Here are some things she shouldn’t know:
She shouldn’t know every exact angle and plane of her, as if she were an architect beholding her creation. Which is a foolish metaphor, because nothing she’s every made could hold a candle to Spyndle. She shouldn’t know what her skin looks like wet, in the river, or dry under a springtime sun, or ripped open, eviscerated.
She shouldn’t know what she feels like, from first hesitant caresses years in the making to fervent lovemaking. She shouldn’t know this because it was – as all things between them were – an impossibility. Impossible, that they should have been in the same place at the same time; impossible, that their paths should have crossed; impossible, that they should have found one another over and over and over again until one of those times the lines could be crossed, and they could touch.
Impossible, that they should still love each other after all this time. After everything.
She shouldn’t know what her back looks like as she leaves (again).
She shouldn’t know that if she dies, she can bring her back.
(Because that’s not always the case, is it? You are not god. You’re a fool with some lightning and a wish.)
She shouldn’t know the way that the word goodbye tears you from the inside out. That sometimes, it’s like a living thing crawling up your throat, clawing and thrashing until you spit out blood.
She shouldn’t have promised her worlds. Not without some kind of plan. But she isn’t an architect. We know this.
(She will make worlds. She will. It’s impossible. She will. Impossible has never mattered to them before.)
Shouldn’t. Impossible. I can’t. They are a world of negatives, of denial. Backs turned. Bodies cringing away. Leaving. Always fucking leaving, because they were too much, together; they couldn’t stand it.
Look. Love isn’t like this. The concept of soulmates is foolish. The idea that destiny, and fate, bring souls together and make some sort of firestorm is foolish, it negates the quieter love that blossoms.
Look. This love is nothing short of destruction. This love is a natural disaster – all negatives and backing away and lightning. Chemistry making chemical fires, impossible to put out, leaving everyone burned
Look. Whatever you want to call it, she’d build worlds for her.
She’d destroy worlds for her, too.
Let’s switch, now. From shouldn’t to can’t. Because it’s fitting, isn’t it? They’re built on that, on I can’t.
She can’t know that the bones are hers. She can’t know that because it’s impossible. Because bones are bones are bones.
But there is something – an echo of magic, perhaps, some sliver of it forgotten in her blood – knows. Knows because she’s spent years of her life memorizing the flesh that once graced those bones. Because it’s what she sees whenever she closes her eyes.
Because they’re bound. Because whatever this is – whatever bastardized, ridiculous, star-crossed force this is – they’re bound.
She knows. She shouldn’t know. She can’t know.
She knows.
And grief wells inside her, a force too tremendous to comprehend. She moves without thinking, without knowing, moves into the river, dazed. Perhaps she thinks to follow her, although Spyndle has gone to a world Cordis cannot pass through.
She wants to say something. A prayer, maybe. But her name – which she’d always said like a prayer – feels like dust in her bloodied mouth.
She walks, chest deep now, mud sucking at her hooves, when something bumps against her. She thinks it’s a fish for a moment, until she glances down, and sees it’s a heart, twisting in the river’s current. A sound is torn from her – a cry, primal, grief echoing over the water.
Because she knows that heart, too.
The current brings the heart back to her, and it collides with her chest – but rather than fall back, she feels it stay pressed against her.
And, as she has always done, she opens herself to her.
For a moment, she shimmers in the water, liquid, transformed. It’s long enough for the heart to be absorbed into her, to be carried inside her, nestled next to her own.
The metaphor of their love made corporeal.
And this is what stops her. This is what keeps her from walking out further. She feels warmer, fuller.
It’s not enough, of course. Grief is still on her, a savage monster with claws sunk deep into her silver skin. She is still a ship, wrecked on the shore with no lighthouse to guide her home. Disaster is still writ all over her.
But when she walks out of the river – walks out alone – there are two hearts beating inside her.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me
im not crying you're crying