I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine; I want him but we're not right
Adaline had never liked the meadow much either, but for different reasons.
When she stood here, Adaline felt traces of her mother—traces of her father. Her mother had been dead and still smelled of the ocean when she had given birth to Adaline and her twin; Tabytha brought back from death long enough to give life to her last children and then lead their father to their now shared watery grave. It was one of her earliest memories and it was made up entirely of her senses beyond her vision. She remembered the salt in the air. The feel of her brother against her side. The grass tickling the delicate flesh of her belly. The kiss on her poll. It remained a marriage of life and death here, and she found herself battling grief whenever she stood in its embrace.
That did not change today—the mare of glass feeling on the sidelines as much today as she ever did. In her heart, she still thirsted for adventure as much as she had as a child, but it was a thirst tempered by knowledge. Adventure was not without cost. She had discovered love, but it was not a love that she was meant to have; she had discovered battle, of a kind, but the only bloodshed had cut her to the very core.
So while she hungers for it, she also now fears it—leaving her landlocked in her own desire. It is this mixture of both need and fear that keeps her ghosting along the edges of the meadow, her steps delicate and tattered, papery wings trailing lightly behind her. It was only when she sees him, wild in a way she didn’t understand, that she convinces herself to step out of the shadows. Her eyes do not leave the horns curving majestically, dangerously, out of his skull; they were unlike anything that she had ever seen.
For a second, she imagines what he had once—the ends piercing through flesh as deftly as a knife through butter—but she finds she is not afraid.
“Hello,” a greeting as delicate as gossamer, voice barely audible as she nears him. “I hope I am not intruding,” her lips curve into a dreamy smile as she finally allows her gaze to drift from his horns to his eyes. “I have just never seen anyone like you before.” She does not notice the hardness to him, the stiffness in the way he held himself. “My name is Adaline.”
in the darkness, I will meet my creators
and they will all agree that I'm a suffocator