Isra and the winter tale “It was magical, this snow globe world.”
T
he snow is falling like pale stars around them and Isra is wishing on every single one. She's wishing for the spring, for trees to bloom heavy with fruit and the meadows thick with wheat. When the storm gets thicker and the wind howls Isra is still there wishing on flakes of snow that are as varied as all the citizens of Denocote.
She turns to look at Illu and thinks that she could drown herself in wishes for every soul in her care. In her bones her heart trembles each time she remembers soot and fire. It cracks each time she thinks of how the girl looked upon the shore once. Isra's still trying to force all the tattered shreds of herself into some pattern that still feels like it belongs in the skin of a unicorn.
But when she looks at the shadow of Fable's wing draped over their heads like a shield from the snow, and the way Illu's eyes reflect a near by bonfire, something aligns. It feels a little easier to feel like Isra the queen, instead of Isra the weapon or Isra the missing. And it's easier than that to feel like Isra the mother.
The winter feels sweet on her tongue when she smiles. “Do you know why it snows?” Her eyes dance like the sea in the summer. The question in her voice is a promise of the thing that has aligned inside her. When she looks out from the canopy of Fable's wind she can seen things dancing in the snow. Small dragons are singing old songs in the flurries. Smoke is twining between all of it like a flock of snow-snakes guarding all the secrets of the flames and the snowflakes.
There is a story on her lips and this time, there is no sadness if the world to leech it out from like drops of unwilling blood. It's humming at the back of her teeth like the winter wind humming through their manes and tails. The story wants life and Isra wants to give in to every demand.
Fable drops his head down to his child and his unicorn, because like all dragons he is always longing for another legend to make him feel a little less like the only one left.
Yes. I knew exactly why it snowed and even how it came to be. However, what I did not understand was the sense of wonder it inspired within me as I stood there on shivering legs, ears tipping back and forth as the crystals fell around us. The expression upon Isra's face is strangely sweet for such a cold moment in time and I am curious as Fable's wing shifted minutely across our heads. To think it had only been a scant couple weeks since that afternoon on the beach. Terminus. That is what Isra called it, or at least the sea it called to. Back on the warm sands one could hardly have known that this World was ensconced in its yearly Winter, a season which was entirely alien to me. Of course the chilly times afflicted other lands, places I could only ever dream of visiting; though not the warm, dewy valleys of Vaalclary. I wrinkled my nose, a motion that was quickly becoming a habit, and sneezed. "No," I lie, turning bright eyes to the seal brown mare stood at my side. "Why does it snow?" I ask quietly, always quiet. Especially now as the green grass of my homelands filled my head.
I missed home, so very much. In our travels from Terminus to Denocte-the name yet tasted strange upon my tonuge-Isra had entertained me to the best of her ability. Explaining the different territories we crossed through on our journey, and even quelling the fears I held over the massive reptile she called a 'Dragon'. I have never seen a 'Dragon' before though I have seen many things. Harsh things, horrible things, bloody things. Beautiful things. But not like Fable. Fable was uniquely his own and equally beautiful. I admired, even now, how the scales that make up his skin seem to glisten like precious gems in even the smallest of light. He was a gentle soul, Fable, always nearby and prepared to leap should his mistress demand it. His goodness resonated with the fluttering of my heart and I could not help a small upturn of my lips just then.
ooc; @Isra .___. Fable
05-16-2019, 11:30 PM - This post was last modified: 06-02-2019, 11:13 AM by Illu
Isra and the diamond snowflakes “Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,”
E
verything in her settles like the snow collecting on the dragon wing above their head. She's a pile words and each is a snowflake, a pit of winter-white ink, that shines crystal bright in the golden glow of her heart. She's winter, she's a birch tree coated in ice, she's a spire of an a sleeping oak in a forest of pines. Isra wants to howl like a wolf under a solstice moon-bright night.
And when she brushes her nose across Illu's delicate brow, and begins her story, there is a heaviness in her words that promises all the musk and forest wonder of a wolf den full with slumbering young. “When the earth was young and the sky was nothing more than a stretch of blue, each of them spent their hours looking at the other. The sky fell in love with the earth. He loved her for her elegant throat of mountain-stone, for her skin of green grass in which deer looked like freckles as they slumbered under his sun.” Under her skin her heart surges with joy to be full of a story instead of a war. Here beneath snow and dragon wing, with the wind howling like a pack of euphoric wolves, Isra feels like she used to.
It feels like dreaming, like the snow is taking all her wishes and sending them back to the sky where the terrible gods might be listening. She almost had forgotten how her chest felt when peace and love lasted for longer than a stolen second.
Isra inhales, and begins again. The snow is falling harder now and her breath curls out from between her lips like sea-salted smoke. “And the earth loved the sky with his blue endlessness that kept all her freckles, and her sea, tinged golden and glowing. They each wanted to give each other a token of the love in their cores. So the sky took from space a bit of coldness and from the sea a bit of mist, and he made with it snow. He draped it over the earth's mountain-stone neck like a ring of pearls. The entire universe could see how much she loved it, because she asked for more and more snow to share with all the creatures that called her home.” Isra laughs on an exhale when Fable tips his wing until all the snow gathering there falls like love once fell from the sky to the earth. She understands what he means, even if his words, still young and fresh from sorrow, cannot form the words between them.
She looks at Illu, and hopes that the girl will understand too. Even if all they had was snow falling around and wind looking to cool their skin, it would be enough. She inhales the smell of smoke and winter hanging on the foal's shoulder. She smiles and her eyes shine with all the depth and endless of the sea that made them.
“What do you think the earth gave back to the sky?” She asks, because there is nothing that kept her innocence unbroken the way a good story did. If nothing else she wanted to teach Illu the strength to be found in wonder, and magic, and in snow caught on the pine trees.
Stories, the stepping stones between reality and memory, and perhaps a small touch of fantasy. As with this particular story. Though despite the lack of science, it was yet a spellbinding tale. I looked up at Isra as she spoke, weaving an image into my mind with an artful twist of her words. Her eyes were warm, shimmering a dark velvet blue under the light of the flickering street lanterns. I hold still as she lowers her maw to my brow, allowing her this small moment of contact for whatever needs she might have had. There had been a lot of her brushing her face across mine since the beach, she seemed to have thrown herself body and soul into the part of Mother. But I could not deny that every time she touched me, a part of me wanted to lash out, yelling and kicking that she was not my Mother and had no right to pretend like she was. I did not, though, and the other half of me wondered why. Perhaps it was discipline, for Amalie had been thorough and just in her teachings of calm and patience. Or maybe it was was shock, fear? No, Isra would never deign to use fear as a tool.
Fable shifted, drawing my attention from my thoughts as he dipped his wing at just the right angle that the snow layered upon it shuffled down. I had to step closer to the brown mare's side to avoid getting a helping on my rump, but I was not angry. I smiled up at the dragon, momentarily drowning out Isra's lustrous story-telling in lieu of admiring the dragon's bright scales. I do not know how much time passed but all at once I realized that someone was asking me a question. That familiar tugging at the back of my mind that said my wandering eyes had been noticed. It was so dreadfully reminiscent of my time with Amalie that I almost did not look, struggling to turn my head around to acknowledge the mare whose focus was now entirely on me. Yet turn I did, suddenly aware of how hard it was to make my bones move while I fought mind and body. I could feel the grinding of my spine, even as I played the part of the sheepish pupil, the thundering of my heard in the shell of my ear as memories came and went with dizzying speed. "What do you think the Earth gave back to the Sky?" She asked, that deep, bottomless gaze immovable, expecting. Did she see through my mask? I wondered then. Did she know what I was thinking? Could she read my mind? I certainly hoped not, for although my heart ached and I wanted to cry, I did not know if I could bear making her cry too.
"Ah, uhm..." I mumbled, glancing around thinking maybe the snow-covered pavilion might give me the answer. "If the Sky gave her snow... than maybe she gave him... uhm." Except it would appear as if the nearly empty market-place was just as clueless as I was. "I don't know. She already gave him the sea. Maybe she gave him his reflection?" I finally sighed, making a guess and being simultaneously disappointed that I did not have a more suitable answer.
Isra and a lake of glass “until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.””
I
sra can see each of the thoughts churning behind Illu's wayward eyes. Each stray look towards the snow dusted streets makes something more than a smile bloom deep in her soul. The way her dragon and her adopted child look at each other is ripe with fledgling adoration and a promise that in a year Isra will be exhausted from tracking them down. She does not think she will mind too terribly; how could she lament anything that makes Illu smile?
“You're right. His reflection was one of the gifts the Earth gave to him.” Maybe it's the way the filly looks so disappointed and uneasy that makes Isra's magic ripple like a river in her blood. Or maybe it's always a dull roar in her chest that has become as automatic as her heartbeat. It explodes from her like rain, running down her legs and her spine. It turns all the snow to glass, a black sea that reflects Isra, Fable, Illu and the thickly falling snow.
She wonders if Illu will see it as a gift, or as nothing more than another fragment of life that's made of sharp edges.
“She gave him flowers that bloomed only for his golden light and trees that grew tall enough to make it seem as if they weren't very far apart at all.” Bits of glass turn to flowers and some of the arches of marble around them turn to might pines and oaks. Everything her magic makes reaches up towards Fable and the moon hiding beneath the snowfall. And it's for love that she makes things (in that way Isra is more like the earth than the sea).
Fable lowers his head and plucks a mouthful of flower from the meadow of black, liquid glass. He twists his neck under his wing and drops them at the hooves of his unicorn and his filly. A low hum vibrates in his throat. All the scales on his neck moves like water with the sound.
Isra smiles, and brushes her nose against her dragon's shoulder. When she looks back towards Illu all that love, and joy is still a dull flame in her ocean eyes. “This world was made for love. Every tree, every inch of snow, every flower sleeping beneath the winter frost... all of it surrounds us because the sky dared to love the earth and she loved him back.” And love is the only religion, the only science that Isra needs now.
Love is the only thing keeping her from razing the world clean to root out a monster.
