Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
“Is it childish when I do not think it but know?” Each word is a snarl, a frothing rage only pretending to be tame as langage. Beneath her hooves mushrooms start to bloom where the fires had burned the night before and destroyed all the grass there. The smell of them is a festering thing, a rotting thing, a fermented flavor of the earth left behind in the wreckage of mortals. From the fire the smell of charred jasmine starts to rise in blooms of spiced smoke.
Danaë feels like she’s choking on it all as the mortal tries to hold her horn between her teeth and drag her into the flames.
And let it be remembered that her eyes wept with sorrow in that last moment, that last almost-mortal beat of her heart, before the wrath settled like a stone in her chest. A single tear, a lone regret, gathers bloody against her cheek before she leans into the feel of the other unicorn’s teeth. A single tear.
The world trembles at the bottom of the fire, where saplings start to rise out of the charred oaks and birches. Each is wet enough, new enough, green enough, that they do not burn completely before the leaves start to rise outside the flames. The tear in her eye is replaced by blood, and malice, and every raging sorrow of the dead forest, and the dead predators beneath them.
Her tailblade presses against the mortal’s throat, sharp and eager for all the sinew and blood beneath the skin. “If you were the sea once you are no longer, mortal.” The curls of her horn dig into the attack as vines grow from the cleaved out land to steady her. “It is not the tide I hear thrumming in your chest and it will not be brine that I spill when you are cleaved in two.” Danaë pushes her tailbade so closely that it might sink in and dig deep.
All she had wanted was to save the dead-trees in the fires and the charred grasses around the stones of them. All she had wanted was life instead of death-- and this, this will have to do.
“I will not be the one to burn with the trees and the flowers, tonight.” She snarls and every vine at her hooves bloom with holly-berries that stain the ground like blood when she steps on them to push the mortal back.
Mother and Isolt would have unmade this mare already. And still Danae tries, just a little, to save her before the death blow of the wicked tailblade poised at the mortal’s tender throat. .
Danaë feels like she’s choking on it all as the mortal tries to hold her horn between her teeth and drag her into the flames.
And let it be remembered that her eyes wept with sorrow in that last moment, that last almost-mortal beat of her heart, before the wrath settled like a stone in her chest. A single tear, a lone regret, gathers bloody against her cheek before she leans into the feel of the other unicorn’s teeth. A single tear.
The world trembles at the bottom of the fire, where saplings start to rise out of the charred oaks and birches. Each is wet enough, new enough, green enough, that they do not burn completely before the leaves start to rise outside the flames. The tear in her eye is replaced by blood, and malice, and every raging sorrow of the dead forest, and the dead predators beneath them.
Her tailblade presses against the mortal’s throat, sharp and eager for all the sinew and blood beneath the skin. “If you were the sea once you are no longer, mortal.” The curls of her horn dig into the attack as vines grow from the cleaved out land to steady her. “It is not the tide I hear thrumming in your chest and it will not be brine that I spill when you are cleaved in two.” Danaë pushes her tailbade so closely that it might sink in and dig deep.
All she had wanted was to save the dead-trees in the fires and the charred grasses around the stones of them. All she had wanted was life instead of death-- and this, this will have to do.
“I will not be the one to burn with the trees and the flowers, tonight.” She snarls and every vine at her hooves bloom with holly-berries that stain the ground like blood when she steps on them to push the mortal back.
Mother and Isolt would have unmade this mare already. And still Danae tries, just a little, to save her before the death blow of the wicked tailblade poised at the mortal’s tender throat. .
