isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She thinks she is getting better at blending in. It’s becoming easier to smile when she is supposed to, because she has learned they usually smile at the beginning of a conversation. It makes them appear friendlier, she supposes, though she still frequently forgets. Her smiles were different anyway, all mechanical and thin — more like a concept of what a smile should be, without actually being one. The action did nothing to soften or brighten the starless-dark of her eyes, but she offers the girl a thin smile anyway.
“Intuition,” she says, because she has learned now to not ignore that magnetic pull that others with an affinity for the stars always had; she has learned that when something draws her towards a stranger that there is likely a reason.
She asks her if she was a star, and Islas is unsure how to answer. Is she still considered a star? Is she still considered a star even though she is trapped in this equine form, even though she cannot return to the sky?
“I was a star,” is her plain answer, looking up to the night sky above thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I still am.” She pulls a few tendrils of light from the starlight above, spinning them into ribbons that spiral towards the ground, where they take the shape of small birds that flutter their illuminated wings around the girl’s head. “I’ve been back once,” she answers, letting the birds fade away into the night. “But not on my own. I can’t get back either, no matter much the stars speak to me.” Ten, had been his name. He was the only reason she had been back, though it had been brief. She knows the man considered her father could help, too, but too often she wonders if he is the reason she was trapped here to begin with.
“Islas,” she says when she asks her name, turning her dark eyes back to her. “That’s what my mother named me, at least. I don’t really remember much from being a star. I don’t think we needed names up there.”
@[Shipka]