and in the end, i will seek you out amongst the stars
the space dust of me will whisper “i love you”
The first thing she notices is the absence of her brother where he should be tucked so close against her side, curled around her body in the dark and quiet of their small world. She misses him immediately, an ache in her chest, unease that unfurls in her stomach and spreads out through the pathway of nerves that spiderweb out across her small body. He has been her forever since the beginning of time, always there and always with her. It feels wrong to be without him.
But then she opens her eyes, so dark and velvet, so beautiful and endless. There are lights flickering around them in the dark, a night sky fallen to earth just to hold them safe together, protect them. It makes the world so much smaller for her, only as big as these lights reach. Makes it easier to adjust when her world before had been so much smaller, so much darker. She blinks, blinks again and again until her eyes want to stay open, until they land first on a face that is so like hers, and then again on a face that looks back at her with her own eyes.
She knows mother by her touch, by her smell, by the way the little blue mare shifts to hold her daughter so close. By the tongue she sweeps across Dark’s skin, the patterns of white she uncovers, large shapes with smatterings of freckles at the edges like the lights that dance around them. Lights up faces she knows she already loves. She nuzzles into mom, huffs softly when Luster cleans her face and her nose and her little ears, resettles that tiny curl of damp forelock back against the blue of such an impossibly delicate forehead.
But she wants to see that other face, too. The one she doesn’t know by touch or by smell, not by sound. The one who would be a stranger except that he reminds her so much of her brother, somehow. Of a boy she’d lain with in the dark her whole life. She blinks up at him with such love, that same love she feels for the boy who needs to hurry up and join her, for the woman fussing so sweetly as she cleans her and keeps her warm. She flicks her little tail, lets her eyes wander to the ridges of white along his thin body, to the lights buried there and making him glow.
She wants to glow too, just like him, whoever he is.
Wants it so bad that for a moment she feels different, feels her skin tingle and tickle and something elastic stretching in her mind. Then there is light just exactly like his, on her face and blinding her for a moment in a gentle sort of way, making it impossible to see out into the world beyond anymore. More light on her legs and her shoulders, along her back like a blanket of cool despite the tongue working to keep her warm. It makes her as beautiful as he is, and then in the next instant it is gone again. But she doesn’t mind, can still feel it sitting there inside her, waiting.
Mom says something, and her voice sounds like home, makes her sick with wanting her brother. But the voice is also beautiful, like a song she’s heard her whole life, a melody she knows by heart. She wants her to keep talking, keep making these sounds that are nothing more than sounds to her, such good sounds. Except she groans and leans away again, suddenly gone, and Dark can feel her her expression change. Little muscles that pull a confused frown to her lips, ears that would disappear entirely into her mane if there were anything more to it than silk and down. She bleats softly, bleats again because the night is creeping in to touch her skin and trace lonely little kisses down the length of her spine, and it is so, so cold.
She’s never known cold before.
