When the crow starts to back further away Thana only watches with the same impassiveness that a lion takes when watching a sparrow back away from death. She understands, and the monstrous part of her sings a terrible sort of song in her heart to watch the bird dance away. Her eyes flick away then, back towards the broken tree and her own mess of once bright paints.
That tap, tap, tap of her tail against the wood never stops. And Thana almost imagines it to be her heartbeat slow and sharp below the whine of music coming from the corner of the room. When she lifts her nose and looks out at the crowd to stop herself from correcting the mare. She wants to tell her that it's a dead tree now, pine or not, it's only dead. Instead she swallow the words down until they burn into silence.
“What is a third eye?” She asks and tries not to feel a hope bloom in her heart that says she is not the only strange one here, not the only monster. Third eyes seem violent if they can create dead trees and lightning bolts. When she inhales she can still taste the sting of paint and the sweet taste left behind by the too close glass of mead. It all makes her itch for something more than paper and paint, idle talk and low humming music.
Thana wants to run until there is no lightning but the whisper of her markings through the dark night.
She starts to pull away, to listen to that hum and stab of her wildness and the song her blade cannot stop singing. Just as she's about to turn the mare talks again with another secret part of this world that Thana, the monster made of magic, does not know. Even her tail stops that heart-beat tap, tap, tap when she says, “I have never heard of Tarot.” All her bones ache with the hope that Tarot is just the name of another thing that she is searching for.
Because maybe then, this strange place, might feel like home instead of a hunting ground.
@Corrdelia
