Her body was not unlike the part of the mountains that the dragon had burned: made new by the past months, a map of fresh scars, rake-marks that told no story except that she’d survived.
They still itched, reminders of her most recent brush with death. She’d been lucky, she’d been careless, and the knowledge of it burned like bile low in her belly. How many times would she have to be saved?
(Sometimes, when she dreamed, she saw Calliope above her, eyes full of a strange sorrow, before she bent and like a blade drew her horn across Shrike’s throat. When she felt it open like a tear in fabric, weeping red, she always woke, full of shame.)
Up and up she wound, to paths less-traveled even now at the end of winter. Shrike did not fit in this world, could not find a place between the glances Raymond and Calliope shared, would not sleep within a city of stone – and so she wandered, lean and irritable, hunting something she could not name.
Never before had her knowledge of not belonging eaten at her like this. She’d spent her life a vagabond – why should it trouble her now?
Here near the summit it was still cold enough that what would be rain lower down was a thin snow, though few flakes made it through the canopy of bare branches and thick needles that scented the air with pine. Her muscles were warm enough that she did not shiver, and the wind was a moan up above. Beneath the boughs, where there were no shadows (for all was shadow) it was almost peaceful, the only kind of cathedral she knew.
But still she was wary, alert. She could afford no more near-misses, especially not alone; the not-memory of her previous death itched worse than her fresh scars. So it was that she saw the cat before it saw her: a clouded leopard, moving as softly through the forest as a shadow-creature. The paint mare froze, one hoof still poised, and simply watched, almost in wonder. It was hunting, but not her; its yellow-eyed gaze was turned away, focused on something she could not see.
A sudden crack of a branch made them both startle, and when Shrike glanced back the cat was already gone. A dark ear twisting back, the mare turned to find the source of the noise, her muscles taut beneath her thick winter coat.
white fanged foreverness
@Jahin
