Lady of the Eclipse
She came through my window like spotlight, interrogating me from dead sleep. Strange dreams crawling in my hair unseen and the covers wrapped around me like a cocoon. Her moon head in her hands in the dark before dawn, perched on my balcony wanting coffee.
The light hung heavy in her eyes still rimmed in red. The jangle made it hard to hold her cup steady. I could still smell burning and blood. We waited in sipping silence for the birds to wake up. The wind a drunk paramour, invisible music ruffling feathers. The sky still glitching as the horizon twisted and sighed. Old crows cawed the dawn in.
I had never seen an empress so exhausted. Her faraway eyes still smouldering as she hunched like the oldest crone of them all. Civilisations risen and fallen under her gaze and a million lovers besides. The tendrils of steam crept into her dark wells and found new homes in her cratered face.
Finally she spoke, her voice like foxes that ran the length of my spine in a language I had never heard. It weaved into my marrow and drew sigils on my bones. It crept under the door to my heart coiling in secret chambers. Ran like water through the corridors of my mind and pinned notes on the ceiling for me to find later.
She drained her cup and smashed it on the deck, her dark face curling in a wicked weary smile. I am not myself when I am eclipsing, she murmured in mother tongue. I am disrupt and nerves. I am more shadow than light. I am the cries in the forest and that howling wind that scares you from shelter.
She fixed a strange gaze upon me that seared my soul to new life and made my magics weep. I am not done with you yet, child. Remember to what you have always belonged. The only whole truth that matters is inside you. I felt my power twist into a key. The sun yellowed the deck and crept towards her. She swore loudly. You'll keep, lover.
She left a mess and her strange perfume. Trails of silvered beetles in her wake that clattered over the deck edge. The starless sky swallowed her whole. I opened a shaking hand to find she had left me a glowering morsel. I held it in my mouth for a long moment before the eclipse sank under my tongue.
Words c. Kerrie Basha 2024