Time seems to stop here and Vaeri can't complain. This place is like something out of a dream and she's enjoying every minute of it. She's forgotten the nipping feeling of the cold breeze as she dances in the snow bank, her hooves kicking up snow around her. From the moonlight, her coat shines like the billions of stars in the night sky. Her floating moon made of magic mirrors the real full moon  that looks down on Novus.

She feels more alive than she can ever remember feeling.

Her legs had grown restless only walking among Denocte. She needed somewhere new, somewhere fresh and full of surprises. The island surely provided this, just as the rumors said, and she feels thankful. It's the kind of adventure she had always dreamed of, but could never make a reality when she was younger. Her Shed-Star family lived too reclusively- a main reason she left. Although she misses them deeply, she does not miss being holed up in the mountains while an entire land of magic sat unexplored by her eyes.

Now that she's made it here, she's discovered the wonder of the strange fairy creatures. They float around her, as curious of her as she is of them. They play with her mane and tickle her neck. She laughs and stops moving for a moment. Concentrate, concentrate, she tells herself and closes her eyes. She's practiced this before a few times, but it didn't always work.

When she opens her eyes, there is a small glowing white orb floating among the fairies. They are delighted at the sight, as is she, until it bursts into light fragments and dissolves in the air. Still, she smiles and feels proud of herself for managing to conjure such a thing. Vae hopes with more practice, she might be able to create a light show.

There is movement within the shadows of the trees and the moonlight shines down on a figure. It's another equine and another stranger she's come upon on this island. Vae's smile is warm and the fairies seem to be excited at another newcomer. They float over to her immediately.

"Don't worry, they won't hurt you," she reassures the stranger, just in case the fairies have startled her. Vae begins to dance again, her hooves making a pattern of overlapping prints in the snow. "Come dance with me." Her tone is suggestive, but inviting. She is not one to feel threatened by strangers. They are the best kind to meet and the most interesting. You can turn the pages of their story the more you spend time with them and talk. From the look of this woman, she wonders what is written on her pages.

"Speaking."

"Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,"
She is awoken in the middle of the night by dream.

When she awakes it is with a jolt, like lighting rushing through all the hollow wanting parts of her soul. There is sweat beneath the snow on her brow. Below that there is the reflection of a bear with chrysalis hanging where eyes should be. Thana blinks back the sweat, snow and reflection. There had been words, something the bear was saying, but the meaning of them hasn't followed her to this realm even though her heart can still hear the sound of them.

By the time she shakes loose from slumber and the copse of pines, her aching soul feel a little less sharp. It starts to move the way it should, like a beast instead of a doe. And if there is still a shadow in her eyes, a reflection of something caught between this world and the next (all bones, and pines, and ancient shadows) she does not know it. Although perhaps it is the reason the drifting lights do not follow her the way they follow the winter-doe and the thick-coated foxes. Perhaps they can see it in her eyes, that strangeness, that death, the way everything in her wake smolders and dissolves into dust.

Faires are not fools. Magic never is. Thana know this. But it still hurts to see the entire glen start to fold away from her.

That is until the girl emerges like a wraith from the snowy dunes. There is a memory in the holy glow of her that makes Thana think of home. She wonders if this light would be as warm on her tongue, as deep, as fierce, as the god-water. She wonders if she could drown in it. It's a hundred terrible thoughts she's thinking when the girl comes closer, wildness apparent in each of her steps. Thana freezes.

She knows this is not her wildness. This is the recklessness of the young and mortal, of girls who look at light and only wonder what magic it makes on their skin. It is not the wild of the hungry, of the wanting, of the hollow cracks at the edge of the stars. It is not something that wants only to be filled.

But--

Thana steps closer anyway and exhales against a glowing ball of light until the light dims to nothing but a pale echo of this girl's light. The snow moans under her hooves (a lament of sorts, of the dead-thing walking in its Eden) and she does not stop to listen to the sadness until she pauses to brush her nose against the girl's shoulder. She says nothing, only gives one soft sigh of air in the space between them, like they are not equines but two wolves in the middle of a glen.

And then Thana starts to dance.

It looks like war.




"And death shall have no dominion"

What a sight this has become. For one, there is Vaeri, lady of the moon and stars, glittering among all the light and the fallen snow. Then there is the stranger (Thana), of darkness and death- a stark contrast. Even when she brushes against Vaeri's shoulder, she is cold like the winter air. The snow beneath her does more than melt from the touch of her hooves, somehow it seems to peel back with decay. This magic intrigues her; it's unlike anything she's ever seen before.

She wants more of it.

The Shed-Star smiles as her new friend dances. It's a wilder dance than her own, but she is living for it. It's as if the Denocte drums are beating for them here and she can feel them in sync with her heartbeat. Then it jumps out of rhythm to something fierce, like a battle cry. The fairies around them have fluttered away, appearing too nervous among the presence of this unknown creature.

Vae closes the distance between them a little more. She doesn't feel afraid. The glow of her body and moon dim ever so slightly as she gets near. Her blue eyes do not lose their shine.

"Where are you from, mistress of the dark?" she asks, the hair of her mane shifting as she tilts her head. After a moment, she reaches out to briefly touch the mare's shoulder in return and she is greeted by the bitter cold again. When she retracts, she begins dancing again, feeling her own restlessness while trying to match the wilder movements. "I like the music you dance to."

"Speaking."

"Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,"
There has never been a time where her hooves have moved for any reason but running or hunting. Her heart has never beat to the bass of a melody instead of war. But here, spinning and twirling with snow filling up the crease of her spine and pulling back in layers of rot from her hooves, Thana thinks that perhaps this is something she was not made to enjoy.

But she does, oh she does.

For a moment there is only the two of them, two wolves in the glen with their legs moving for something other than survival. There is only the tease between skin, and bone, and beauty on the edge of grotesque. Somehow this is more without the erratic fairy glow. Somehow it's more wild, like the heart aching below the froth starting to form on her chest. Thana does not want to ruin it with words, and other bits of this mortal coil. She wants to dance until all the fury has leaked from her skin like rain from a root.

Perhaps that's why it takes the touch of the mare to rouse her from the leeching of her war. Perhaps it's why there is still more wolf than unicorn in her gaze when she rests all the weight of it on the moon dimming upon the girl's brow. Perhaps it's why for a moment she only stares, wondering which of them is killing the light. Her hooves pause in their dance like a hound on a scent-- waiting, waiting, waiting.

The silence and the sound of snow stretches out for too long. Beneath her skin Thana's lungs do not tremble. Dancing is easier than killing and her body is made to run, and sweat, and flicker on the edge of death for days. A part of her yearning to be mortal, to love, wants to laugh at being called mistress of the dark. But it no more incorrect than lady death, and no one says her name in quite the way Ipomoea does. So Thana does not share anything more than a smile that's more teeth that kindness.

“I come from the forest” Because she still doesn't know how to say she comes from a city. She almost wants to tell her that it's a forest that's dead now, with more bones than roots, because she pillowed her head on a moss covered trunk and started to dream. Thana almost wants to say that this glen will be nothing more than ash and rock if she stays long enough. Her blade sounds like an owl screeching at the moon when she drags it across a stone before her hooves start to dance their grotesque and beautiful war again.

It's that sound that soothes her more than the silence and less than the leeching of her fury into the winter wind. It settles her enough to almost laugh and say, in a voice made only for magic, immortality, and darkness, “It is not music that I hear.” She reaches to close the distance between them and drags her blade, soft as a kiss, across the mare's hip. “Listen closer” Beneath her skin her heart hums the echo of her fading fury. And each note of it, each war drum bass, is full of all the things music cannot grasp. Only violence can hold it all.

Only violence.

And Thana.




"And death shall have no dominion"

"Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,"
For a moment, when the girl inhales with a look in her eyes that promises language instead of air, Thana wants to pull the girl's lungs from her chest. The urge hits her suddenly and her magic touches the thought gently, like a lover might touch a rose thorn, and bids it to grow root and unfurl. Her hooves do not flounder with the fury that takes her suddenly. They only become lighter while the rot around her hooves becomes dark and thick as oil. The  air becomes cloying with the scent of it all, death crawling across the pristine snow.

And then the words come and it's not music, or magic, or want that rises in Thana's thoughts to meet it. It's fury,   bloody and raw, tangling itself into a million words of annihilation. It's the memory of a bloody leaf, of holding a blade at her regent's throat, of sleeping in a mass grave with bones pillowing the wicked tip of her horn like a flowered meadow.  “What do you know of forest creatures and secrets?” Despite the growl in her chest, and the want clanging against her teeth, her words are a quiet thing. They could be almost tame if not for the blaze in her eyes when she turns her head and lets her own steps slow and grow methodical.

Perhaps she had been madness and war before, a beast let loose upon the virgin glen, to make something more of it. But now with the tap of her horn against the girl's spine, like a knock begging to be let inside, Thana is something worse than madness.

The distance between them is an easy thing to devour. Thana takes it with nothing more than an exhale, like her own lungs are rabid to expel all the things blazing a winter storm across her gaze, like she wants something more than air filling up all the empty places beneath her skin. But what comes out is, “Thana,” in a way that suggests nothing more than a sigh and a forgotten word.

When her last hoof falls, before she freezes, there is only the sound of her name tumbling (like a stone in a riptide) in the small silent space between them. Only that and the blackness looping around around them as virgin as the snow once was.  




"And death shall have no dominion"

Most would probably run at first sight of the rot at the girl's feet. It's an interesting thing, almost oozing and bubbling. It seems to consume everything on the ground except the woman's own hooves. Vae wonders if it would consume her too if she reached out far enough. The stench of death is so strong, she'd almost think she finally came face to face with the grim reaper.

She asks the Shed-Star what she knows of the forest and its secrets. She's oblivious of the fury growing underneath the woman's words and there's no telling what Vae's answer will bring out of her. Especially since she begins to spin a lie.

"I was a deer in a past life," she answers simply and looks off into the distance as if she's remembering back to the old days. "I'd wander the forest and speak to the trees and the birds. They told me about their days, although the birds in particular had a lot to chatter about." It's almost a shame it isn't true. Living as another species would be fun and deer are beautiful creatures. She's only ever seen one and it was brief. Maybe she wouldn't last very long seeing as how they're so flighty and she's the complete opposite.

"They kept secrets of all those who passed through and I'd hear about those too," she adds, feeling the woman's horn tap her spine. It sends a cold shiver through her body as if her blood turned to ice for a moment.

At last, the lady of death has a name - Thana. It sounds beautiful and forbidden. She says it so quietly, like it's not something to be proud of, or like she doesn't find it special at all. Not like Vae, who offers her name like she offers strangers a dance and a smile.

"I like you, Thana," she admits, although it's not meant to be in a flirtatious way. More like she finds her intriguing and she wants to know more. "You're different, but in a good way. Being normal is overrated." At this, her body shimmers again and her floating moon glows, as if to reaffirm how she feels.

"Speaking."

"Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,"
It's the lie that settles Thana.

Although she doesn't know the words are nothing more than a story woven in the mind of a moon-child. It's easy enough for her to believe. Being a deer sounds easier than being magic and blood, wrath and hunger. It sounds easier than being a monster. She should wonder that a story has the power to make her feel monstrous, like a lion licking the curl of a lamb's neck. But she doesn't.

It's easier to be the lion than the lamb, the villain instead of the hero. It's so easy to be made and to be death.

And so Thana settles into all the things that are easy, because later there will be killing. She tells herself that in the end it'll be worth the pain, the suffering, the ache devouring the marrow of her bones (and taking from them the morrow). “You should not like me.” Each of the words is nothing more than a burned bit of paper, heavy with ink and flame, falling towards the sea. Each is a wish tossed over the cliff-side for the blackness to take. She speaks each word because she does not hunt deer, only the things that track them through the shadows.

The rot pulls away with her and starts to spread only the the darkness of her shadow, where the moon-girl's light cannot reach. Thana wants to pause a moment, to look at the rot, and the snow, and their steps crossing those spaces like constellations crossing the night sky (slowly, day by day, slowly). She does not. Things that dance like war do not pause, or linger, or dream.

“Thank you for the dance, Vae.” She says, and then she's gone. Only the tracks in the snow, ground and rimmed in black like an infection of the winter, leave any hint as to where the unicorn has gone to hunt.

Like a lion, and a wolf, and a thing caught between the two, Thana has gone to hunt something weightier than once-deer.  




"And death shall have no dominion"

There is so much Vae wishes to learn about this woman, including just how tangible the rot is at her feet. It must be something she can control, but how did it come to be? Vae's magic has always made sense being a Shed-Star, but what is Thana? What truly is a creature of death?

Her curiosity only grows more hungry when the woman says that she should not be liked. That only makes her more likable. Vae goes to step closer, but the rot is already pulling back as Thana is stepping away. She frowns at the thought of already having to say goodbye to her newfound friend.

But after thanking Vae for the dance, she leaves without another word. All that is left from her presence is the blackened chaos on the ground among their hoofprints. She watches Thana until she's swallowed back up by the shadows of the trees. Then, she takes her own leave back among the light fae while she wonders what death must feel like.

"Speaking."