The girl is a contrast to her, a blithe smile, a voice like bells. Her eyes are bright, with a sort of righteousness and delight Cordis has never known. Once, she might have felt odd to stand near her, felt heavy and tarnished. But she was never much once to compare herself to others (she feels apart from all others, really, a chasm opened and yawning, and the one who had crossed has since crossed back, into places far more unfathomable), and she certainly doesn’t do so now, not when she walks tangled in her grief.
I can never be harmed, again, says the girl and that is enough to cause a kernel of jealousy in her. Cordis can’t imagine such a world – even before this (she doesn’t name it – naming things gives them power, they always said; so she does not articulate her grief) she knew much more pain than she did pleasure.
She doesn’t reply, makes a low ‘ah’ of acknowledgement and is ready to turn away again, to leave the girl with her fire and her bright eyes, but then she says something interesting.
Someone saved me.
Ah, how Cordis needs to be saved, and how far-away the idea of salvation seems.
“You don’t say,” she says, and skepticism colors her tone, but still – the truth speaks itself somewhat in the girl’s wings, restored in a world that was stripped of its magic. Perhaps there’s something to her story.
“Where was this…being?”
She could find her. She could beg, throw herself prostate before the being and ask for the magic back, for the small and cold comfort of lightning once more wrapped around her silver skin, that one modicum of protection.
She is owed that much, surely.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me