“Brown is the color under your hand when you touch a horse, when its skin is still steaming after a hard run.”
When Baker asks her what a horse is, Salomea strokes his hair and kisses his forehead.
Heinrich lies alone in a field of dry, yellow-brown grass behind the school and looks up at the sky. He closes his eyes and imagines that the shadows that move over him and darken his eyelids are not the shadows of clouds but of his great dragon-bees.
He brings his tongue to the back of his teeth and begins to hiss. When he puts his voice behind the consonant, it becomes a steady buzzing sound. For a moment, he hears the noise and forgets that the buzzing is coming from his own mouth. For a moment, he is full of purpose. ♦
Jessica Rutland | 51