There has never been a time where her hooves have moved for any reason but running or hunting. Her heart has never beat to the bass of a melody instead of war. But here, spinning and twirling with snow filling up the crease of her spine and pulling back in layers of rot from her hooves, Thana thinks that perhaps this is something she was not made to enjoy.
But she does, oh she does.
For a moment there is only the two of them, two wolves in the glen with their legs moving for something other than survival. There is only the tease between skin, and bone, and beauty on the edge of grotesque. Somehow this is more without the erratic fairy glow. Somehow it's more wild, like the heart aching below the froth starting to form on her chest. Thana does not want to ruin it with words, and other bits of this mortal coil. She wants to dance until all the fury has leaked from her skin like rain from a root.
Perhaps that's why it takes the touch of the mare to rouse her from the leeching of her war. Perhaps it's why there is still more wolf than unicorn in her gaze when she rests all the weight of it on the moon dimming upon the girl's brow. Perhaps it's why for a moment she only stares, wondering which of them is killing the light. Her hooves pause in their dance like a hound on a scent-- waiting, waiting, waiting.
The silence and the sound of snow stretches out for too long. Beneath her skin Thana's lungs do not tremble. Dancing is easier than killing and her body is made to run, and sweat, and flicker on the edge of death for days. A part of her yearning to be mortal, to love, wants to laugh at being called mistress of the dark. But it no more incorrect than lady death, and no one says her name in quite the way Ipomoea does. So Thana does not share anything more than a smile that's more teeth that kindness.
“I come from the forest” Because she still doesn't know how to say she comes from a city. She almost wants to tell her that it's a forest that's dead now, with more bones than roots, because she pillowed her head on a moss covered trunk and started to dream. Thana almost wants to say that this glen will be nothing more than ash and rock if she stays long enough. Her blade sounds like an owl screeching at the moon when she drags it across a stone before her hooves start to dance their grotesque and beautiful war again.
It's that sound that soothes her more than the silence and less than the leeching of her fury into the winter wind. It settles her enough to almost laugh and say, in a voice made only for magic, immortality, and darkness, “It is not music that I hear.” She reaches to close the distance between them and drags her blade, soft as a kiss, across the mare's hip. “Listen closer” Beneath her skin her heart hums the echo of her fading fury. And each note of it, each war drum bass, is full of all the things music cannot grasp. Only violence can hold it all.
Only violence.
And Thana.
@vaeri
