The darkness, as they slope down into the castle’s middle, seems without end. In it she can see the suggestion of shapes where the darkness has laid upon itself like a bruise. A five-headed lion walks across their path and Warset can almost hear the scratching whine of his eagle’s claws across the stone. A lamb chews itself out of the darkness and when she blinks the silver of her gaze refracts across those sorrowful, muted eyes. A star dances, a flash of silver brighter than her eyes, somewhere too distant to reach.
Her heart strains at the sight like a comet against the gravity of a moon.
Light from some strange source catches in the ivory of her wingtip. When she turns to find the source, distracted enough that she’s stopped listening to the child, there is only a darkening on the blackness to suggest there has been a thing there at all. Instincts, buried this deep into the daylight hour, start to rise the hair on her spine in warning. The leopard, and the star, know exactly how terrible the darkening of the blackness can be.
Perhaps it’s why she’s already baring her teeth at the darkness as it reaches towards them.
What is a star, a thing of fire and silver, but a brightness to swallow up the darkness down into the stone-pit of it?
Warset does not hear the child glup, nor step away from the darkness with its mouth of teeth. In the shape of it she can see the shape of a lion, a bear, a snake with seven heads, a hole searching for a key of music. Each shape makes her remember a name, a line of song, a thrilling harpsichord cry. Her wings snap out again, and again, and again, until she’s alive with light enough to blind. Even in the face of a dragon she had not bowed, and she will not bend her head at a monster now. Never again, she tells herself as she snarls at the dark demon, never again.
And when the monster streaks down, down, down into the yawning darkness where there is not a memory of a star to be seen, Warset gives chase (without a single thought spared for the child). And on her lips, as she gallops through the blackness, is a song that has the castle walls trembling as star-bones start to fall from the cavern walls.
Her heart strains at the sight like a comet against the gravity of a moon.
Light from some strange source catches in the ivory of her wingtip. When she turns to find the source, distracted enough that she’s stopped listening to the child, there is only a darkening on the blackness to suggest there has been a thing there at all. Instincts, buried this deep into the daylight hour, start to rise the hair on her spine in warning. The leopard, and the star, know exactly how terrible the darkening of the blackness can be.
Perhaps it’s why she’s already baring her teeth at the darkness as it reaches towards them.
What is a star, a thing of fire and silver, but a brightness to swallow up the darkness down into the stone-pit of it?
Warset does not hear the child glup, nor step away from the darkness with its mouth of teeth. In the shape of it she can see the shape of a lion, a bear, a snake with seven heads, a hole searching for a key of music. Each shape makes her remember a name, a line of song, a thrilling harpsichord cry. Her wings snap out again, and again, and again, until she’s alive with light enough to blind. Even in the face of a dragon she had not bowed, and she will not bend her head at a monster now. Never again, she tells herself as she snarls at the dark demon, never again.
And when the monster streaks down, down, down into the yawning darkness where there is not a memory of a star to be seen, Warset gives chase (without a single thought spared for the child). And on her lips, as she gallops through the blackness, is a song that has the castle walls trembling as star-bones start to fall from the cavern walls.
It all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end.
