“Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."

He settles her hunger and pours it out across the dirt until there is only a cup full of it at the bottom of her heart. It almost makes her bones feel full of marrow instead of rot, and magic, and black-ore. Eligos turns to go, his own hunger only fed instead of filled, and his footsteps are near-silent on the grass as he dissolves into the shadows.

Thana wonders what it would feel like, to twist and mold her form into a hundred different emotions besides this coldness on her lips. She wonders if her heart would learn to sing and hum instead of scream. And she wonders what it might feel like to take a seed between her teeth and taste something other than sulfur.

Death pours out from her now in a wave of wilting grass and lichen as she turns to lead the stallion deeper into the forest. She wishes it was light, silver and sweet instead of this black bitterness. Perhaps the waters that made her own poured sorrow and hunger in and kept the happiness (and kindness, and love) for themselves. “Someday you will have to tell me about your travels.” She says the words and her eyes beg him, not today, not today, not today. Not now with this almost settled thing in her still counting the hard vertebrae beneath his skin as she moves to lead him into the dark, wanting forest.

“I do live here.” But she does not clarify if it's castle or thicket that holds her tight each time she dreams when her gaze snags on a golden sapling as they walk. And she does not offer that she stays because the king asked it of her (still she doesn't understand why, not when his flowers die each time she kisses them). But something in the way her steps quicken to a trot, suggests that shes racing now towards whatever it is that she calls home.

Ahead the library breaks up the pathway, the door gleaming as brightly as the trees woven together above it. The sight of it sets her cup of hunger to over-flowing. She does not reach for the door as she stops and gestures Willfur to keep going. She's already discovered that any book, or table, she touches starts to mold and disintegrate into dust.

Something like a smile (one full of teeth instead of joy) creases her lips at the corners. “You will like the gardens more than the castle.” Thana does not say that he reminds her of Ipomoea who talks to his flowers, or that she can picture him in a bed of foliage just as easy as she can picture the bones slumbering in woven patterns below the first. She only lets her smile flicker and fade like the quick-death of a star, and she only lets her hooves carry her away from the library that will not welcome her inside.

But what she does say over her shoulder is, “find me in the city when you turn from the books to the flowers,” because it has been too long since her hunger poured out on the ground instead of flooding her soul.


@Willfur

Willfur


Thana leads and he follows, peering around her deep red shoulders to memorize landmarks, turns, small changes in footing or plant life that might help him learn the way. As she picks up speed the stallion hangs back a moment, lowering his head to sniff at their overlapping hoofprints, curious, as always.

His is familiar and ordinary in every way, just a nondescript, shallow crescent in the soft soil, but hers is like an artists perfect rendering of hoof anatomy. Every detail is visible, as if the very particles of the earth gave way beneath her, shrinking back from even that brief span of contact. There's the curve of her toe, the twin bulbs of her heels, the triangular 'frog' that helps to circulate blood throughout the hooves when she walks. Even the small imperfections in her soles are clearly visible. Inhaling, it smells of dry, dead grass and dehydrated dirt.

A crease spreads across the mules wide brow as he hurries to catch up, ears splitting one to either side in thought. He's encountered magic before, but it's a subject with such undefinable terms. There are no set-in-stone rules, no absolute truths or provable anything. It does what it wants and often laughs in the face of science and logic, so he knows better than to try parsing it out, but still, he can observe and maybe get lucky once in a while in noticing a small detail or correlation.

He wonders if this - draining, aging, killing - magic is hers in form and function, hers by choice, or if it's something that's been put upon her. Can she control it? Or does its effect control her? It would be so easy to let something like that isolate her and he doesn't think she deserves to be isolated. He doesn't think anyone does, but before he's decided whether or not to broach the subject at all, she halts, turning to him with the barest suggestion of a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

They're here!

Glancing past, he's a little taken aback. He'd expected some huge, stone structure and the library hidden somewhere within, secret and shielded from the elements, but the trees themselves huddle close, swelling and leaning in until they create walls and a roof and rooms as organized and structurally sound as any he's ever seen consciously created. It's an amazing marriage of nature and intelligent design.

Even the enormous door looks entirely organic, its front intricately woven with branches and vines that curl, twist, and braid into vibrant motifs. He's already examining the jambs, trying to see what the hinge mechanisms are made of and how they work, when he realizes that the mare is leaving. "Thana!" He calls, startled by the sudden parting and genuinely sad to see her go. "Thank you."

Maybe it says more about his inner workings than it does hers, but he'd seen her brighten since they first met, she'd smiled, and he can't help feeling that once she slips away into the dark she'll stop smiling. "I'll do that."


@Thana