Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
And the unicorn evils run them through;
The itch just below her skin, the one that races across her sinew like a wound, does not settle at the sound of Corrdelia's voice. It grows teeth, and claws, and a spine of bones that does not bend. And it burrows into her form like worms into the dirt. Thana shivers at the feel of it, of the restlessness crawling down her insides like a sentient thing. She takes a step backward into the bright-lights of the archway-- anything, anything to keep her from moving closer to the mare.
A firework explodes over their heads, the ash spreading across the sky like a winter-cloud. Thana closes her eyes against the echo of the roar. She begs her heart to settle, and her hunger to sleep, and Eligos to cut lines in her skin so that she might feel pain instead of want.
Eligos drags his teeth across her hock and lines of red bloom against the surface of her skin. Thana sighs as the feeling of it as she opens her eyes towards all the colors bright enough to blind even at night.
But she does not smile, not even as she says, “I too live in Delumine now.” She does not ask the mare where she lives, or why she's come, it is enough to know that the forest holds both their secrets now. There is a comfort in that knowing and she takes another step back to the halo of fire-light and shimmering glass.
Her itch races down her spine, dragging the same lines as Eligos had in places no one her might see.
“Come.” Thana does not ask, not with the crowd starting to press into their spaces, and the crow starting to tilt wrongly upon Corrdelia's shoulder. Her hooves are walking before she makes the decision on where to go.
Perhaps it's why her voice rings out, on the other side of the archway, in a roaring echo against the creeping darkness. “We will find you paints in the markets.” Or perhaps the itch driving her forward is why she does not look back at the mare and her corpse to see if they are following her at all.
And maybe it's why her eyes look towards the pathway like a wolf looking at a deer trail in the thick forest.
