Thana is still waiting when the light comes rippling out from the lake like a sea that has forgotten where its edges are supposed to end. There is too much brightness for her skin, and her weak rotten magic, to kill. Fireflies start to cling to her skin like dewdrops and gather in the hollow of her horn like water made of sunlight. Thana swallows a few living dewdrops down before the insects settle and all the things hiding in the dark of the humidity are revealed.
She does not answer the stallion with anything more than the strange weight in her eyes that skims over him to the hare, and the macaw, and the thorny plants rising like trees. Even her steps are silent as she moves between all the things revealed. Like a queen she walks between the monsters, and the stallion and into the thicket of thorns and bright petals. Not once does to pause to listen to the silent macaw or look at the way the hare has emotionless glass lamps for eyes.
In her dreams she'll see these creatures, over and over again, and in each dream they will open up their magic, hollow bones to welcome her home.
And it is not until she's almost to the thorns she turns back towards the stallion. with gems on his antlers and a heat she'll never understand on his lip. Thana lifts her nose like a shield between them. Her scythe whistles through the air when she cuts the thorns from the plant-stalks like it's nothing more than silk blooming from their roots instead of weaponry. There is no plant (she thinks) that grows and does not already know how it will feel to fade away in the fall.
Everything knows how to die. Everything knows the masterpiece and the history of it.
So she opens up and mouth and says, “I am Thana.”, because the plants already know what she is and what she brings. A petal catches in the crease of her spine when it falls. The shine of it turns to black and rot and sludge running down her sides.
“And you-- she inhales him, and the sharp stone tang of his jewels. He does not taste like the wings of fireflies still caught on the back of her throat. Nor does he taste like the dewdrops making pools beneath the valleys left by her tongue. “are you something I am looking for?” He does not taste like anything she should ask the question of. But she does anyway.
Thana cannot help herself.
She never can.
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