look at the stars,
look how they shine for you
Though she grins when she first sees me, there's something in my sister's expression that makes me wonder. It isn't like before -- the uneasiness that flutters against my ribcage isn't fear, exactly -- but something is bothering Rhy, and that in itself is unusual. Even as children, I would cower and tremble and hide (from her, from the electric), whereas she had always worn her strength with ease.
Her comment about the snow mound almost makes me forget her faltering nerves, and if she had really laughed, I would have laughed with her. “I guess you could say that,” I say with a soft smile instead, though the lakelight blue of my eyes search her own after I glimpse the set of her curved jaw. Had a muscle just jumped there? Why are you so nervous, Rhy? And then I listen, my eyes widening at the implications of everything my sister tells me.
When I'd first returned to Beqanna, I'd gone to the Chamber to stay with our uncles, Rodrik and Kavi. I was afraid to be on my own, then -- I still needed the reassurance of family. But after the battle of the Seasons (after everything had changed), a conversation with cousin Straia had helped me realize that I couldn't stay forever -- not if I wanted to keep the ice in my veins. And for that reason I'd never ventured to the Falls, where most of father's family once lived, either. Now, with the dissolution of magic across Beqanna, things could be different.
When Rhy mentions the Jungle's jaguar-spirit, I can't help the light that momentarily dances in my eyes. “Grandmother Kagerou would like that, I think. Mom said grandfather used to call her his jaguar, because of her tattoos.” And for a moment, we're smiling together -- each with bright memories (separate, yet whole in a way) shining from our gaze. But then I feel the shift in conversation that some part of me had been dreading, though I don't know why.
But soon (oh, too soon) I will.
For a moment, Rhy disappears before my very eyes. It startles me; a cold wind lashes through the grass as I search for her, the ice in my veins flaring reflexively. And when she returns again, greyed somehow, the wind of winter begins to frost the green blades as I try to grasp all that she tells me about the afterlife at the end of the world. All of this might have been hard to believe for some, but I myself am proof of the impossible -- so I don’t doubt. Not for a moment.
‘Our parents were there, Kora.’
What?
‘With the dead.’
No.
‘We won’t see them again.’
No, no, no, no, no.
The tears freeze on my cheeks before they can fall -- streaks of ice across gold-and-silver skin. And I can’t help the snow, not now, not when they’re dead, not when this is the impossible that I have to believe, no, no, no, please, no…
‘I can get back there.’
This can’t be happening.
‘I can take you.’
I blink hard and Rhy comes back into focus, her figure a blur in the winter storm that’s risen. We’re surrounded in a cloud of white -- hail and sleet and snow.
‘We have a brother.’
Despite the raging storm inside, I call the whiteness back to me.
‘Leander.’
The hail and sleet and snow vortex into nothingness, sucked away to vaporize in the sky.
‘They said we should find him.’
The tears are the only evidence of my emotion I allow to remain, jagged and crisscrossed and stark, frozen in place against a hollowed expression. A brother? I think blearily. And then, They’re gone. I can hardly bear the weight of a world where Rayelle and Riagan no longer exist. My knees tremble, but I can’t move. I look at my sister, and I feel that weight grow heavier still. They were going to come back for her -- for us. They should have come back.
My voice is ragged. “How?” She can’t possibly know all the answers I need -- how did this happen, how did they die, how can you go back, how are we going to find him? -- but I can’t help asking. It burns in me, a cold fire that rages inside, though my eyes are dim and bleak as I try to keep focus on my twin sister -- the one who’d found them at the edge of the universe.
kora
the winter girl of riagan and rayelle
you know I would never mind how long or short a reply takes bb <3