all that she looks on is made pleasanter;
’There’s yelling ahead,’ the tiger whispers into spinning mind, words trailing pale vapors where they bounce and rickochet. Death-bright eyes sing of hunger, of a primal urge to stalk that which waits in the mist, to follow and pounce and devour that which stops in the jungle.
But these trees are not the fronds of her home despite the humidity, their needles claw at her skin as she would others.
And the pegasus that stalks beside her is just as still, just as predatory, having learned the art of survival and killing and thriving long ago when but a cub in her own horrid home. Away from the jungles, she was just as unused to the humidity that brings moisture to her skin. Inward and outward it flows, hers or natures, the phoenix does not know. All she knows is the mist. The mist and the bodies that move within it.
Snapping branches tug her, pull ears toward their breaking spines, demand caution and curiosity to intermingle in a hedonistic mixture that has the Regent of Night walking and walking.
Do boughs break in her passing? Or is she silent like the padded footfalls of her beloved that is a shadow in the dark?
Neerja goes on ahead, hunting the three bodies ahead just to the side. If they look, would they see burning eyes full of fire, full of hunger? She doesn’t know. All she knows is the sound of a voice from the past and the body of a hooded thing with a bird upon their back. Honeyed gaze swallows the scene, gulps hungrily at the life before her. Too long has she secluded herself, thinking and planning and learning once more. Denocte did not wilt with her neglect, for Isra returns. But she missed mortality, missed vitality, and all that the creatures who walk and sing and sigh and die have to offer.
So dark feet press stains into the foliage, leave doe-trails behind her, and all the while she goes forward. Only the future is left, even as Time pulls and pulls worlds and ages together into a medley of here and now and before and after.
They stop, the five of them. Neerja, hidden in shadow upon shadow upon shadow. And Moira, coming from the side between the two with wings tucked tight and head held high and mouth curved in a soft, disarming fashion. "Yelling scares the birds away,” she hums to Morrighan softly. "It is good to see you, Morr.” A smile for a familiar face from home, an incline of her head.
’She should be minced meat,’ Neerja mutters in their minds.
Pursed lips hide laughter while red body turns towards that of the future, of the now, of the past. "Please, there’s no need to wear a hood when even the world sweats.”
