MABEL
The cosmic dance of the bees grounded her, far more so than the blades of grass beneath her bare feet, or the rocks giving way to the small ripples and pulses of the Oasis. She kept the panic in her gut, where it ravaged and savaged and contorted into some toiling, anxious multitude, and away from her features – that yearned and longed to grimace. Her limbs began to backpedal, a flight mode activated, until there were more shadows passing over and she had to look, had to know, had to see what was going on –
Not a threat, in the way the water was. Henry, conforming from the eagle motions (the very one she’d taken, greedily, from him a season ago), and she stilled. Spine ramrod straight, held together by very little except pride and mutiny, and he was quiet, too quiet, eerily so, and Mabel didn’t know what to make of it.
Or the words that flickered and followed through. Her fingers played on the edges of her shirt hem for a moment, as if to give them something to do rather than bolt like the rest of her craved; and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you surprised?” She had been in some way. Shocked they’d made it at all. Stunned when her arrow had slipped into monsters. Bewildered when the everything had come crashing down around them.
Glad? He was glad?
Her face must’ve formed the perfect air of confusion, and she backed further away from the embankments, until she could sit upon a rock and not be so obviously reaching for a retreat. Unaware of the loss hovering over him, of how he’d been altered and changed, the youth swallowed down a length of bile. “How was your LongNight?”
Not a threat, in the way the water was. Henry, conforming from the eagle motions (the very one she’d taken, greedily, from him a season ago), and she stilled. Spine ramrod straight, held together by very little except pride and mutiny, and he was quiet, too quiet, eerily so, and Mabel didn’t know what to make of it.
Or the words that flickered and followed through. Her fingers played on the edges of her shirt hem for a moment, as if to give them something to do rather than bolt like the rest of her craved; and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you surprised?” She had been in some way. Shocked they’d made it at all. Stunned when her arrow had slipped into monsters. Bewildered when the everything had come crashing down around them.
Glad? He was glad?
Her face must’ve formed the perfect air of confusion, and she backed further away from the embankments, until she could sit upon a rock and not be so obviously reaching for a retreat. Unaware of the loss hovering over him, of how he’d been altered and changed, the youth swallowed down a length of bile. “How was your LongNight?”
Let's go to war to make peace
Let's be cold to create heat
Let's be cold to create heat
