And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."
It is not the leaves unfolding above them that makes the forest feel like home in a way it never has before. Nor is it the trail of rot rippling out in some black waves from her hoof-prints that makes it seems like something she has never really forgotten. There is a memory of skeleton branches, and golden saplings, and dragging a king into the copse like a jealous wolf. Even with a hundred memories of the forest none of them are what makes this time, this gallop through the trees, feel like coming home.
Thana would like to think that it's Ipomoea, running beside her fleet-footed as a stag. But it's not.
What makes the forest feel like home with the sun dappling over her skin like puddle of molten light, is the weight in the air. Her tongue feels coated in iron with the taste of it, acid and metallic as only life-blood can be. Something in the forest is dead, or dying, or waiting for her to steal the life from its bones like a a root stealing water from a seed.
If Ipomoea is running towards the life with the footsteps leaving a bloody trail, Thana is only bringing with her death and nothing of life, or salvation. Only death, only silence. She is not running towards death: she is bringing it. With each thunder of their hooves it's creeping closer to the bleeding out thing.
The moment that she finds it (by way of the harsh inhale of air through Ipomoea's lungs) there is nothing but a flutter of purpose in her chest. Thana does no feel pity for the struggle of the deer, or melancholy to watch the light grow dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer in the deer's eyes. Perhaps there is a twinge of understanding like the pull of a noose. Perhaps there is an apology in the way she walks steadier towards it while Ipomoea falls to his knees.
Perhaps there is only fury in her eyes, that another thing is dying for greed instead of balance. Perhaps there is only rage.
Thana is already moving closer when the deer starts to thrash. She knows it's death chasing it now, not true fear of them. All it can feel now is the coldness creeping through its bones. “It is cruel to let it suffer.” The words are almost no more than a whisper, a exhale of the reaper come to drag the stag to the belly of the earth so that later he can feed the roots and moss.
And as she lays her horn across the stag's throat, she quivers with the strength it takes to not look at Ipomoea from whom this will be nothing like coming home.
@Ipomoea
