04-22-2017, 10:09 PM
Polaris
There is nothing remarkable about the dawn that finds her, nothing new about a sky enameled blue and pink, about a golden sun that sits heavy and impatient just below the horizon. The trees are as they have always been, tall and knotted and gnarled, a hundred sentinels gathered to a place that not even the Reckoning had managed to change. Maybe it is their spindled, reaching branches pushed aloft to hold the pieces of sky and cloud together, or the tangle of roots below that wrap like bony fingers around the heart of this quiet place. But it is safe and untouched, so same, so quiet, so ordinary when the watery yellow light kisses her small shoulders and she stirs with a soft oh of sound.
She is curled in the u-shape of roots beneath a particularly large old tree, sleeping with her back against the trunk and an impossibly delicate head resting on outstretched forelegs the color of bright gems. In the fingers of dawn that stretch across such strange skin, she is gleaming and beautiful, the reflection of morning in a bead of pooling dew. There are trees there, in that translucent teal, branches and leaves and birds and clouds, a mirror of the world around her in shades of blue-green while they are trapped inside her. She doesn’t notice though, doesn’t realize that that her skin should be soft and warm and supple, that it shouldn’t hurt to lay crumpled like this, that it should be of flesh and blood instead of this cold, twinkling glass.
She only knows the cold and the quiet and the hunger in her belly.
When she wakes to find just the shape of her sparkling shadow beside her, there is a whisper of worry that tangles in her stomach, an instinct that hums in such delicate, curving ears, this is wrong, this is wrong. There should be a mother curled beside her, milk damp around her mouth and on her whiskers. But there is only nothing, only no one. She jerks upwards and her legs slap together, up against her belly, and the still-soft glass groans and fissures and scolds her angrily. The shock of pain stills her, confines her, and she freezes soundlessly, wide-eyed and wounded in the growing light.
She waits a few seconds, waits until something long and narrow and fuzzy inches slowly over her foreleg and disappears into the nearest leaves, and then she moves again. So slowly this time, drawing trembling legs beneath her, she is up and standing and trying to curl against the tree for strength, for comfort – though there is none to find. An instinct tightens in her throat, forces a sound from her lips that is as sad and lonely as a sky full of stars, distant and beautiful and untouchable like her. It is not quite a word, not quite a voice. It is the quiet, confused keening of an impossible girl.
Stubbornly, or maybe just foolishly, she pushes away from the tree with the sound of a dozen chiming bells, of dropped porcelain and shattered ice. Already she is more graceful than she should be, so cautious and so deliberate, made careful by the lesson of pain. It is only when her hoof catches on a root and she stumbles forward that stops again, frozen and trembling, amber eyes wide and sad and dark with confusion.
She is curled in the u-shape of roots beneath a particularly large old tree, sleeping with her back against the trunk and an impossibly delicate head resting on outstretched forelegs the color of bright gems. In the fingers of dawn that stretch across such strange skin, she is gleaming and beautiful, the reflection of morning in a bead of pooling dew. There are trees there, in that translucent teal, branches and leaves and birds and clouds, a mirror of the world around her in shades of blue-green while they are trapped inside her. She doesn’t notice though, doesn’t realize that that her skin should be soft and warm and supple, that it shouldn’t hurt to lay crumpled like this, that it should be of flesh and blood instead of this cold, twinkling glass.
She only knows the cold and the quiet and the hunger in her belly.
When she wakes to find just the shape of her sparkling shadow beside her, there is a whisper of worry that tangles in her stomach, an instinct that hums in such delicate, curving ears, this is wrong, this is wrong. There should be a mother curled beside her, milk damp around her mouth and on her whiskers. But there is only nothing, only no one. She jerks upwards and her legs slap together, up against her belly, and the still-soft glass groans and fissures and scolds her angrily. The shock of pain stills her, confines her, and she freezes soundlessly, wide-eyed and wounded in the growing light.
She waits a few seconds, waits until something long and narrow and fuzzy inches slowly over her foreleg and disappears into the nearest leaves, and then she moves again. So slowly this time, drawing trembling legs beneath her, she is up and standing and trying to curl against the tree for strength, for comfort – though there is none to find. An instinct tightens in her throat, forces a sound from her lips that is as sad and lonely as a sky full of stars, distant and beautiful and untouchable like her. It is not quite a word, not quite a voice. It is the quiet, confused keening of an impossible girl.
Stubbornly, or maybe just foolishly, she pushes away from the tree with the sound of a dozen chiming bells, of dropped porcelain and shattered ice. Already she is more graceful than she should be, so cautious and so deliberate, made careful by the lesson of pain. It is only when her hoof catches on a root and she stumbles forward that stops again, frozen and trembling, amber eyes wide and sad and dark with confusion.
though i never needed any proof to trust the heart that beats inside of you