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Valka
She entered the darkness, taken willingly into the moonless mouth. There was nothing anymore, the snow reduced to puddles of white syrup swallowing hooves with each hesitant step. The trees were pointed teeth bending wary overhead as she walked along the tongue of spring. She was but a word in the night, perhaps stolen or lapsed. Heading north again, stale as bread in the night's jaws. Valka was but a yawn, lingering on the edge of familiar voices. Just outside the place that imitated home, and sang her name with the rock-cut wind. Valka's heart was a warm darkened coal. It would break into flame if someone stepped out from the shadows. Anyone. 'Perhaps Snö,' the mare yearned quietly, tangled thoughts prowling the pure blue of the child's wintry eyes in the aching memory. Remembering the tender promise they clutched.
Valka emerged like a midnight flower from the sleet; photosynthesizing the dark vastness of the snow capped kingdom. Even in the blackest reaches of night, the climbing peaks were visible against the star-flecked sky, cradling her spot in the aspen with paternal arms. Stunned by the stalwart beauty, her offset horn tipped more to the side, odd eyes mesmerized by arching earth, the wind's sharp voice, the frozen warmth. A shiver rattled through slender legs scaling the curve of her neck, setting chill deep into her bones. Valka breathed the world into warm lungs. Felt the cold creep past them, ever anxious to touch the open heart that fluttered between two measures of longing. She could inhale forever without staggering at the bulge of a bloated chest. It didn't matter how much air she forced down into those lungs, because it was impossible to fill this kind of emptiness. It might have been possible for the two ballooning sacks to touch each other, as her heart filled hardly any space at all. Every breath was like this. The same air came in and out, frozen as the memory of a friend. All the same sharp pang of frost until each breath birthed a sigh. Air echoed against air. Against the silence.
It could have been months or minutes of existing between the inaudible battle of earth and atmosphere. The lights flamed green above and danced on the snow so lightly that not a single print was left behind. Valka's eyes were not trained for this kind of beauty. She thought of crystalline air when she first saw the sky on fire, of course tried to breathe it in, taste any scent of this strange smoke. But she only felt the cold abandonment of plain air. Valka felt pain instead of sweetness. A lash of cold through the blind expectation of warm wind. It was the mnemonic key to her memories, and they came as rapidly as the sun did through the violent sky. Her mother's wild voice poured over her like stagnant water, her father's absence felt cold as the space between her lungs. Valka shifted her slender legs, exhaled the white froth of northern spring out onto the fading dark of sunrise. She felt odd. Dizzy even.
The dark child felt the heat of something stirring in her eyes, boiling over onto hollow cheeks. Tears? She tucked her tail and snorted, suddenly surprised by how loud it was, surprised by how bright morning was. How could she cry? How could the most beautiful thing feel the ugliest pain? Valka's melting gaze grappled faint shadows as they leaned away from her, once again resembling the all-too-familiar pattern of her fleeting father. The cold breath became choking sobs, the kind that nobody should see. Her skin boiled at the sun's abusive touch. She bolted, wheeling back on her tail, turning to the blue side of the horizon, galloping fast enough to chase it. Valka was angry enough to break open—rage into wildfire.
But it was too cold to flame.
YOU'RE A WOLF. |
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