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The dawn comes as easily as it always does. Streaks of pale pink skate along the horizon and the roaring froth of the falls turns golden and rose. And perhaps had it been the morning after any other dream, Aridela might have looked up in wonder to see that the world is still colorful beyond the dark blackness of her shadow.
But her sides are still coated in salt and her lungs are still fluttering weakly against her paper-bird heart. Her eyes skitter over the pale dawn and race for only the violent glimmer of the falls.
She feels weak as she stands, a thing made to shatter and break instead of whisper of beauty against the river shore. Even the grass, thick with dew, does nothing for the hollow ache in her belly as she pulls at it like it's fragile strings of pearls instead of food.
Perhaps she's only forgotten how to survive, how to do anything but slumber in the thicket with the bellowing falls echoing in her ears like thunder (louder even than the sorrow running through her thoughts like bloated snakes). She only rises now, with her bird-bones and paper insides, because there is nothing else to do.
The dew frosts her ankles in diamonds and the moisture clings to the hollow creases of her rib-cage like it's sea-brine instead of still water. She's a wild thing now, all tangled hair and skin that only hints at a mockery of shine. Most of all it's a look in her golden eyes-- a shine of winter and wolf-hunger.
And when she turns, to the sound of hooves behind her, that shine turns to embers just begging for fuel and wind.
Or maybe her look is only begging for another storm, or another sharp-shard mirror, to sweep her away.
* * * * *
nothing can breathe in this space
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