[twwm] sonata no 14

Oh, the moon. Oh, the lovely, scarred face of my lady in the sky, her cold calloused palms caressing my heart and piercing it with the rocky craters that filled her skin.

She was finally here for me, here to save me, here to love me and breathe life into me. I reached for her, gently bobbing and swinging with the wind, and when I awoke -

Purple orbs stared down at me from above, where the moon still sat in the sky. This creature was not my imagined lover, and I stepped - I stepped?

Staring down - staring? - I now had paws, legs, fur - two wild tails flagged behind me. Fur raised along a spine I had never had, a horn from my head, and my fur shone like oil spilt into the lovely waters of the world. I would never be able to attain my past shape, and I did not grieve it. What will I do now, I pondered. This other; still in front of me, and I had not even introduced myself to her - I had never even spoken.

I tried to think of the words others had used before around me. Words assembled through strange vowels and consonants, filled with meaning and grief, joy and rage. There were the clunky speakers who tumbled over their words, and the indecipherable voices of little animals. With all this in mind, I thought of the words I wanted to say, and: “Hello?” Husky and full-bodied, rich like fizzling comet tails, my voice was as strong as the willows and birch that surrounded us.

The stranger in front of me - not quite so different from myself, I now realized - tilted her head, and twitched her whiskers, dipping her long neck to investigate me. "Hello..." her voice was silk sheets against rough cotton and unsanded wood, gritty pebbled sand against punishing ocean waves. It was the symphony of her life, and I basked in it. "Have I created you?" she asked, turning her head owlishly. "Did you create yourself from me?"

I don't know quite how to answer what she asks of me. How could I have ever created myself? I had no power in my previous form; I could do nothing against the time which shaped me and changed me into what I am now, nor could I choose my fate.

A simmer of resentment started to burn inside me, coiling like a red-hot snake of iron, before I cooled it, hissing and sizzling under water. "You made me, I think." I looked towards the moon, faithful friend, cold lover. "I thought you were her. I reached out and..."

Her purple eyes followed mine up to the uncaring gaze of the moon, and I could've sworn I watched a silver sheen of teardrops start to gather on the unblinking spectral color that filled her sockets. It was my turn to be confused now. My gaze left the moon and fully watched this other, this woman who had given me life, in the body of another strange creature like I was.

Crying at the moon like I had done so many nights? Weeping, wailing, throwing myself at the cages of my mind that could never move, never leave, never stop being. It hurts to give up upon things you think love you. It is like an animal, an animal you have loved, but have always wondered if their wilding hearts understand the concept of love.

The hurt of giving up love is like watching a small creature - small enough that you have nurture it and care for it against all the horrible things of the outside world - and losing that creature to the pain of the outside world no matter how much you did to protect them. It is the love of your child, and the love of everything you have done for them, and then when they leave you...

I speak, finally. "Did you love her too?" My words are like raindrops, moonlight captured in them, a mother-of-pearl tear from the clouds as they shelter the moon's light. Her gaze does not move from the craters and dark spots, it only shifts as she lets a tear fall slowly.

"I have always loved her," she spoke softly. Her voice had changed, a tone of discordance humming through it like the buzzing violin string, overlaid by solemn oboe and melancholy flute. "I loved her through death, and beyond it. She has been gone too long, and only loved me in life."

Love was something that only those who walked by me spoke of, and that is how I learned of it. Mournful, angry, excited, nervous, quietly together, but alone. I have known love in many forms, and while I will never know what she means, I press myself to her side regardless. Her fur is warm, and it smells of cedarwood and soup, livestock and wet, dark earth. It smells like home, and I curl closer into her side.

I will never be able to sleep, in either of my forms, but I swear I drift into some sort of hazy consciousness as the other above me begins to hum.