the sun shines low and red across the water,
Later, much later, when the smell of blood isn't thick on her tongue like the wine she stole a sip of once, she might wonder--
She might wonder if this is how girls become warriors. Or maybe it's how young things learn to hunger, lament, and rage like ancient gods older than the stone rising around them bones. Or maybe it's the moment she might discover that she wants to remake the world like the sea remakes the shore each time the tide comes calling.
Now she only tastes the blood and injustice. The air is cool and tainted in her lungs and everything in her rails against the way the metal sting of it doesn't feel like brine. When she steps deeper into the belly of the darkness, with her sister the only heat against her skin (it feels like a fever of winter), her hooves sink into something that feels thicker and deeper than stone should feel. A shiver creeps down her spine like ivy, like roots, like a sickness she'll never be rid of. Somewhere, all the bits of her that are nothing but a young girl, shake between the cage the parts of her that are all ocean-wildness have made. And if she was a nothing but a young girl, a princess-- she would turn back.
But Avesta is more sea than girl, more star than mortal, more feral than tame. So she steps closer, and deeper, into the black. Her horn shines in what little moonlight there is this far into the belly of the mountain. It points north, deeper into the dark, a small knife held against the throat of darkness in warning. “We never have to be afraid when we are together.” She tells her twin, even though her own skin feels cold with something that almost feels like terror.
Aspara falls to the ground before she can even put together the gore before her. There is blood and small piles of soft white strewn among it. Avesta struggles to read the pattern to understand what she's looking at. Surely it is more than something horrible that her wild heart is trying not to hold. She inhales and it's metal. But beneath that there is the musk of something wild, like daises forgotten and left out in a downpour. It smells 'other' like Fable, but also like the darkness between the bonfires.
Wolves. They are wolves. Or were wolves. She steps closer to the bodies, away from Aspara. The girl part of her wants to curl against her twin and cry, and sob until her eyes are deserts. But the magic in her blood is digging into her marrow and urging her to do something. Or maybe it's really saying become
Avesta surrenders to it with a sigh--
Her horn aches when she touches it to the fur two dying pups tangled together (this close she can see how frailly they are breathing, almost-dead but not). Beneath her skin her blood feels like fire, like something desperately trying to come out. “Wake up.” This close she can feel the hearts of the wolves. They are both weak enough to be a leaf in the wild, or a bit of glass in the garden. “Wake up!” She screams and bellows like a dragon at the pup, and at the mountain who did not lead them on quick enough. Blood starts to leak from her nose and her legs start to tremble like weeds. Stars dance in the black blooming in the corners of her vision.
She collapses into the blood. But when she brushes her nose against the two pups (leaving pink streaks across their white fur) she can feel their hearts beating stronger than they were before.
Maybe they were not too late after-all.
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