Bodies of Magic

There was nothing beautiful about a body’s death. But a city could be beautiful in a dying way, especially in the last days before you left it. Especially if you weren’t leaving by choice, and would give anything to stay.

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Moyna gauged the distance between her rooftop and the next. The soles of her boots gripped the rough tiles.

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In dawn sunlight the stone of Sieuxerr turned the mauve of breath-starved fingernails, as if the buildings themselves were gasping for air. Moyna imagined the cure before she could stop herself: magic sliding into the small gaps between stones, coaxing them open to take a deeper breath. The blue streets flushing purple, then red, as life returned to the city’s bloodstream. Sights like this were why Moyna ran rooftops when she needed to get out of her head and back into her body. She could pretend that the city shared its secrets with her on purpose. That it loved her back.

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She clutched her satchel firmly to her hip and launched into the air, which cradled her for a heartbeat before she landed on the roof of the next building.

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Her right ankle sang a warning as her foot landed on the join between two tiles. Moyna wobbled briefly and found herself peering down through the gap she’d just leapt. A path between buildings: dirty grey stone rather than the blue of the main streets. Lethal all the same, from this height.

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Or would it be? It’d depend on the angle, and whether she smashed her skull. She imagined her body broken by impact. Long bones leaking blood and marrow into the tissue, or poking through skin. Ribs skewering lungs, perhaps. Spleen and liver burst. Her grey robe blossoming with red. No, nothing beautiful about it at all.