There is discord in her solitary steps through the glass graveyard and the cobwebs of wishes. Each snap of her knees, each thud of her hooves, each whisper of her blade on the ground, seems like a lone alto note in a symphony. There is no elegance in the sound of her movement but that of the lost, and the wandering, and the broken hearted.
And perhaps her form, spectral and strange, is nothing but a tangle of sinew, marrow, and blood cells. Perhaps she is nothing more than the reflection of all the deaths given shape, and thought, and pulse as the risen are.
When she turns there is a star-belly with spires of jasmine rises from the black dust. Vines twist and tangle through the holes and knot themselves into organs and the roots of eyes.
Around the bend, in an echo of the twisted shadow of her horn, there is a bear with chrysalis hanging from his open air skull. His teeth are tulips and his ribs are not bone but birch bark curling like the damp pages of a tome. When he roars the dead-star mirror rattles like thunder and her unicorn bones leap like a flock of matis at the thrill of it.
She laughs and there is discord in the sound of that too.
Her steps quicken like the heart of a risen before the second death. In the thunder of that broken canter her laughter flickers and fades as quick as all the death mirror memories curling around her. Over and over she looks for an echo of her own corpse, of her horn tangled with ivy and the rot of her heart blooming with violet lichen and sunny daffodils. Over and over again she sees only death, every death by her own.
There are stars, and lions, and wolves, and dryads, and wendigos, but no unicorns with blood eyes and sharp tails. There are--
Oh, there is a pegasus.
Danae turns to her and to the mirror image beyond her of a rib etched in vines and a corpse with perfect pearls in the grave of eyes. She sighs and the teeth peeking through her pale laps are bone-white and sickle curved like a dying moon. “They are lovely,” she says in a whisper thin as a dandelion seed.
Because they are lovely. Still are lovely. Will always be lovely.
Her eyes when they linger on the image blink with an echo of a garden and a promise of a dream dancing across the darkness. Over and over again-- a corpse, a garden, a dream, a long legged mare running beside her with flowers instead of a liver.
And in that image there is no discord.
