Desreal: wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight; --

Running in the dark, sometimes –

It was dawn when she rose to her feet from a nest of brambles and thorns she couldn’t remember. There was blood in her still – of course there was – and memories sliding like eels in the back of her mind; of his lips, of his touch, of things that couldn’t and shouldn’t be. They flamed, sparked to life, coiled in her throat and her eyes and made her want to cry from the sweetness – the emptiness, the madness – of it.

But she had never cried in her life, not even when her brother died, and she would not cry now.

Instead, she drew the forlorn thoughts from her mind, watching the sunrise as she moved through the woods like a ghost, as if she’d break apart and billow away anytime. It would be interesting, she thought, to simply unravel and vanish into the air, like her father did. But she was not her father, and she was not her – and yet…

No. Some things couldn’t be.

You have no time for this, the winds said, and she smiled at them, as they were right. There would always be the winds; they, not mortals, were her spirit, friend, lover. You know why you had to come here in the first place, don’t you?

Yes, I do.

And reality, as it is wont to do, drew itself up and around her, as she shook the rest of the languid exhaustion from her limbs, and went on through the woods.

*
grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.