Bind the Sun

[Rekah Illyriana]

She emerged from the fires of Beltane a scorched, seared false Phoenix. There were no ashes she stepped from. She left behind the festival and followed old pathways, old footsteps that no longer held the same warmth they once did. The festival itself was always bittersweet for her. It held nightmares. She locked them away. It held dreamscapes. She locked those away now too.

One foot in front of the other the red clay cracking and flaking off with each and every step. A fire thrown ghost for this day of spring and fertility. She pulled in a deep breath of night air. Crisp and cool. It filled her lungs and she felt empty. She lived half a life, watching from the shadows, the cupboards, the knots in the trees, the doorways, always there. But, just there. She had made her peace and said her goodbyes to that fairytale. That Once Upon a Time, Ever after.

The ocean sang its siren’s song. It pulled her home to the rocky shoals. Memories of Jasper flitted through. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes willing the memories to go away. She had watched people in love. Holding hands, secret kisses, the gentle stroke of a thumb across the base of the neck. A smile into a mess of curls. A kiss to the corner of grin. She watched them all. The smile she sewed on her face was easy. Buttons and thread it kept her together inside and out.

It was there that she stood naked at the water’s edge. The water curling at her ankles. It was something she could feel. The pull of the riptides, the caress of the waves. She could feel them.

She welcomed the Greek fire that sparked around her. That chaotic magic that held her together exploded in the night. The iridescent blue and white flames rippled across the surface of the water. She dove headfirst into the flames and black water.

The midnight sky held nothing on the murky darkness of an ocean. At least with the sky there were stars. In the water there were creatures and monsters with teeth, scales and songs to drag a man to his death. She felt the crushing weight of the water around her with her lungs about to burst before she frog kicked. A turn and flutter kicked back to the surface with gasping breath.

Bits of fire crackled along her skin, cinders of blue and violet popped, flickered as the last of wildling’s blaze died on shore. Her feelings lit like fireworks across her skin. The smallest hints of colors like freckles danced across her nose. Small pin pricks of grays and blacks. Her feelings were inscrutable. She felt too much and at the same time felt nothing at all.

The ocean wasn’t ready to keep her yet and reluctantly her to the land. She stood and watched the sun break the horizon. Her turquoise hair wet and plastered to her face. She didn’t care. Sand stuck to her skin. It wasn’t a bother. The morning greeted her. Rekah greeted the morning with a primal scream. A Viking’s call to battle.

Feeling too much and all at once feeling nothing at all.

[Rekah Illyriana]

I.
Gone

She pulled her fingertips across the tops of her thighs, pausing only briefly to trace the scars. Vir He was gone. A vague memory in her catalogue. She blinked and took a breath. The air in her room was stifling. Suffocating, even. Every heartbeat hung on a hook as the panic gripped her. He was still gone. And that piece of her was gone with him.

Kicking off the covers and throwing the pillows to the floor so she could roll off the bed. Her bare feet hitting the floor with a quiet thud. What house was she in tonight? She smelled the salt on the air, heard the waves. Seaside. It wasn’t home. But, sometimes it held memories of a home. It didn’t matter how she made her way from the bedroom to the shoreline. There were footsteps. And blind searching along hallways. Palms and their scarred skin listened in the darkness for corners and doorways. The trek to the shore was uneventful.

Her pupils dilated. And the world shifted into indigo and black. The darkness itself was not so dark as the sky opened and the millions of stars spilled into view. She paused at the dunes, dropping the comforter there before continuing to the water’s edge.

There were no crashing waves. The water was silent. Its surface a smooth looking glass. The heavens stared down and saw its reflection on and on and on. Rekah put one foot into the dead calm then another. The waters peeled away from her allowing her passage to the deeper parts of shore. She never ventured far enough to where the land dropped to the depths. It spit her back. Oil to water. She was never allowed to stay in those murky waters.

The world was gone, and here she was. Her ‘wings’ were false. They were never functional, nor were they true to Fae form. They were pale pink and opal white fine lines along her arms. Nothing bright like Jasper’s had been, or any of the other Royals. No, her’s had been magic’s attempt to blend into the stronger magic Jasper had in him. They were false, decorative and fading. Already pale the lines were lighter. Soon they too would be gone.

The water started to swirl around her ankles filling up the space it had previously given her. She watched the lighter sand of the ocean floor give way to black waters.

Water will reclaim her place.

Rekah fanned out her hands. Crooked fingers, scarred fingers from being stitched up with love and in silence. She dragged them through the water leaving bioluminescent trails in their wake. She didn’t scream her soul to the void this night. She left it silenced and accepting.

Once back on shore she made her way to the discarded blanket on the dune. The pale pink lines of her wings were fading.The opal white were there in stark contrast to the inky indigo-black that were starting to fill the swirls and curls where the pinks had been. These crisscrossed her collarbones and disappeared over her shoulders where they faded back into the pale pinks on her upper arms.

She wrapped the blanket around herself and sat. The ocean rumbled back to life. Its song trapped in the undertow.

She listened.