she’s got jumper cable lips
she’s got sunset on her breath. now i inhaled just a little bit, now i’ve got no fear of death
Wishbone had never prayed for the life of a queen. While most children participated in those young games of queens and kings and soldiers and villains, the girl had found herself sneaking off to dance with the humpback whales and snort bubbles at the sea otters and climb the volcano’s stern face. She had played as pirates and nimble explorers, as thieves and soft nymphs of the night, as a constellation-goddess and a shadow crafted by Khaedrik himself. Her dreams were never aimed toward the rise of power but rather the rise of adventure that spilled into the glow of her life.
Yet now she finds herself suddenly in the position most children lust after. She will begin the delicate chess game of politics, of moving the knights and pawns with a flick of her slender fingers, and her hands will certainly long after the roughness of the rope, her ears to lust for the scream of the wind miles above ground. Wishbone isn’t sure what to expect of her queenship, but perhaps it will be a place she thrives in (to play the game of politics and retire to the seas and skies once her turn has been finished) or perhaps it will be a place she dies in (to feel the crown force her neck lower until all she sees is the bloodshed of life and the terrible mountain of her failures).
Nonetheless, these thoughts flee her mind when Khaedrik follows her with the quickness of a shadow-dweller. There are not as many trees to wind between as there are in the wild forests of Beqanna, yet he moves as easily across the terrain as if he has been born into it. Khaedrik surprises her every time they meet. He stops shy of the depths of the water and Wishbone can’t imagine why.
Yet his craftsmanship is spinning through the sea, causing ripples to blossom upon the surface while she stands amid them. A dolphin erupts from the waves, dark as night yet friendly as the species has always been, and Wishbone laughs with that charismatic threat lingering at the edge of her throat. She does as the shadow-dolphin gestures, surprised to see Khaedrik now drifting closer atop his own construction.
He is spiraling around her and a dark sentence falls from his mouth with a smile on his lips. “The ocean loves me,” she laughs and her nose dips below the surface to sprinkle hazy-morning droplets in his direction. Perhaps they land, perhaps they do not — the underlying threat of playfulness lingers still. “And your dolphins seem to enjoy it just as much.” Wishbone slides from the back of her own creature and she finds that they have drifted far enough for her legs to meet only sea below. The sand is too low for her feet to find purchase, but the mahogany has been swimming for too long to feel fear.
In fact, she dives below the water for a moment, enjoying the lull of ocean-silence kiss her ears. The low song of a whale sings as Wishbone resurfaces, the entanglement of her mane clinging to the lithe muscle of her neck and shoulders. “You look” — delicious — “handsome.” It slips out (husky and low in her throat, burning like dragon-fire and smoking like a cigarette) before she catch it. Even if she had the chance to reach out and catch the words, she would watch them sneak past.
Her amber eyes lean into his delighted shadowed gaze.
wishbone
@[Khaedrik]