let your fists come undone; lior

[exist]

while collecting the stars, I connected the dots.
I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.

His silence is deafening, the quiet way he watches her with eyes that gleam cool and bright like distant silver stars. She shifts uncomfortably, reprimanded almost instantly by the bite of thorn and bramble as it digs deeper beneath the soft russet feathers to taste the copper of blood where it beads like angry red pearls. But then he speaks, just one single, simple word, and she finds it is enough to dissipate the uncertainty brewing in the pit of her stomach.

“Hello.” She returns, her eyes light and green and cool as emeralds buried in stone. Her brows furrows, though it must be nearly invisible beneath the tangles of red forelock, and her chin lifts, forcing her head to cock slightly to one side in an expression that belied the last few traces of hesitation buried like burrs in her chest.“Wait-“ she says suddenly, thrusting her nose forward to stop him once she realized his intention. But he pushed through the brambles all the same, ignoring or oblivious to the way her face darkened with worry the instant blood began to form in lonely beads across the black of his skin.

Maybe it was because she had nearly died, because she would not have lived at all but for her sister, but for the trait they shared. But it hurt to see anyone to suffer, like a pain in her chest, physical and brutal and so painfully real. She felt it now, that empty ache, that awful pressure in her chest, and it was only made worse by the fact that this stranger now suffered on her behalf.

The sound that bloomed from her lips was soft and wretched, a whimper of regret as she pulled against the thorns to reach out and touch her nose to his shoulder. She is wordless against the black, quiet and unmoving but for the odd warmth that blossoms from her light touch. It isn’t much, it isn’t nearly enough, but even as he peels apart the briars and opens his skin for her, she focuses on healing him. Her eyes fall closed, peaceful, though there is much tension in the lines of that coppery face, and she imagines his flesh knit back together, imagines the pale pink of uninjured flesh.

It is only when he steps back that the connection is broken and her eyes fly open to trace first his empty face and then the smears of red against his skin. He speaks again, a single word in a flat voice that makes her wonder, and it is only then that she realizes why he had stopped and pulled away. Her wings were free, a hollow beaten down so that she can join him in the open space. She does, stiffly, and her wings shift into something more suitable. Iridescent and gleaming beneath, with a hard russet shell like a beetle overtop to protect them from more briars. It wasn’t beautiful in any way, in fact they looked quite strange on the back of a horse, but she was wary of the feathers until she could leave the forest again.

“Thank you.” She said finally, reaching her nose out to touch his shoulder again, thrusting another wave of healing magic into wounds that still peppered his skin. The effort made her sway a little, unsteady with a new weariness that felt heavy like snow draped across her skin. And then, in a voice so soft and tired, with eyes so gentle and uncertain when they lifted to fall into the silver of his, “Are you okay?” She could probably heal the remaining wounds across his skin (she had all but forgotten the ones that were still carved into her skin like ruby constellations) but she would need some time to rest.

Exist