Let the shadows fall behind us [open]

[Cordis]

The mares tears don’t last, which Cordis is grateful for – she could not have offered any paltry comfort for longer than a moment, not when comfort is so hard to come by. And then she looks at her, and asks a question - the question – and a shudder runs unbidden through her. Did you ever love again, she asks. It’s almost right. Except there was no again. Just once. And god, is once enough. “I didn’t love before Him,” she says, “I was too young.” Maybe she’d loved her father, in the abstract way nature and instinct bid of us, a survivalist kind of love, but she can’t recall it. All she remembers is the river, and the mare she followed there. “But after…” After, her gold girl. After, the river and the laurel and the lightning and a hundred heartbreaks; the full catching breath of destined lovers, on display in all their wretched glory. Leaving and coming back. Always coming back. “After I escaped, I found someone. Spyndle.” Her breath catches on the same, like a piece of shrapnel on her lips. She’s not used to giving her name to strangers, only breathed it to its owner, with reverence, like some holy incantation. Naming things gives them power, Cordis has often said. It’s why she doesn’t speak His name, even now – the stupid fear that if she did, His ears would prick and He would come, as if summoned. If only she could summon Spyndle so easily. Death is a much wider divide if you are not a god. c o r d i s I’ll touch you all and make damn sure that no one touches me