11-12-2017, 10:36 PM
to make something beautiful should be enough;
Hadn’t some part of her known?
A tie, the memory of a heartbeat that matched her own (like music, there in the womb of a death queen, two strange lives begotten in a kingdom and grown among ghosts). She thinks of her often, as she flickers between lands (she doesn’t touch the kingdoms – they are too solid, they stink of commitment). She meets a horse who is bleeding and she thinks of her, achingly so, and her healing touch. Vael could have helped that horse. Salt only walked on.
Salt struggles to fall in love with anywhere. She doesn’t mind these places, the crashing river or the quiet shadow-places in the forest. They are alive and sweet and she feels an imposter, walking amongst them, wishing she were a ghost.
It is fortune, or fate, or simply the unexplainable tie forged between them that leads Salt down this particular path on this particular day, admiring the softness of the light in the trees. One place in particular almost glows, and Salt thinks again of her, of her haunting coat, like will -o’—the-wisps, fairy lights leading her astray.
She follows the light, and maybe her eyes place tricks on her, because there is a beautiful woman, glowing softly in the trees, and it’s a face Salt knows, it’s one that mirrors her own.
“Vael?” she says, and disbelief spackles her voice, “is that...?”
I’m dreaming, she thinks, surely, I’m dreaming.
salt