let your fists come undone; leliana

[exist]

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

 It is Spring again on the mainland. The snow is melting and the ground is thawing, there are soft tawny buds on bare branches and patches of green peeking through even bigger patches of brown. Everything smells new, like warm and mud and rain waiting to fall, and it must be overwhelming to those who had grown used to the months of a world that was only ever frozen and snow. Exist likes those smells – the sharpness of cold and new snow, the sweetness of green and thaw and mud – but there is nothing that comes close to how the ocean smells, of salt and brine, where it laps at Tephras shores.

Wordlessly she finds her sister, and, touching the indigo of her nose to the dark of innumerable brown dapples, pulls her towards the ocean. They wade together through the greenery, following faint trails carved out by larger hooves until there is only sand and shore and the endless blue of an ocean that melts into the sky. 

When the sun finds her wings, they unfurl and dissolve, shifting from soft tawny and white feather to the gleaming iridescence of dragon-fly wings. In the yellowy light they seem to sparkle, a million trapped colors and somehow no color at all, framed by veins and lines like delicate silver lace.  Smiling, she glances back at her sister, just once, and then plunges forward into the waiting sand.

She is greeted at once by the spray of ocean water against her face, by the stink of salt and brine and dry, hot sand. For a moment she is still, just a heartbeat in time, long enough to look out across the blue and wonder at its vastness. To her left she can see where the land turns and curves out into the ocean, but it grows hazy before she can see where it ends. To her right the beach just stretches on and on until the same blurry haze claims that, too. Ahead there is only endless blue and a skyline of periwinkle – no hint of green, of the mainland she knows is nestled somewhere along the horizon.

When Leliana joins her, Exist turns and touches her smiling mouth to that soft mahogany shoulder. “Leliana,” she says, her voice quiet and colored with a shade of wonder, “this world is so beautiful.” She cannot help but pause again, gathering the questions to where they can sit impatiently at the tip of her tongue. This world is beautiful, but she has met so many who seem guarded against it, ruined by it. Their own mother included. When her pale green eyes drift back to find and settle against Leliana’s, her brow is furrowed and her eyes are uncertain. “What do you think the old world was like?”

Exist

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

Her sister was as much a part of her as her second lung. She felt her, sensed her, even when she was not there; as if an invisible thread ran from her to Exist, as if they were constantly tethered, bound. Whenever she felt the earth shifting beneath her, the gravity faltering, she knew she was grounded by Exist; just as she was for her sister. They were never truly alone in this world, not when they had one another.

So Leliana is wordless when Exist finds her, when she beckons her to the ocean. Instead she simply tosses her head, the crimson wave of her mane flying out behind her, the sand tossing beneath her hooves. Together, side by side, they splash into the water, the feathers of her legs curling and sticking to her cannon bones, the salt of water and air stinging her eyes as she glanced to the horizon…

where Ischia lay in wait, where Dovev fought and slept and bled.

Her heart contracted painfully as she thought of him, of their night together, and she turned her cheek from it, focusing her eyes on the apricot and indigo of her sister. There was a sadness in Exist’s eyes, a hurt neither of them could fix, no matter how hard they tried. She leaned over so her side could be pressed against hers, the comfort of her presence hopefully enough to help ease the lonely ache of her heart.

“It is indeed beautiful,” she whispered, her voice that familiar fog, low and warm and steady--all of the things that Leliana herself was. “The old world?” she repeated, lovely brow creasing into a frown. “I’m not sure. I have never really thought about it.” She was too wrapped up in the here and now, practical to her core. There were too many things to solve here, too many things to think about.

She hadn’t stopped to wonder what it was like before.

“I imagine it was colorful and bright and full of magic.” Her eyes lit up as she caught her sister’s gaze, the red velvet of her lips curving into a smile. “Back when magic ran so much freer.” The crimson wings at her side rustled and then shifted, turning iridescent to match her sister, the light reflecting off them.

“Although this world is not so bad.”

She is silent for another moment, before she speaks again, her voice lower, as if she was sharing a secret with her sister, and perhaps she was. “I met someone, Exist.” Her wings shifted again as she focused her thoughts, turning into black leather, dotted with the colors of the night sky, constellations flung out across their edges. “I met someone and I don’t know what to do about it. What to think about him.”

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow

[exist]

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

She is quiet long after Leliana stops speaking, long after the low melodious voice has returned to its home within that dark and delicate chest. Exist is busy unraveling memories that are not hers, imagining worlds where horses wore literal constellations instead of spots across their skin, bright and cold and silver like the ones strewn across a black and bruised sky – worlds where fire burned molten in the marrow of eager bones, where flames licked at the flesh they were tethered to but did not blister or maim.  She wondered if the horses in these words were different – if the power born to them was as dark and corrosive as it had been here, as ruinous as the stories of now had declared them to be.

And yet –

“Do you think they were happier then?” The question feels blasphemous when it leaves her lips, like cursing the Gods, or fairies as it may be, who had left them here. But all she can think about are the ones she loved so dearly, so wholly, the ones who had been changed by the absence of some crucial part of their souls. Like Giver, so soft and solemn and buried beneath the weight of so many things, so many secrets, perhaps. But he had changed when the magic found him again, when it poured in and filled those dark places and crevices with cool silver starlight.

She thinks of mother, too. Wonders – and she knows that she should not if only for the way the thought is barbed and dangerous, the way it leaves her mind aching and her heart raw – if in the old world, the world that came before, would mother have stayed with them? So when Leliana, in her soft and steady way, says, this world is not so bad. Exist just smiles, a quiet kind of smile, and then turns to bury it in the red of Leliana’s mane before she can see it and realize the truth behind it. It is a smile that says, I think we just traded one kind of dark for another.

It is only when Leliana’s voice drops and Exist can feel a ripple in that otherworldly calm, that she pulls away from the dark neck so she can more easily watch that quiet red and brown face. I met someone, and Exist pauses, the smoothness of her brow knotted and furrowed with uncertainty. Her own wings notice before she does, fluttering impatiently when Leliana’s shift from iridescence to dark leather, a gesture that feels almost jittery when it is coming from her sister.

Exist shifts and steps back, reaching over to draw her lips along the sinew of the wings, to trace the delicate architecture and the hollows in-between. And then, softly, “was that where you were the night you didn’t come home?” Home, home to me. She eases forward again and the water spills around the copper of strong, powerful legs. “I was worried.” She admits next, heavy-eyed, so that it doesn’t seem like an accusation. Then, curious, soft as the sun in the copper of her skin, and with a smile that etches itself in indigo across her mouth, “What do you want to do about it?”

Exist

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

Leliana does not have the same longings as Exist. She does not burn for constellations beyond her grasp; she does not ache for worlds she cannot see. She is pragmatic, focused on the hurts of the world before her, her mind turning toward the bruises that flourish on the horizon, on the cries of the injured. There was too much to do here, too much to consume her mind, for her to think of anything else. But oh, oh, how she cherished her sister for her ability to do so, for the way her mind spun outward, soaking in the galaxies and floating amongst them, her dreams and thoughts melding with the worlds beyond their own.

What it must be like to glow so brightly.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, voice low and steady. “I imagine that some thought that they were happier, but the past always look better than the present, does it not?” She turned her crimson-dipped head to look toward her sister, to study the ache in her eyes, and she felt her heart constrict. “I think of her too, you know.” Their mother, always present, hovering just out of reach for them both. Leliana did not like to dwell on Victra; she did not like to think of why she had left, of the demons that had chased her. But that did not mean she could keep the thoughts at bay. Too often, too frequently, they nipped her heels.

She held her sister as she buried her head into her neck and breathed in deeply, overcome by the scent of salt and Exist’s presence, steadied by the weight of her. “I hope that she is happy, wherever she is.”

Even if that meant not being happy with her daughters.

She answered her sister calmly, ignoring the pangs in her chest as she dug up Dovev’s face, as she thought of the blue stars that twinkled, buried in the blackness of his coat. It hurt, to imagine him, to remember what it had felt like to be held by him, but it was also soothing, somehow; as if her memories of him somehow brought them closer together. “Yes,” she answered simply, watching her sister peel away and then step further into the tide. “I met him first in the meadow. I followed him to Ischia one night.”

She breathed in deeply, the air expanding within her chest, steadying herself. “That’s the thing,” she leaned down, letting the waves wash around her muzzle, although she was careful to not breath it in, before lifting her head once more. “I’m not sure it matters what I want with him.” Her eyes were dark with hurt when she looked up to her sister but she quickly banished it, replacing it with the calm stillness.

“It’s okay. I am grateful even for the few moments I was given.”

It was enough. It was enough.

(It would never be enough.)

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow