ultima

Was she the same girl she was before? Was she different? She couldn’t tell; her face was still familiar at the edges but the eyes were foreign, harder and brighter in the Helovian sun. When she went combing through the woods with Tilney, she felt a pang of nostalgia and a vague sense of otherness, spurred by the sound of her own voice, her quick remarks, her laughter. Who was that? Dancing over the brambles, exclaiming over burdock? That girl was loved fiercely and tenderly and she wore it like gold laurels on her brow, but that was not Ultima, Light of Morning and Sound of Dawn.

That was Alph. Alph always woke up early and didn’t need to be roused. Alph loved Tilney and blackberries and the feel of garden soil beneath her feet, much like Ultima— But not.

Everywhere they asked her, ‘And who are you?’ and initially it had been such a simple question. But the answer was becoming more and more difficult to even whisper, where once it had been such a thing simple thing to say, to shout – I am! The Lady Ultima, crowned fairest by the stars in heaven and the birds beneath it! The river knows me. The earth keeps me. Every tree and every rock in this blessed Wood sings my name, and if you ask them (head high, smiling cheekily, honest as only children can be), they will tell you: “I … am … ”

Startled, for starters.

“Oh!” Her wings fanned automatically, though the dark, wave-touched sand was solid, capable, and did not fail her. “Oh, you small, dear, precious little—” An ear flicked forward, her chin lifting after it.

Girl, color of sunlight blazing around the flat black silhouette of a mountain. Fire. Consuming, but warm. “You look like a sunset,” Ultima said simply, smiling almost shyly in reply. That wasn’t a word she would’ve used to describe herself before this, but for a minute it didn’t trouble her. The two girls on the beach and the fox spinning around their heels like a dust devil – she couldn’t see it, being a part of the picture, but she felt it. And it felt right. Soft. Delicate, like anything new does. “Like one I saw here, not too long ago. It’s really lovely. Your coat,” she added.

And she had more to say – about the sea and how she hadn’t come from it but she knew someone who had – about how she’d never even known the word “sea” or “ocean” until she came here – about how everything had changed. But the words couldn’t come for some reason, that soft, delicate thing sitting at the top of her lungs, and before she could roll it away: ‘Good morning, ladies. I hope I haven’t disturbed you so early on.’

Her head flicked up again, the smile faltering just barely as the stallion trotted forward, clumps of sand scattering around his fetlocks. She’d been an open door a moment ago, but she felt it closing again, slowly, slowly, shutting a little light away as the hinges swung.

“Good morning, sirs, miss,” she said, glancing at Natraj, and then Tandavi, bright as an ember on the edge of her vision. “It is rather early, isn’t it? I suppose neither of us musketeers were expecting to see another face before the sun was properly risen. I’m –” The curtsy was a deep-seated habit. “Ultima.” The faint, ambivalent smile was new. “Of the World's Edge. And the pleasure is mine.”

dear god, make me a bird so i can fly far away from here