[P] A blood-red thing

[Isra]

It took a season for Isra to gather up the courage to return to the night court. It took a month of dreams that were full of something other than fire and dragon shadows for her to think that maybe she might be able to walk between those raven gates. It took a million feather thin breathes of panic to find courage enough climb the mountains covered in embers and ash. Some of the trees still smolder and cast strange shadows over charred mountain goat bones. Isra blinks to cover up the tears, the sorrow for the creatures that kept her company as the memories came and went like dread tides in the summer. She doesn't look at any of the guards as she walks past the open gates. Her hooves cling to the shadows and she's thin and weary enough that she thinks they might see only a shifting shadow that lengthens as the sun starts to move across the sky. Ever has she been a ghost here in Night. She thinks that perhaps she might as well be a corpse buried under the soot and sand of the dying embers. Still she carries on, down the mountains. Idly she appreciates how different they look with no hate blazing, no frantic animals stampeding down the rocks. On she goes until the trees turn to stone and deer paths to cobbled roads. It's a hollow sort of comfort to come again in the daylight with her belly full enough of grass that she feels no hunger. She wonders if she met the monsters that talked of dragons, gates and fires if they would skate their vision over her like rocks upon the sea again. Would they remember? Would they know the girl that burned with all the innocents, trapped like fodder with no choice but to run, run, run? These empty streets are a comfort to her, a sign that perhaps she is not the only ghost left to roam Night in sadness in solitude. And for a moment she feels free enough to breath deep, to let her body linger in light instead of shadow. But the moment passes the moment she sees the red stallion ahead. Her heart flutters when she notices the weapon half-hidden in his lion tail. All her muscles shiver and she can only snort in fear as she slides sideways into the shadows. There is no greeting to break the silence left by her as she waits barely breathing against the wall. She can only hope that he was distracted enough to ignore the sound of hooves at his back, the smell of wildness that cannot be anything else but horse. Isra hopes that like the rest of Night he will forget his eyes rested upon a dark unicorn full only of brine and salted, violent fear. * * * * * do not remember me @Raymond