I wanted pomegranates, I wanted darkness; spyndle, any

[perse]

i wanted pomegranates-- (“Tell me again,” she begs, because she knows He is preparing to leave (His stays are always much too short) and she wants to keep Him, “tell me how I got my name.” “No one believes Persephone ate the pomegranate willingly,” He says. It is a half story, he begins in the middle, “but I think she savored the flesh of it. I think she savored every moment of it. Giving in that way is special, isn’t it?”) Here is Persephone, grown. The filly who walked spindly-legged in the company of a dark god while her mother wailed and gnashed her teeth behind her is gone, replaced is a woman grown. Silver (like her mother), a burnished metallic color that reflects and tosses light like confetti. She squints, unused to the sun (she grew up in His lairs, in shadow and secrecy, just like her mother). She is the dead spit of Cordis, but here is the difference: where Cordis ran, hellhounds at her heels, Perse walks. It is not quite a saunter, but it is confident, smooth. Here is the difference: where Cordis begged for death as He flayed the skin from her bones, Perse begged for more. She didn’t know she would love it – didn’t know she would love Him – but she does, she does. She does not miss her mother. (Her mothers.) She misses Elecktrum, sometimes, the way they would tumble through space together like comets. But mostly she loves Him, her dark god, and she drinks his poison thirstily. i wanted darkness-- Go, He had said as He tore into her flesh, wrote His name on her chest, go, and see where you came from. Where she came from is boring. Where she came from is two mares entirely too caught up in themselves, from a meadow with rivers and hazel that’s entirely too bright. Here there are no gods hungry to dissemble her and remake her. Here they do not know the pleasure of submitting to the gods, to being theirs, to being broken and remade and tasted and burned. (She loves it all. God help her, she loves it all.) But He had said this to her so of course she obeyed. He walked out of the pits with her, led the way through the labyrinths, and brought her to the wasteland. From there, He branded her skin (He always remakes her fresh and untouched) with His name, a mark along her crest, half hidden by the silvery tumble of mane. (She knows, though. She feels it, warm, like a kiss.) Find your mother, He had said, but he had specified nothing else (not even which mother), so she does not even know where to begin. i wanted him-- p e r s e ------------------------------cordis x spyndle

[Spyndle]

She swore never again.
She swore it was the last time.

But here she is, wading in an ocean of grass that grabs at her ankles and threatens to pull her down and drown her in memory. Here she is, even though there are a thousand places at least that exist and do not harbour the anguish she knows this one to hold between its walls. Here she is, even though this meadow-sea is bursting at its seams with misery like an ancient wood dam in the midst of heavy rainfall. Here she is, scanning the horizon for something even while she will not admit it aloud, and denies it silently.

And there it is, a silver of silver in a too-bright meadow that on first glance she takes in as a reflection on the river water.

But she knows better.
She knows that silver can be familiar.

She knows that silver can be familiar, especially here in a meadow that feels endless like the sea, especially here on the river's edge, especially here by the hazel that grows aslant and washed in the red glow of a setting sun.

She swore never again.
She swore she would not look back, that she would become a pillar of salt if she did.

She swore that she would crumble.

But she looks.

It almost breaks her in half, again.
It almost spills her open on the river shore, again.

Because it feels like flesh being torn. Because it feels like choking on warm blood. Because it leaves her tongue dry, and it tastes metallic. And it first she knows that the silver figure on the horizon is Cordis, and the knowledge feels like mountains moved onto her chest. And next she knows that it is not, and the knowledge of that is heavy enough to grind her bones to dust, to leave her flattened and paper-thin.

She swore never again.
But she says: "Are you real?"

spyndle

you are the prettiest thing that I will ever know

[perse]

i wanted pomegranates— i wanted darkness— i wanted him-- She does not want to be here, in this world that’s too bright (she prefers to glow, a burnished centerpiece, than to reflect). She does not want to be here because He is not here, the place does not smell of Him. The small comfort is she can see some of Him in many of the residents, His brood, ensuring His blood says writ across the history of His birthland. She misses Him so deeply that her stomach feels hollowed. She feels too clean, her skin crawls with Him flaying it open. She misses the sight of her bones protruding, the cloud of pain so sweet and furious it was all she knew, all she loved. But He had asked her and so, she obeyed. She’s a very good girl, after all. Had she known, that she would come? (Had He?) For a moment she doesn’t even recognize her. She recalls her parents the way children to, as things beautiful and impossible, larger than life. This mare is small and weak and practically pathetic. (But then, she had been in His grasp and she had turned away, preferred the embrace of her other mother, His old pet, His failed pet.) She prefers to think herself as something that sprung, whole, into being. She doesn’t like to think she is the result of anything so base and animalistic as copulation (though granted, the two mothers suggested some magic involvement, of course.) The mare – her mother – comes, walks heavy like Atlas bearing a world on their shoulders. Are you real, she asks, and for a moment Perse is struck with memory, of her mothers, of a field bright with meadowsweet and hazel. “I certainly hope so,” she says, and laughs, false and high. She grounds herself. She is not their daughter anymore. She is nothing but His. “Mother,” she says, then, because it is what He would want, “mother, I’ve missed you so.” p e r s e ------------------------------cordis x spyndle