AMALIA
THE SHIELD OF SAFRIN
i think it's beautiful how a star's light
Wings, tan against a bright blue sky, specked with cream and midnight blue and a sparkling spread of stars. She glides upon their broad expanse, letting the gusts of warm air lift her, shielding against the onset of cold with feather and a swiftly beating heart.travels the universe long after it dies
She does this when she can do nothing else, when the world feels far too vast and the girl too small, too meaningless. When if she stays herself she will crumble, crushed beneath the pressing weight of an unfathomably expansive world, of sins and stories and failings, falling, failings, more and more the more she tries, two steps forward only to be knocked down.
On the days it is too hard to be Amalia, the girl becomes something else. Sometimes, most days, it is the leopard: fierce and feral, strong and cunning, a beast of instinct and feline grace. In that skin she is fearless, wild, playful and brave; she does not think before she acts but lives to every fullest point, enjoys each moment and fights each war.
Today, it is the owl. She feels her mother in the owl, for it is a wise form, aloof and silent in the starlit skies. Easily, eagerly, it slips between the boughs, less shadow than flash of silver light, calm and cool and pointed. It is the form she takes to clear her head, to see the world in a cleaner light. Clarity is what she needs today: underneath the weight of failure and futility, the looming blight and crumbling Spire, she is spiraling, flailing, drowning in the depths, in danger of becoming little more than a ghost.
But the owl is strong and stalwart and true, and she wears the wings with resolution, a promise to deserve. In her wake and at her side, a cosmic whale flies along, singing and cooing and soothing and believing, still rather unaccustomed to human despair. Over time Amalia has come to learn that Jyoti is infinitely older than she; and yet the humpback is scarcely an infant, each year a drop in the pool of her life. It gives the baker some forced perspective, reminds her that in the end each moment will lead to a million more.
That all they can do is do their best, despite the pressures of the world.
So she muses and so she mulls as she flutters beneath the boughs of trees, wafting like an autumn zephyr through fiery leaves and copper canopies. It is Jyoti who spots the pair, familiar and welcome like a furnace in the cold. She calls out in a low, keen voice, singing softly the song of her kind, a hummed concerto of joyful youth. The starwhale drops down to greet Deimos, swimming lightly about his head three times before flickering off to hunt down Zuriel, starlight shimmering in her wake.
Amalia, too, has seen her lover, though her approach is a quieter thing. Silent and swift the owl descends, dropping just above his head (close enough to notice, wanting to be seen, but not to be captured, not yet, not yet,) before landing in the clearing before him, her back to him as her feet touch the ground. Clad in white and green and brown she is an earthen creature, her long gold hair loose about her shoulders, red scarf tied tight about her neck. "Tell me a story, Mr. Shade?"- and she turns her head to glance back at him, dark eyes sparkling, fondness ringing through her voice. Do you remember? her face seems to say, a small, sad smile tugging at her lips. Do you remember luxere and songs, simpler times when the world made sense?
That's what I want to be in this world —
someone whose light lingers after I'm gone
