Of Honey and Wildfires (The Songs of Sefate #1)

by Sarah Chorn

This was love, this burning. It was not as sweet as honey; rather, it was a wild thing. A tempest. A raging forest fire. It was hungry, and it demanded. For what would a father not do for his child?

Home is not a place. Home is an architecture of bones and a steadily thumping heart. Home is where dreams are born, and monsters are put to rest. It is where the soul can unfurl like the petals of a flower and find succor in the golden blush of each new day. Home was my father’s arms. When I was in them, I knew nothing in the world could touch me.

My heart stills in my breast. I wonder how it is possible for someone so beautiful to be so sad. “You cannot love me,” I say. “I am nothing but mud and dust.” Our eyes meet. My cheeks fill with the colors of the sunset. Summer on fire. There is a curl at the edges of her lips. “Is not the earth made of mud and dust, and more beautiful for it?” Her words drip like honey between her bee-stung lips. Her smile is a thief stealing away my breath. The world fades away. And then there is only us, and the soft magic of this night. We are lost in an ocean of silence, yet we are drowning in each other.

The day is dying. A scepter of crimson bleeds through the dandelion sky. Twilight spreads its wings. The moon, crowned in a diadem of stars, lifts her head and surveys her dark kingdom.

I realized then that like the moon, I only knew one of my father’s faces. The soul is such a fickle thing. Easy to bruise. Easy to wound. No wonder why we protect ourselves with this careful camouflage. All of these meticulously cultivated aspects of ourselves we drag with us through the years. Our costumes are heavy, of course our spines are bent.