Posted by astarte on June 16, 2008, 3:04 am, in reply to "nam-tor wak yon svi-if yontau au ; thread" Yehl turns away, and Astarte knows. Far away, in a desert distant in space and time (and itself shattered into ruin, she knows; too long had she longed for that desert, and her home, now that it was scattered into stardust), she too was a changeling – restless with that royal blood that burned in her veins, burned for desert sands and desert sun and desert iniquity. Oh, she remembers that fear, where her life rested on the snake-hissed secret of her name, and her blood! She casts that aside, and whispers, in a voice hushed to Yehl’s back-bared torment, tenderly and perhaps a little brokenly: “I know you, mare, and you -” you, she thinks achingly, before the bitterness can leach into her voice as she breaks the silence between them, of commingling fur and breath and comfort, “I will not betray. Raven.” Yehl. She comes again into the night, bathed in that ephemeral starlight and ethereal; she smells of Reef-salt and milk, and for that sanctity, she cannot stay. Nevertheless, Astarte seeks her out, somehow knowing (as the leaves know when they are eaten, and the earth knows when it is wind-shifted, and the stars know when they pulse and shine that much louder) that Yehl would come, at the call of earth and tree and wind and that inevitable starsong. They do, indeed, sing: they sing of majesties unrealised and the naïveté of a mare’s awed gaze, so innocent, so unknowing – arching, as they did, so gloriously above in a night dark and deep and daring. Something in Astarte croons with them, but this night is not for her. She finds Yehl, touches her shoulder, and whispers her name – real, and tangible, a secret between them. Yehl is no raven to alight on carrion-carcase, glossy and beautiful regardless, and Astarte will not call her that when only the stars are alive to hear them. Her voice carries like star-croon, so suddenly it surprises Astarte herself: something is within it, something loamy and pure and textured like the earth, and she knows what this is. “Yehl – find yourself. Trust alike, and know trust. Tell someone who you are.” Something changes in the night, some star-innocence breaks, and ever so briefly does Astarte grieve.
129.78.64.102
Yehl, Raven – Astarte knows your name. It is not a shocking thing, nor a frightening one; she knew it from the moment they had met, from the whispers of the earth, and that simple truth had quieted her own thoughts. They intertwine as if inseparable, curled like the very forces between them (opposite and of such magnitude to be tangible, vibrating, keening), Astarte fox-red and Yehl raven-dark. Astarte gathers Yehl to her slim chest and breathes the fear away, taking that strange and undeniable essence into herself; she exhales it as if their blood and breath and fear were one (and deep within her, Astarte knows her fear for her own, and snatches at it – the comforting solace of familiar fear, of an identity stolen and harboured close! Oh, does Astarte know that fear, of losing one’s self to that dark and comforting beyond, and cherishing it). The sun sinks and hides Yehl from sight, mercifully, but Astarte keeps her close until their heartbeats merge in maternal phase and the moon begins to shine headily upon them (and those stars, fording the void between the dark, shine alike in splendour – Astarte raises her head to it, briefly, and breathes their song as well, rising and falling with cloud-shift and moonshine); the night is quiet.
time is the fire
in which we burn
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