02-06-2017, 09:16 PM
She leaves the same way she came, past his lake and through the trees painted like sunset and fire and ancient things. Past stones that look even larger in the daylight than they had in the dark the night before. She lingers around them, blaming the hesitance on a sense of curiosity at their immensity, at the way they are scattered like marbles across a floor. But the truth is in the weight of her chest, the ache that grew and sharpened with every step that pulled her further from the cave. Further from Stillwater and those dark, beautiful eyes. When she can linger no longer, find no more excuses to delay home, delay leaving Sylva behind, she crosses the border into Taiga and becomes a ghost between the trees.
If anyone notices her, they do not say anything.
Time feels slower now than it had before, suspended in between the beats of her trembling heart. It feels strange without his heat beside her, without his eyes in the hollows of her face and his smile in the crook of her neck. It feels even lonelier than the stars looked in the sky, so bright, so beautiful, so isolated from one to the next in an ocean of dark and unknown.
Her breath hitches and she drops her eyes, tucking her chin close to the curve of her small chest so as to hide the pain that gathers there. She isn’t sure why she does it, there is no one here, no prying eyes, and even then it would be difficult to make sense of the blue girl appearing in slivers of sunlight and disappearing again as soon as shadow touched her skin. Still, this pain, this ache, it feels private. So she tucks it away where she thinks no one will find it, no one but Stillwater, should she ever see him again.
It is dusk by the time she reaches the edge of Taiga where it curves with the Forest to hold a small lake between them. She did not mean to stop here, but suddenly she is following its edge into the trees of the neutral territory, pausing when a small beach reveals itself to her in the growing dark. The smile that finds its way to those pale, perfect lips is faint and uncertain, shy, and it makes her whole face soft with a longing that blooms in her chest.
“Stillwater.” She breathes, despite that he is miles and miles away, tucked in his cave or in the sand at the shore of his lake. She eases forward towards the water, stopping before it could lap at the grooves in her dark hooves, and then closes those sad, solemn eyes against the night that blossoms like a bruise overhead. For a long moment she is still and silent, her body soft and slight as it leaned forward to press against the breeze coming in off the waves. Around her and through the dark, those lights appear again, floating like fireflies and sunken stars, sinking like snowflakes against the faded blue of her skin and disappearing somewhere deep inside.
It is the product of remembering, and fondly, the quiet man with the dark face who had held her safe through the night. It is the product of remembering, less fondly, where the ache in her chest had come from. What she does not realize, standing sad and quiet and alone on the shore, no longer camouflaged by the dark, is the light that appeared in Sylva, too.
A small mare, slight and slender, peppered through with gleaming light and dark to match the colors on Lusters dusty roan skin appears at the shore by the lake. There is no sound, no smell, no way to touch what is only light and bright and the result of remembering. But it is there and it is quiet, and when it lifts its small, dark face to the night, there are a hundred flickering stars in that sky, too. Stars like sunken ships and lost fireflies, waiting patiently for a pair of deepwater eyes to find them.
If anyone notices her, they do not say anything.
Time feels slower now than it had before, suspended in between the beats of her trembling heart. It feels strange without his heat beside her, without his eyes in the hollows of her face and his smile in the crook of her neck. It feels even lonelier than the stars looked in the sky, so bright, so beautiful, so isolated from one to the next in an ocean of dark and unknown.
Her breath hitches and she drops her eyes, tucking her chin close to the curve of her small chest so as to hide the pain that gathers there. She isn’t sure why she does it, there is no one here, no prying eyes, and even then it would be difficult to make sense of the blue girl appearing in slivers of sunlight and disappearing again as soon as shadow touched her skin. Still, this pain, this ache, it feels private. So she tucks it away where she thinks no one will find it, no one but Stillwater, should she ever see him again.
It is dusk by the time she reaches the edge of Taiga where it curves with the Forest to hold a small lake between them. She did not mean to stop here, but suddenly she is following its edge into the trees of the neutral territory, pausing when a small beach reveals itself to her in the growing dark. The smile that finds its way to those pale, perfect lips is faint and uncertain, shy, and it makes her whole face soft with a longing that blooms in her chest.
“Stillwater.” She breathes, despite that he is miles and miles away, tucked in his cave or in the sand at the shore of his lake. She eases forward towards the water, stopping before it could lap at the grooves in her dark hooves, and then closes those sad, solemn eyes against the night that blossoms like a bruise overhead. For a long moment she is still and silent, her body soft and slight as it leaned forward to press against the breeze coming in off the waves. Around her and through the dark, those lights appear again, floating like fireflies and sunken stars, sinking like snowflakes against the faded blue of her skin and disappearing somewhere deep inside.
It is the product of remembering, and fondly, the quiet man with the dark face who had held her safe through the night. It is the product of remembering, less fondly, where the ache in her chest had come from. What she does not realize, standing sad and quiet and alone on the shore, no longer camouflaged by the dark, is the light that appeared in Sylva, too.
A small mare, slight and slender, peppered through with gleaming light and dark to match the colors on Lusters dusty roan skin appears at the shore by the lake. There is no sound, no smell, no way to touch what is only light and bright and the result of remembering. But it is there and it is quiet, and when it lifts its small, dark face to the night, there are a hundred flickering stars in that sky, too. Stars like sunken ships and lost fireflies, waiting patiently for a pair of deepwater eyes to find them.