Falls

Time slips away as she stands belly deep in the waterfall pool. Her blood slows to the pace of the moon crawling across the black sky. Frost pools on her eyelashes and her cheekbones as she lifts her nose over and over again to feel the rushing roar of the water against her skin. It feels like recreation, this ice-sharp sting where winter air and water meet.

It almost feels like home.

The night goes on like this, until the sky turns mottled pink with dawn and the grass shines white-as-bone in the rose gold light. Aridela does not notice the sun, or the grass cracking under her hooves as she moves from the water. All she can feel the the slow oil-thick thud, thud, thud of her mortal heart and the bird-bone hollowness of her form as she shakes the water off. Something in the pain of it makes her feel as alive as a new born star brushing against the darkness for the first time.

She wonders if this is what it feels like, to be bloated with nothing but herself. She wonders if this is what it feels like to live, and freeze, and hang in the place between the here and now.

She wonders.

And she counts the morning clouds when she looks up.

Behind her the falls continue their winter roar and the sun continues its slow climb to the crown. It feels strange to her, this rotation of everything around her, when she's standing still as a root in mud. But she does not try to move, not even as a crow lands on a branch above her head and starts to scream.

Time ticks onward. Always onward.






* * * * *

nothing can breathe in this space