Icarus and The Magpie (Short Story)

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Thoughts.

Thoughts are as swift moving as trains. Rumbling down rusted tracks. Shaking loose their pinning nails, and kicking up stones as they go. They twist through mountain paths. Cut deep in stone. They burrow down in hidden groves and barren tunnels. Caverns forged by man.

Thoughts are as careless as trains. Loud in the night, unsightly in the day, and always full of chaos. Always brimming with a well stoked fire.

Thoughts are the greatest of these.

Thoughts, weren't made to stay.

They were made to have, and let go.

They are sensible.

Iris woke in a flash. She was shaking uncontrollably and cold, her lips were blue and here eyes were made of glass. Her heart was a stone let sinking. An anchor being pulled up from the sea. It was heavy. A deep throbbing had set in her temples and threatened to wail into a screaming beast kept in her head. She gasped for the air and it filled her lungs again without question.

She had either died. Or she had come close to it.

"IRIS!!!" Loud banging tore away at the door to her room. "-BREATHE!"

Iris threw herself from her bed and crawled to the door, grasping for the lock she worked her numb fingers around it. "Penn-" She rasped and threw it open crumbling as it went and he caught her. She was breathing and the air burned within her.

Penn was a flurry of simple linen cloth and feathers. Charcoal hands fumbling over her skin and tripping up in the layers of her clothes. Leaving black marks along them where they went. "What- what- tell me what happened- Iris-" He pushed the hair from her face, she was all a cold sweat. "Iris- the door was locked-" Penn was shaken silly and he still hadn't fully gathered himself. "Tell me what to do-" His hands hovered over her. Was he scared to touch her? Did she look that fragile? "-show me where your hurt." He cradled her head in his hands. "Let me help you-"

"I'm not hurt-" Iris coughed. "-It's okay." She shuddered against him. "I'm so c- cold-"

Penn scooped her up as if she were nothing but a word. He carried her out to the empty living space and built a fire in the hearth. How is he strong again?  The one drawn into with trees and tangling grasses. The logs there-in were so old that just the mention of a spark set them ablaze. It licked at the bricks that made up three sides and seeped between the iron hands that held it. There it gathered until all of them were consumed. Iris lost herself in the flickering blaze. Who was that- She tried to reason to herself what had happened. Was I holding my breath?  She pulled the blanket Penn had wrapped her in closer. Was it because of him?  Phobos?

There was a clamor in the kitchen and Penn came running back to her. A cup of boiled water in hand. She took it. Iris, was lost in her own headspace. She had forgotten the feeling of it. Iris had gone and let herself be known again. Her head was a foreign place.

"Tell me what happened..." Penn lowered beside her. His wings flaring out and back as he did.

In that moment she was grateful for her lack of furniture. The fact she had nothing only made it easier for winged things to move about freely. There was a part of her that didn't want to tell him. It was a selfish little part that was festering, she wanted something of her own and this had the makings of the perfect thing. "There was... someone there. In my dream. In The Void."

"Void... was it another bird?" He questioned. "An idea?" He was a mess of nerves and firing thoughts. She could tell he was trying.

He could tell she was hiding.