01-23-2017, 09:51 PM
She had slipped out before the stars had fully faded from the dawn sky. Father had stirred first, lifting that dark blue head to watch her leave, a smile drawn like a heavy slash across his mouth. Mother had stirred next and offered her a similar smile – though it was much softer in the deep black of her quiet face. Neither seemed overly concerned, this wouldn’t be the first time she had slipped out to watch the sun unearth itself and return to its post in the sky. But their faith in her just made the lie hurt a little more. She had been planning this in secret ever since Rora had whispered the word Sylva.
Today, she would go see it for herself.
It is easy enough to slip between the trees, invisible in the shadow thanks to a gift she cannot explain. She suspects it would be easy even if she weren’t invisible, suspects that there is very little that is interesting about a small and plain yearling the color of deep, murky ocean. From the forest she slips into Taiga, skirting the perimeter between the ancient woods and the mountains whose purple peaks had never seemed quite so bright as they do today. When the day is nearly over, the trees change from pine to hickory and walnut, the needles softening to the flat green of actual leaves – it is just as Rora promised.
Even as the day draws to an end and the sun sinks beneath the horizon, dropped and forgotten and probably a little lonely, she can see that this place is beautiful. It is awash in color like nothing she has seen before, reds and golds and oranges like maybe the sun came here to sleep when it disappeared each night, like it was fire (not leaves) that fluttered at the ends of their branchy moorings.
She is still beneath the fire of the trees when night falls and the stars come out again. She can barely see them through the leaves, but she doesn’t mind because she is used to a sky full of tree and branches - having been born in dense woods like these. In the dark she is like a ghost, flickering in and out of the shadow night casts, her passing marked only by the rustle of leaves underfoot and the snap of fallen branches. There is a strange weight in her face during those moments she is solid and blue, a guilt that is almost tangible. This will be the first time she will not return to her parents to sleep beside them, the first time she lied by not letting them know where she was going.
She didn’t like how heavy that knowledge felt sitting in her chest.
Ahead she can hear the wet sound of water lapping at uneven shores, of starlight caught and trapped in a million rippling reflections. She moves towards it easily, all legs and slender torso, made small and delicate by youth. She has seen the coast before, just once or twice, but this water is different. It doesn’t stink of salt and brine and seaweed. It seems cleaner, somehow, and she wonders if it is run-off from the mountains that are so nearby. Quietly, she wades in until the narrow of that delicate blue chest is submerged, until her skin is damp and dark as the night around her. With a smile, small and slight, etched like shadow into the pale of a velvet mouth, she lets loose the light that hums beneath her skin, pushing out pinpricks of bright no bigger than fireflies so that they swim in the water around her.
They swim in wide circles, around her and beside her, behind her – and she notices him finally, that dark silhouette nestled in the sand near where she had entered the lake. With a gasp she goes invisible, hidden by the dark and in the dark, no more than a reflection of the shadows that pooled between them. It is useless, really, because the lights still swim between them and water still bounces and ripples away from her body to mark where she stands. As soon as she realizes this she returns from the shadow, no longer hidden, but decidedly bashful. “You surprised me.” She tells him softly, in a voice like starlight, silver and sweet. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t asked. “I didn’t realize anyone was here.” She drifts a few steps closer, uncertain, and that dark mane spills around the delicate hollows of a dark and white face. Her lights swim toward him, slow and lazy like fish meandering beneath the surface, and then gather to pool between them until the night is hazy with a strange and soft twilight. “I am Luster,” starlight, again, and this time it even reaches the gleaming of those dark, solemn eyes, "who are you?"
Today, she would go see it for herself.
It is easy enough to slip between the trees, invisible in the shadow thanks to a gift she cannot explain. She suspects it would be easy even if she weren’t invisible, suspects that there is very little that is interesting about a small and plain yearling the color of deep, murky ocean. From the forest she slips into Taiga, skirting the perimeter between the ancient woods and the mountains whose purple peaks had never seemed quite so bright as they do today. When the day is nearly over, the trees change from pine to hickory and walnut, the needles softening to the flat green of actual leaves – it is just as Rora promised.
Even as the day draws to an end and the sun sinks beneath the horizon, dropped and forgotten and probably a little lonely, she can see that this place is beautiful. It is awash in color like nothing she has seen before, reds and golds and oranges like maybe the sun came here to sleep when it disappeared each night, like it was fire (not leaves) that fluttered at the ends of their branchy moorings.
She is still beneath the fire of the trees when night falls and the stars come out again. She can barely see them through the leaves, but she doesn’t mind because she is used to a sky full of tree and branches - having been born in dense woods like these. In the dark she is like a ghost, flickering in and out of the shadow night casts, her passing marked only by the rustle of leaves underfoot and the snap of fallen branches. There is a strange weight in her face during those moments she is solid and blue, a guilt that is almost tangible. This will be the first time she will not return to her parents to sleep beside them, the first time she lied by not letting them know where she was going.
She didn’t like how heavy that knowledge felt sitting in her chest.
Ahead she can hear the wet sound of water lapping at uneven shores, of starlight caught and trapped in a million rippling reflections. She moves towards it easily, all legs and slender torso, made small and delicate by youth. She has seen the coast before, just once or twice, but this water is different. It doesn’t stink of salt and brine and seaweed. It seems cleaner, somehow, and she wonders if it is run-off from the mountains that are so nearby. Quietly, she wades in until the narrow of that delicate blue chest is submerged, until her skin is damp and dark as the night around her. With a smile, small and slight, etched like shadow into the pale of a velvet mouth, she lets loose the light that hums beneath her skin, pushing out pinpricks of bright no bigger than fireflies so that they swim in the water around her.
They swim in wide circles, around her and beside her, behind her – and she notices him finally, that dark silhouette nestled in the sand near where she had entered the lake. With a gasp she goes invisible, hidden by the dark and in the dark, no more than a reflection of the shadows that pooled between them. It is useless, really, because the lights still swim between them and water still bounces and ripples away from her body to mark where she stands. As soon as she realizes this she returns from the shadow, no longer hidden, but decidedly bashful. “You surprised me.” She tells him softly, in a voice like starlight, silver and sweet. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t asked. “I didn’t realize anyone was here.” She drifts a few steps closer, uncertain, and that dark mane spills around the delicate hollows of a dark and white face. Her lights swim toward him, slow and lazy like fish meandering beneath the surface, and then gather to pool between them until the night is hazy with a strange and soft twilight. “I am Luster,” starlight, again, and this time it even reaches the gleaming of those dark, solemn eyes, "who are you?"