Look into those blue eyes and you will see a sky, void of clouds and wind. Stare into those blue eyes long enough though and the sky will be forgotten, and an ocean will stand in its place, ready to drag you under, to fill your lungs and pull the strength from your body. What you will not find is any red string running across him. Fate has tried to bind him before, and fate had failed. What would his mother think now? Praying to the old gods and the new, praying to the fates, to the ancestors? Does his mother hold that red string in her hands?
No.
It is woven through her hair like the white lilies on her wedding day.
She’s beautiful, an arched neck, nostrils flared. He thinks he saw a girl like this once in one of Elliana’s paintings. His sister’s artwork always created the most stunning of images, raw emotions, vibrant expressions. They harbored all of the beauty that true life lacked, or was so fleeting no one ever got to see it. Not truly.
And then the beauty, the painting, his sister, it is forgotten in the motion of spidery limbs and boyish grins. “You can bring your puppy,” he says as if the encouragement is needed. “How do you know that?” He asks, challenges with all the bravery of his mother, but the smile he wears is entirely his father’s, open, soft, bright, much like the star his father was shed from. “My dad is a star,” he says because its true, James knows his culture well enough, knows his history. “And he is out all the time.” Always. He tucks dark ears backwards in a mess of awkward black hair with uncertainty. “Maybe you just never looked hard enough.”
Maybe fate has a greater sway for a young boy than previously thought.
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
image by Gary Bendig
@[neuna]