Eager to be helpful, Razgut supplied, "She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox's tongue. She tastes like hope."
The wish-daughter leaned forward, and a rush of lapis hair revealed her slender neck.
Razgut couldn't help himself. He licked her skin once – fleetingly, achingly – and felt her tense and jerk back.
But not before he had gotten his taste.
Her flavor blossomed on his tongue, and he closed his eyes, rapturous. Izîl had tasted like the rust of his pliers, already decaying from the curiosity that gnawed from within. This girl tasted of life, like a night flower just beginning to open.
He tasted pollen and nectar, half-remembered from blossoms in a world of angels.
He tasted the first, crisp bite of an apple, bartered from a vendor in the heat of a Moroccan summer.
He tasted hinges, the metallic sense of a new portal being opened.
He tasted the fairy tales of the rich tribal language translated by Izîl: the midnight glow of a swan maiden; the single, stolen drop of cream on a fox's tongue.
He tasted the utter loneliness of a hollow soul, beautiful as pain.
He tasted the whisper and prayer of hope, spoken in a voice as deep as silence.
He tasted stars.
At this last, Razgut felt a longing such that he had not experienced for a thousand years.
.
.
.
And he felt another flavor add itself to the mix: the salt of his own tears.