does not look upon her like she might shatter at any moment. Instead, her gaze is cool, almost bored. “Hello, mother,” she says. She is so much more than them. p e r s e ------------------------------cordis x spyndle