There has always been this feeling in her, this wanting outside the wanting of the empty bones waiting for spores, that she has never been able to name. It follows her into her dreams when she runs through constellations made out of empty sockets, and hollow joints, and sinew lines drawing out stories. The feeling haunts her every step and it feels nothing like the earth dappling in half-moons below the fragile weight of her. Like a phantom shadow made of stone and oil it nips at her heels every time she tries to dance to the war her mother can hear.
It is following her now, haunting her now, as she flickers her risen-vision and self-vision between hound and mortal. And still, as she steps towards him, she cannot name it as it deepens like a church tower through her throat and burrows like a weed into her soul. The howling sound it makes, as she exhales in a sighing lament, seems so much louder as it echoes against the inside of her skull.
This feeling, this nameless feeling, aches when the sound of a growl breaks the silence before anything else does.
But it is not that feeling that turns her bloody gaze to the hound in a look that promises this forest does not belong to the dogs of mortals. It belongs to gods, and god-unicorns, and eira-gods buried and rotten beneath their hooves. The look says back as much as it says heel.
And it is that feeling that shifts only her own vision back to the stallion and smiles with a pale, echoing flash of not amusement but understanding. “I think I might be one.” She says, or rather that feeling says, in a whisper that is as god-like as his voice is prayer-soft. Only whispers bring miracles when roars like her sister’s are made to smite.
Lichen, and roses, and mushrooms as golden as the dawn, move closer to him as she does. They haunt her and still she cannot name what it is that glows in her own heart like a spore in a risen. Her smile falls deeper and deeper into whisper and lament. “There is nothing I do not know about this forest.” Another whisper, as she lifts her horn from where it had instinctively angled towards his throat.
The risen, with all his own thoughts and none of Danaë’s, curls up upon the blade of her tail to peer at the hound like he had once before when his eyes were not poppies and his paws were not moss.
