this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; marlyn

[luster]

It snowed again during the night while her small family had huddled close and comfortably in a shallow alcove carved into the side of small, knotted hill. She had slept without worry with her parents standing over her and their noses pressing the ghosts of warm breath into the blue of her skin. Even here, buried in the deepest parts of the forest, where trees grew tall and tangled and as wide around as she was long, winter had still found them. It settled white along the tops of bare branches, gathered in clumps where the wood knotted and the bark grew rough. It sagged in the pine trees, dragging their branches low enough for Luster to touch and wander beneath, disappearing in and out of the snowy landscape like a dusted blue ghost.

In the way that only a child knows how to be, she gentle and fearless, unconcerned as she finds and follows a stream that has somehow remained unfrozen. It doesn’t take long before it has led her to a small clearing with a hill on one side and thick brush and undergrowth that acts as a natural barrier on the other. Above she can see the steel grey belly of a sky still full of snow. It’s the kind of grey that is indecipherable. No sun, no clouds, no open sky beyond – and yet she knows it’s all still there, hidden somewhere beneath that cloak of flat silver.

There is a sound to her left and she turns, but this small den carved from winter and snow and the deep forest is still empty but for her. She waits for a long moment, curious and soft with small blue ears pressed forward through the tangles of her dark corn-silk forelock, but when nothing changes her attention is turned instead toward the stream. The water is as smooth as glass where it bubbles over the rocks and the thick wedges of ice on either side of it. She steps forward cautiously, carefully, dropping her lips to the surface without drinking, pulling away only when her skin began to hurt from the bitter frozenness. There was something about this scent, of water surrendered to winter, of frost and snow – of being able to smell cold that she had quickly grown to love.

But the sound comes again, the soft whoosh of disturbed snow and the rustle when it falls free from a bed of pine needles and the branch snaps back into place. She turns her back to the stream now, peering into the nearest shadows with quiet dark eyes set against the dirty blue of her dark face. Taking a step forward and cocking her head, she calls out in a quiet voice, a voice like bells and birdsong. “Hello,” a pause, a heartbeat, “is someone there?”

so we let our shadows fall away like dust

@[Elle Belle]

[Marlyn]

The snow thickens her coat and it is a blessing that it hides the scant form of her true body beneath. Her sides bulge with the life that grows and so she much tend the child of her womb carefully and lovingly. This child of a drifter magician and lost queen.

Dark eyes have already found the blue and white child. Marlyn watches quietly as the youth trembles against the cold and pries away from the fears that lay just beyond her the cave. Brave little one. "Hello." The word is given when Marlyn breaks the line of site of trees. A gentle smile touches her lips as she can feel that last bit of magic she possess begin to flutter. This blue girl, this small child, was the last to receive the fairies gift. "What's your name, small one?" The tones are gentle enough as to not spark fear. The pregnant woman inquires. It is a slow process but Marlyn wants to explain it all, to keep the girl from being frightened.

"Call me Marlyn...or Mar if you like." The former queen, for once in her life, offers her name without title and at an abbreviation. Yes the situation is peculiar. Yes it would get more odd but this was her duty and so Marlyn must fulfill the tasks given by the fairy.

MARLYN

[luster]

It is a mare that steps out of the darkness of the forest around them, small and beautiful and as brown as the earth buried beneath the snow.  She has a quiet kindness in the hollows of her face, a smile that softens the edges of her mouth, and Luster is at ease at once. There is nothing about this stranger, or anyone she has come across so far in her exploring, that makes her feel any kind of worry for her safety.
It is the innocence of a child, the naivety of thinking something that has not happened can not happen.
It is Luster.

“Hello.” She says back to the mare, a curious smile slipping over the dark of her whiskered lips as she closes the distance between them with a few small steps. But something happens when that mare smiles, when Luster steps closer. It starts as a flutter in her chest, like snowflakes trapped beneath her skin, and she cannot help but balk and turn those wide browns eyes in near-betrayal against the strange mare. But the mares face does not change and the feeling only deepens from that flutter to a stirring in the marrow of her bones.

Except-

It doesn’t feel bad or wrong, it doesn’t hurt, and she isn’t scared anymore. It feels like exhaling after a breath held too long, like a burr pulled from the corn-silk wisps beneath her mane. It is freedom.

“My name is Luster.” She says softly, her dark eyes gentle and curious where they settle against the mares delicate face. A pause and she cannot help but cock her head slightly to the side, her right eye disappearing beneath the tangles of her dark forelock. “What is it that you’ve done, Marlyn? Why do I feel different.”

so we let our shadows fall away like dust