so we let our shadows fall away like dust
Luster, he croons with his lips against her throat, and at this she can smile, small and thin and shadowed, I’m sorry to hear this. I’d hoped to be wrong. His mouth has travelled up to her ear by the time he is done speaking, ending with a kiss that she quietly leans into, and she wonders silently if he can taste her surprise. It is not like when Stillwater touches her, not that molten fire she has come to expect. It is, strangely, something gentler, maybe made so by the distance between them, by the lack of want that flutters in her chest for this man. Still, that smile deepens for him, only him, and she is soft when she curls beneath his neck to find comfort in the heat of his chest – soft, too, when his mouth tastes the shape of her spine and the hollow curve of each vertebrae.
She is not ready for his words though, even soft and buried in the easy bliss of his attention, not ready for the name on his lips or an introduction she had imagined a thousand times but never once like this. “Heartfire?” She repeats and she is emptier, quieter than an echo. “My Heartfire?” She asks again, as if he would have any idea what it is she is asking, any idea which thought she follows like a vein back to her heart. It is the name that belongs to her sister and, though she knows there could be many and each one a stranger, it is impossible to look into that blue face and not see the reflection of something she thinks she knows, if only in her core, if only by instinct.
For a moment she is distracted by his lips against her cheek, soft and imploring, by the kiss he traces across the blue like stars in the gleaming dark. But the low warning of Heartfire’s voice calls Luster back from the quiet and into the present where the world tries, once again, to wound her. He would be far safer without you next to him, Luster. There is no time to react before the grass shudders and breaks apart, dust and dead beneath their quiet hooves. When her bruised eyes drop, startled, round and brown and beautiful, it is only to find a circle of bare dirt, ruined earth, and her jaw hardens reflexively. The threat is impossible to miss.
But –
She finds she does not move, cannot move, leans deeper into the embrace of that bone and black chest even as her eyes narrow dangerously against such familiar blue. A blue she longs to fall against. Instead she pulls light from the sun, from the sky, drenches both she and Dovev in it until it gleams from the surface of their skin like they are dark gems. She is still new at this, but she finds that balance between nothingness and tangibility, creating a membrane like soft rubber to coat them both. It would do nothing against whatever had happened to the grass, such instant death, but it would guard against lesser things.
Her eyes are still narrowed and sharp when the green stallion murmurs his pleasure to Heartfire, apparently impressed with the destruction she had caused so effortlessly. It makes her wonder at them both, at the dark in the woman who must be her sister, at the dark in the man who seems so intrigued by her, so comfortable with her. But then he moves, that strange green man, shifts closer, and as he does the green seems to bleed from him, fading until it is only a small star on a forehead that is otherwise grey and dappled. Luster, come now. How could you mistake me? She is furious at once, seething and hurt, though she buries it deep and hides it well, hardening like a blade against Dovev’s dark chest.
“Snake, then.” She says, barbed and beautiful, watching him with eyes as hard and sharp as stones as she slips out from beneath Dovev’s neck just a few easy steps. “I think you’re more of a Snake.” It doesn’t bother her that Heartfire and Dovev will not understand, that they weren’t there the day this man had appeared to her as a soft grey woman, warm and friendly, asking Luster to guess her name. Then, turning to Heartfire with eyes that flash dangerously, “You keep interesting company, sister.”
But she is drawn away again by a voice that is low and, perhaps, as dangerous as she feels, wild in the wake of so much hurt, carved sharp and wicked by the teeth of so many lies. And you. The man says, and she only needs to see his eyes settle on Dovev for the swelling of sudden, thick shadow to pool beneath all of them. Have you lost your teeth, or perhaps your tongue, that you would shield yourself so pathetically behind a young mare for protection? She is silent when she slips back beneath Dovev, silent even when that smile appears in the pale velvet of such delicate lips. Be careful about your answer, she settles under his nose, sinuous and beautiful, or I might be inclined to take both from your mouth by force.
She curves silently beneath those dark lips, twisting to leave a kiss against the curve of that mouth again. Then, with eyes that flash and sharpen against a treacherous grey and green face, her smile widens, amused. “I wish you wouldn’t, I so enjoy both of those things.”
