i have loved the stars too fondly; any

[Carinae]

astra inclinant, non necessitant ------ (the stars incline; they do not compel) She aches for what she cannot define. She aches, too, because to whom can she express the singular pang in her chest, the longing for the stars, the quiet, the standstill of time? It is impossible to know what it’s like to live there in space’s queer timelessness, to watch galaxies collapse and feel simultaneously like a god and like an infinitesimally small speck of dust. She is a creature kept from its migration, because the home she wishes for is impossible (Was always impossible, she wonders sometimes if it was a dream, a capsule of madness.) She is not like her mother – she was born to the stars, but not of them; nor is she like her father, full of magic, a megalomaniac god. All she has is a reflection of the sky in her coat, a living painting. Of course, she merely mirrors the sky, a lovely trick but ultimately a useless one. There is a new legion of them, half-siblings scattered piecemeal with stars and colors. None of them were kept as she and brother were, in the strange timelessness, coats made to bring the stars home. (She misses it. God, she misses it.) She had tried to find father, while he was here, meaning to throw herself at his feet and beg to be sent back. He hadn’t loved her, had existed alongside them for only a short while (or perhaps a long one. Time does not exist in space, not like it does here, where it is heavy and ponderous across the skin.) But he had heeded none of her cries, and she cannot find a god when the god does not want to be found. So she remains stranded, a girl apart, once of the stars and now of the meadow. She shines a bright blue, a reflection of the sky, clouds drifting lazily over her hindquarters. She is lovely in the way things made magic are, and though her eyes may be dull, her coat is not, and she shines on. carinae

[Astarte]

astarte

The girl is a window... her body a looking glass through which you see the sky as it expands from horizon to horizon; endless. She stands, but she is never still. Her heart beats, her vessels thrum, and her sky moves. Astarte’s earth eyes, as rich as soil, drift between the mare and sky until they rise no more but settle and watch the lazy drift of white cotton clouds as they pass across hip, flank and shoulder. The bone girl would think she had seen it all, but she knows better in these twisted worlds to think she has seen the most unique horses the cosmos could birth.

Was there any limit to the vastness of power?

There are similarities between the girls despite Astarte’s coat being a limp bone white compared to the celestial girl’s effervescent skin. Their souls are too heavy; one pulled down by gravity and the other by the vast enduring expanse of eternity.

The girl of bone and dust had followed Carinae like an ethereal shadow, too shameless to care how she would be perceived. When finally her eyes were sated, she drifted closer her limbs hissing through the long grass like the tide washing upon the shore.

”A curious trick.” She murmurs as she steps closer, her body relishing the warmth of the sky girl. A curious sensation it was for Carinae’s body foretold of chilly skies not hazy summer sun… Like a child, enraptured and so greedy in her curiosity, Astarte’s reached forwards. Ashen lips, as dark as moody skies, stopped with just enough space that her whispers trailed across the Sky Girl’s skin, like fingertips over fragile silk. There was only warm equine musk and other scents of earth and vegetation... nothing like the cool sigh of flowing air or condensation. Pulling back Astarte sighed, her breath a silvery plume in the frigid air. She was almost disappointed, but foolish she was to have wished for any more from this girl’s skin.

Gazing at the Sky Girl from beneath heavy lidded lashes, the Bone Girl’s whisper was nearly lost by the winds. “Your soul is too heavy for your body.” With those words Astarte’s earthen gaze, drifted from Carinae’s listless eyes to her sky blue torso. She knows that ache.

[Carinae]

astra inclinant, non necessitant ------ (the stars incline; they do not compel) It is kindness and cruelty both, that she was made to mirror the sky above her. It is a memory; especially on clear nights when the stars seem almost touchable, and they scatter across her skin and she remembers with an aching clarity what it was like, among them. But it is a taunting memory, what she will never have again drawn across her body, again and again until days come when she does not want to look at herself, when she cannot stand her own skin. Memories are like that, though, tinged in bitter sweetness, the sky laid over her a joy and despondency both. There had been sounds, behind her, but she paid them little mind. She feels dulled, today, far too anchored. (The heaviness of the world astounds her still, she grew up weightless, and when she came here she felt impossibly weighty and strange.) The steps lend themselves to a girl, who strolls closer until the space between them is tenuous at best. A curious trick, she murmurs, and Carinae wonders. She does not think of it as a trick, anymore then she thinks of her own shapes and angles as a trick – it is part of her, the way bones and organs are. The mare closes in, recedes, and Carinae is still for all of it, save for the drifting clouds across her back. The mare continues on, cryptic, and she hypothesizes on why Carinae is the way she is (ironic, then, that the dullness shines so bright from her that it can be seen miles away). “No,” she says, “I think I’m too heavy for the earth.” carinae