She dreamt about stars, again. Stars blinking out one by one until there was nothing left but a deep and familiar dark that swallowed her whole. She was beginning to think that dreaming had a learning curve when you haven’t done it in a while.
The wintry pre-dawn was listlessly grey, shrugged off by the forest in favor of the night. Blinking against the weak light, Scheherazade turned her good eye to examine the smoke and iron trees around her. It was quiet in the way that forests are never quiet, the dead sounds of splitting ice and falling snow, softness pure and gleaming bringing whole trees to the ground. The relief she had for many days found in the presence of solitude was growing dull, or rather restless, knowing that this state could not continue and therefore weary for its end. This was why she had come after all: endings, which was just another word for beginnings.
She had felt it when she arrived, the way you felt a storm approaching, the way something whispered against her mind you have gone far enough, you have finally gone far enough. Charged by this promise, the blue roan stretched her sleep-stiff legs into a steady pace, leaving cloven divots in the snow behind her.
As the sky lightened, the trees began to thin in number yet broaden in size. The diameter of some in this part of the forest were greater than the length of her from end to end, and she often had to skirt their bulk to maintain her course. Looking up and up into their barren heights she felt her throat constrict in the presence of so huge a life, more than once pressing a tender touch to their ruddy bark as she passed. The sun was now spilling white and gold between the trees, sparkling on the snow piled in the open spaces there. She closed her eye and turned her face into the meager warmth, vowing this moment, this place, to memory.
Without being able to identify exactly where it started, a feeling of happiness welled up inside her, surging and tugging like a tide between her ribs. She sucked in quick breaths of the stinging winter air to nourish her skipping heart, and its beat was undeniable to the rest of her. Plunging forward, she half-leapt, half-ran through the iced-over dunes, forced to dive erratically as the snow surpassed her knees. Gasping, euphoric, she didn’t stop until her legs were trembling from cold and exertion, perspiration chilling across her skin.
Slowly, and with more than due consideration, she righted herself. Her shaking legs placed and replaced themselves beneath her straightening spine. Her body was grounded, but her heart felt raw- an abused and reactionary thing curled up in some corner of her chest too dangerous to touch. Not for the first time she wondered if it was always such a horrible thing to feel so fully. Or if, like dreaming, she had forgotten how to do it right.
I am dedicated
To the same baffled heart I have always carried.
SCHEHERAZADE
The diamonds and mud of my mouth.
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