There it is again, that gravity — the one that steals the air out of her lungs and leaves them shrivelled, flat and empty. The gravity that compresses her ears with such a colossal pressure that the words Cordis speaks out to her then, the ones about being found, they’re lost the second that they leave her lonely lips.
It happens almost instantaneously.
Of course it does, because if there is anything of Spyndle at all that lingers, caged by her bones, it is destined to be bound by all of those same laws she knew while she was alive, isn’t it? Those laws that were etched into ancient stone tablets and read that the cycle could not end, that they must find each other again and again and again even if they are both torn to pieces and with worlds between them. Those laws that were older than time.
“You seem different,” Cordis says.
She hears her this time, and gently nods her agreement while her body screams at her to close the gap between them. Not feeling the illness slinking through her veins, not noticing the way her body changes (is it the gentle wave of pale gold scales? — no, just a beautiful trick of the light), revolting against its previous shape, she is left only to assume that Cordis sees the newly burning fire lit inside her bones; the resolve that she carries with her now after waking that day among the wildflowers. She’s seen the magic that Cordis wields in her memories, knows that she is electric, that she can do strange and wonderful things through the strikes of lightning, but she doesn’t know the extent of it — that Cordis now is seeing past resolve in these moments, even if she doesn’t know it.
It isn’t, though — resolve.
It’s much bigger than that.
“I am, I think.” Comes the answer — naive, stupid, because she doesn’t know, not really. They are standing together, not realizing that a clock has been started; their lives are ticking down second-by-second and grain-by-grain. And it takes her so quickly, this sickness, though she bolsters her defences and her white blood cells are barbed and armoured they are no match for this contagion; they are led to slaughter. She is a dragon, but she is led to death’s door like a wide-eyed lamb as a slow, drop of violent red rolls out from under the rim of her nostril and down her lip.
She only realizes when she tastes the iron of it, but naive, stupid, she doesn’t know what it means and continues.
“I want to help you. I want to give you back what was taken from you, even in this small way.”
That’s what she says. What she means is that she doesn’t want to see Cordis drowning. What she means is that she can’t bear to hear her hearts breaking into halves. What she means is that she wants her to have closure, if that’s what this is.
Because she’s seen the memories, known them when they were only little wild-things with possibility tangled and knotted like galaxies and constellations in the darkest parts of their eyes. And she knows them now, sees one of them at least before her now, with the stars stolen — empty, vacuous, black.
And in some small way, perhaps it will give her closure, too.
“Tell me about her, please.”
“If you can.”
She says these last words softly, with a gentleness to her face that shouldn’t exist. There is so much violence in her now, between the sickness and the hardened barbs just begging to rip open the skin of her spine and see the daylight, that it is a wonder she can look so soft at all.
Glassheart
i'll always love you the most
@[Cordis]