In a dream, somewhere foreign and smoky, the air tastes of ash and it melts on your tongue as if a snowflake. You are moving forward, a begrudging pace, stumbling but you are not sure why. You look down, frustrated and curious as to why your balance has been compromised – you see you are walking on a graveyard of bones. A whisper in the distance would fester into quiet weeping, but you cannot find the source of this infinite wailing – she haunts you. You suddenly see a faceless horse, a ghastly equine who personified an absence of light. This creature was shaped like you, but they were a black hole, fabrics of smoke and spitfire dancing around them. You don’t actually wish to get closer, but you cannot stop yourself, you are not in control.

The black creature lingers, no noise except the sound of scissors cutting, cutting, cutting what? 

As you get closer, the scissors are cutting hair. Black hair drops like ink, each tendril accompanied by more crying, an insufferable melody of mewling that hangs heavy in the air. But it is not the ghoul that laments. 

Who weeps?

Tonight, the question would not be answered; it was just a memory of a nightmare perma-burned into the retinas of a street-dancer trying to earn some coin. She had been accustomed to grazing the few winter grasses that thrived in the sands, drinking the waters that the wilds naturally provided, yet on this winter night, she craved something warm to heat her bones and wine to wet her palette. This dream had been following her ever since her return to Solterra – reunited with her home.

Fever would finish her dance by arching into a refined pose, sylphlike, a serpent poised to strike - a slick of shimmering sweat adhered to her abstract mahogany coat, controlled breathing allowing wisps of hot air to escape her nostrils and dissipate into the frost-ladled night. To her approval, a small audience had gathered, and their hooves would sound a strange applause, a handful of coins tossed her way to encourage more, their eyes hungry for more.

Their eyes would never be as hungry as she.

In a sweeping movement, she would bow gracefully, a spindle of honey spilling onto the floor and whisking away the currency at her feet. She would thank them graciously, insisting should they ever need entertainment to warm them on a cold night, she would never be far from reach.

False promise. She was always out of reach.

And with that, Fever slipped away out of the firelight for another performer to take her spot, the bells on her thigh an alarm that would announce her every movement. A fire-breather had come to perform. Alas, as the mare weaved through the bodies that gathered, a whisper would catch her attention, causing a spotted ear to swivel in the direction of its conjurer.

“Whore.”

An ungodly smirk would touch her black lips, pretending to have not heard the critic, amounting it to jealousy and simply leaving it at that. Perhaps, if not for her pressing need of a drink, she would have taken the time to banter with the jester. Because sure, the viper could certainly kiss you like a whore, but she looked like a fever-dream, and her company was untouchable – wait, no, her affections are generous, her body a church housing many a poor soul who were trying to find seek solace from whatever haunted them. 

The dagger of her smile sheathed and she would move along the familiar adobe buildings, these streets she called home. She too, haunted, a slip of a fleeting creature, un-whole, unwell. Stygian and gold eyes carefully concealed under a lavish frame of dark lashes.

Scum hecklers would never be allowed her company – they were never once invited.