a heart seized up; any

[gravely]

One. Two Three.
Three. Two. One.

Witching. Gravely. Reap.
Now there is only Gravely.

One. One. One.
It becomes a chant in her head, and from her lips that hold the graveside hush - “One, one, one.”

One. Her. Gravely.
She stares through a curtain of pale frothy hair; her stare is cinnamon in color, dark cinnamon, like spice and shadow, and there is a loss in it that few know of - three, two, one - one - one, only one, all alone, so very very alone! It is enough to slaughter the thick dumb meat that beats inside her; a loss as thick as bread on a starving tongue, and it chokes her every moment she opens her eyes and rediscovers herself as alone, as one. She has lost the sense of them, one-two-three, and is adrift. Bereft, even.

Mother is in the grave, Gravely thinks. Are they too? Their names do not cross her lips; kept secret and dark, a hole inside herself that she can crawl into and say their names to herself, say one, two, three and three, two, one. Repetitive, but there is a balm in the repetition that soothes the ache of loss in her, lessens the severity of it until she is a mantra of oneness - one, one, one, such a lonely number and a lonely thing. Gravely does not smile, her hair still hiding her face as she looks out at them, they are alive and she hungers - thirsts, even - for a taste of their aliveness. She can feel it tremble against her lips like the wings of a moth promising a kiss and a sigh tumbles out of her mouth, careless, murmuring. One becomes once, then one again. Her gape-mouth closes; maybe on a thought, a half-said thing that her teeth crumble back into the dust of silence and disuse. They do not need her words anyway, they are not deserving of them.

The silver bay slides back further into the shadows, not sure why she still looks since there is no hope left in her. That - hope - died long ago, the same time she sucked in her first breath. Embers, ash, and pain; one, two, three and three, two, one so alone that she hopes never to live again but hungers for a touch of life to ease the cold burn of death in her. She dies, just as much as she lives this half-life, breathing and thinking and the like, but so very much the chill of the grave that sits just inside her flesh.

[Witching]

Empty, I echo to the least footfall,
Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,
* * * *

Three. For so long.
Three planets, gyrating in an utterly dark universe.

Three sets of legs. Lips. Knees. Chins. 
Tangles.
Knots of them, all together, so they were more like one. Until one, two and three – they came tumbling from the reheated atmosphere of their incubation – Mother. She had come first, Witching. (Maybe she was first to know alone.) But she had waited, patiently, because she had only ever known three. Only ever trusted in three. And they came!

Two! Her. Duplicates, from their chins to their tails.
Three! Him. Different. Necessary because he made them three again.

And then just like that, death took on life’s condition and begot life – and then it died again.

Just three.

She is singular-minded. She breaths and touches her lips to the dips and rises of her chest. She imagines (thinks she remembers) the exquisite closeness of the womb, where lips touched flesh quite unknown but familiar.
She does not yet know, but she has a lifetime to find Two again. They have forever and more. Three does not. Three is painfully finite. Little does she know.

(—or she could live without, forever.)

She runs, trusting that something binds them and that this thing, their thing, means to draw them closer and closer until they collide once more. The universe is too big, now. The universe is no longer theirs and they have lost the suck of each other’s gravities. They are aimless bodies, adrift. She watches for them, with eyes like cinnamon, too, unblinking. She picks her way along paths she think she has traced before, looking down through her ashen hair at the many prints. They could be them, she thinks, any one of them. She presses her own hooves down, harder than before, hoping to leave something behind like beacons for them to follow and find.
Her hope has not died. Maybe because once, long ago, she knew alone and still trusted in three. And they had come.

Things that are most familiar to her: the harsh taste of ash, ribs pressed together like a string of fairy lights, the dull hum of hearts in a quiet cavity – that smell. Thought lacking in pine and Three, She knows that smell like she knows her own and she follows it like a hound into shadow. “Sister–” she croaks, squinting into a perfect mirror, breathing hard. “Where have you been?” Witching’s voice is so soft, and it never betrays her. It is strangely even, though she leans in to touch Gravely's side with longing. “Where is... Reap? You know where he is–” it hangs, half statement, half question, because she has to believe that this is the moment.

WITCHING
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale their pallor like scent.

[gravely]

She is not supposed to be one; she is two, and he is three.
But she cannot smell them, cannot sense them in that way that only those who share the same house of flesh can sense one another - nearby, always, constant.

Stygian, is the darkness in which they began.
Womb-black and safe, forever three and together.
Which they are not now;

(Forever, the finality of it; like one - Witching, she does not know that three does not have the time that they do. Forever, it seems so final, so endless, but not for brother - he will taste the grave long before they do, and neither of them knows it.)

The ashes of burnt up hope stir in her; breezes toy gaily with the pale froth of her hair, making the strands twist and snap together against her face and neck. But back to the pile of dead hope in her, the same breezes bear smells that are familiar, that dredge up space and forever and galaxies of togetherness. Something explodes in her like a supernova, hot and bright, and her dark cinnamon eyes blaze back to life - knowing, expectant. She hears the hoofsteps moments before the croak of One’s voice reaches her; relief breaks like dawn across her silver-bay face and with it, the smallest crook of her lips in a smile. “Lost,” she responds, as Witching leans in and they touch, two splinters of the a greater chunk of driftwood. All that is missing is Three - Reap, brother, last.

Regretfully, she pulls her face back from her sister’s side and gives a forlorn shake of her head - no, she hasn’t seen him, hasn’t smelled him, he is lost like she was - like they were, but the hope is reborn in her, from ash and phoenix-fire and star-stuff. If Witching has come back, then Reap shall as well. That is how they are to trust it to be, that how strong their belief in the gravitational pull of their threesome is for them. One and Two, and only Three is still missing…

Three!
The grass shivers at his coming; he is strong and fast, like a whirlwind of force that begs to be reckoned with and Two’s face splits into a grin, because now - now, the circle is comple. One. Two. Three. OneTwoThree. He smells familiar - like family, because he is, but also different somehow, that has Gravely fussing over him dutifully, poking her nose into the tangles of mane about his neck, sliding her lips down the length of his spine - he smells, like death, like mother and she rears her head back to regard him anew. She knows he has been among the beach, that terrible shore, and not the ash and timber of their birthplace.

“Too long,” she murmurs, a susurrus of being - nearly wraithlike, and just as willowy compared to his brawny self. Both of them - One and Three, are out of breath and she cannot exhale fast enough, thinking she might float away and up, up, up into the stars! Because they are there now, they are OneTwoThree and Two is not terribly alone - terribly bereft, any more. She can taste happiness like a cloud on her tongue, pale and airy, and it swells along her throat and pushes deep down into her belly until it shakes a laugh out of her.

“Brother, Sister...” she sighs, pleasantly stupefied by their return to her.
She never wants them to part again; jealousy is a hot snake that twists her gut in all manner of violence - they will not leave her, not now, not ever. It is a thing that she promises to herself, secretly and softly, as she reaches out to touch Reap’s nose with hers’.